Harlem Bespoke: We had to do some digging to find archival photos of the forgotten Rockland Palace at 280 West 155th Street by Frederick Douglass Boulevard and these are the only other images of the block on file through the city records. Originally called the Manhattan Casino, the Rockland Palace would become infamous in the roaring 20s for the Hamilton Lodge drag balls that would attract over 8,000 revelers from all over the city and country. Uptown's underground LGBT ballroom scene would live on into modern times but the event space did not endure recent decades.
As can be seen from the more current photo, the entire block has was demolished sometimes after the 1980s and now everything is just a parking lot. If the building existed still today, there would definitely be advocacy to make it an important city landmark but all has since been lost. We had our original post up about 10 years ago and some blog readers have since added on some interesting historic insight in the comment section:
LINK
No comments:
Post a Comment