REMEMBER: THE DARK TOWER CIRCA 1915

                   Archival image courtesy The Museum of the City of New York

For Black History Month this year, HB will re-publish some of the archival history posts that are now almost a decade old themselves.  Many of the Harlem Renaissance figures are noted for their accomplishments by historians but little has been preserved uptown to mark the places they lived in or established during that remarkable decade.  

The top photo is another image of one of the most famous townhouses of the Harlem Renaissance circa 1915.  The Madame C.J. Walker Mansion was basically two townhouse which doubled as a flagship hair boutique and the home for the first African-American millionaires.   This building located just west of Lenox on 108-110 West 136th Street was called The Dark Tower and also would be known for entertaining the cultural elite of the Renaissance years.

Eventually Harlem would face some difficult times after the boom of the 20s and the government would eventually own the famous estate which would then be demolished by 1941 to make way for a new building.  The lower photo shows the Countee Cullen Library which was built on the spot of the historic house and one can see that the adjacent brownstone still stands today.  In the perfect world, the library and the original Walker building could have been combined for the ultimate historical resource on Harlem but that would require more creative thinking by city planners.  More on Madame C.J. Walker can be found in our past post: LINK

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