Harlem Bespoke: We walked by 137 West 110th Street this weekend to follow up on a history post and noticed that everything out front is being renovated. This kind of brings things to a full circle since back in 1983, getting a bank to finance the building called The Semiramis was quite difficult. Although the location just west of Lenox Avenue was on Central Park North, this was gateway to Harlem and things were not so great in the historic neighborhood. A New York Times
article from 1985 mentions that it was almost impossible to get a loan for the abandoned building two years previously because nobody believed there was a market for condominiums this far north but a second generation Harlem resident persevered to make it happen.
Apparently everything came together and The Semiramis was the first rehabilitative condominium project from a private developer to debut in Harlem and had sold 85 percent of 71 apartments by 1989 with price ranges going from $100K to $200K. As far as new constructions go, Tower on The Park at Frederick Douglass Circle would break ground the following year in 1986 with the help of the New York City Housing Partnership and would be the first modern residential development of its kind in Harlem. Another real estate article from 1989 goes over some of the history and also reveals that many middle income professionals were still hesitant to invest back in the day when prices were at their lowest for cooperative conversions:
LINK
HarlemBespoke.com
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