REMEMBER: BEFORE HARLEM CIRCA 1903

A photo taken around 1903 shows Manhattan's original African-American neighborhood at the turn of the last century and some might find it surprising that this was not taken in Harlem.  Uptown was still very much a German, Jewish, Irish, Finnish, Swedish or Italian neighborhood back in the early 20th Century and The Tenderloin district at 7th Avenue by 30th Street just south of today's Penn Station was considered the black neighborhood.  In the the following years after the image was taken, this would all change because of one African-American real estate entrepreneur and by the 1920s, a new Renaissance would be happening up in Harlem.


Archival photo courtesy the Museum of the City of New York