Harlem Bespoke: Our photos from the neighborhood back in 2010 shows that a couple of brownstones still had signage up from a closed Black Fashion Museum located on West 126th Street just east of Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard. Mrs. Alexander Lane opened the Harlem Fashion Institute in 1966 and the next door Black Fashion Museum in 1979 after seeing the need for representation and education in the field for those in the community. Everything was running for 30 years but the businesses would close doors by 1994 and the founder passed away in 2007. What ended up happening to these buildings?
As can be seen in the lower two photos, everything has been renovated since then and basically became a boutique condo building. Construction
started up in 2014 and the brownstones now have a modern grey tint to them with penthouses added on top. We definitely do miss the cornice detail but overall at least the facade is pretty much is intact and restored.
Some might now be wondering what happened to the fashion collection after all these years? It turns out the daughter of Ms. Lane actually kept the rare archive and donated the garments to the Smithsonian
National Museum of African American History and Culture about a decade ago before the institution started construction in Washington D.C. Read more on the original story in our past post:
LINK
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