Thursday, February 2, 2023

BESPOKE: SUGAR HILL'S BLACK HISTORY NAME




Harlem Bespoke:  Harlem is of course named after a Dutch town and most of the other parts of uptown have monikers that honor white landowners or former founding fathers but there is one exception.  Sugar Hill in West Harlem (in the Hamilton Heights neighborhood) was of course where the sweet life was for wealthy African Americans in the 1920s and has the official borders of 145th to 155th street bound by Amsterdam Avenue to the west and Edgcombe Avenue to the east overlooking Jackie Robinson Park. In past, Duke Ellington called Morris-Jumel Mansion at 160th Street The Jewel in the Crown of Sugar Hill and so historically the borders were considered further north by locals back in the day.  This part of Harlem has free standing estates such as the Bailey Mansion mixed in with limestone townhouses, prewar buildings and barrel front cornices decorating the rooflines along the boulevards.  Saint Nicholas Avenue is the main strip and taking the A Train to Sugar Hill way up in Harlem from 145th Street actually only takes less than 15 minutes from midtown.   More recently, the Dorrance Brooks Square Historic District has been christen in Central Harlem and now this is the only neighborhood in Manhattan named after an African-American: LINK

No comments:

Post a Comment