Harlem Bespoke: We mentioned that the block on West 119th Street between Frederick Douglass and Manhattan Avenue had mostly been demolished in the 1970s but has since been redeveloped but what was on the street in the past? Back in the 1940s, a group of tenement building provided housing for local residents but landlords decades later let everything fall apart. The images found in the city archives from the 1980s are really hard to look at in comparison to the restoration of the area today.
Everything basically was an open lot which apparently served as makeshift parking for some. This was a time that nobody wanted to invest in Harlem and even the local black population diminished by half from just a few decades before. Apparently cameras were not great in the 80s also but the photos kind of match with how gritty things were back in the day. Parts of the East Village further downtown during that decade looked similar to Harlem and so the property neglect was a bigger problem all over the city. Check out the dramatic after images taken this week if you missed out on our past post:
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