REMEMBER: GANGSTERS AT THE PLANTATION CLUB

Harlem Bespoke: The building currently used as a church on West 126th Street just east of Lenox used to have a more notorious history during the Renaissance years.  This direct competitor to the Cotton Club in the 1930s made the pages of The New York Times when the mafia squared things up.


 "GANGSTERS WRECK HARLEM NIGHT CLUB; Nine, With Crowbars, Knives and Axes Do $25,000 Damage to the Plantation. HERD EMPLOYES TO CELLAR Rip Up Dance Floor, Smash Mirrors and Destroy 200 Costumes. RAID LAID TO RACKETEERS Management Suspects Invaders, Who Escaped, Were Sent by Rivals of New Resort."

The owner would mysteriously meet his death afterwards and the rest was history.  Fate would have it that the Cotton Club location at 142nd Street would be demolished by the 1950s but this upstart nightclub nightclub still stands today.  Check out our original story from 2010 with an archival photo of the Plantation Club: LINK


HarlemBespoke.com 2020