HARLEM

Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and Central Park North on the south. The greater Harlem area encompasses several other neighborhoods and extends west and north to 155th Street, east to the East River, and south to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Central Park, and East 96th Street.

Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands. Harlem's history has been defined by a series of economic boom-and-bust cycles, with significant population shifts accompanying each cycle.  Harlem was predominantly occupied by Jewish and Italian Americans in the 19th century.  African-Americans from the South began to arrive in large numbers during the Great Migration in the early 20th century. In the 1920s and 1930s, Central and West Harlem were the center of the Harlem Renaissance, a major African-American cultural movement. With job losses during the Great Depression of the 1930s and the deindustrialization of New York City after World War II, rates of crime and poverty increased significantly. In the 21st century, Harlem started to gentrify, bringing crime rates down substantially and generating a new Harlem Renaissance. Another aspect of the neighborhood that makes Harlem an appealing place to live is its accessibility to public transportation; four different subway lines put many places in Harlem within a 15 minute ride to midtown Manhattan.

Harlem has some of New York’s most beautiful architecture, both residential and institutional. There are miles of streets with New York brownstones; more and more of them having been rehabilitated and renovated in the last 20 years. Astor Row is a unique block with brick houses set back from the street, with front yards and wood porches, making the street seem more like a southern city than part of New York. Harlem is also a neighborhood of churches. There are many churches that were built in the 19th Century, including All Saints Catholic Church, designed by the same architects who built St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the Smithsonian “Castle” in Washington, D.C.; All Saints is known as the St. Patrick’s of Harlem. The famous Abyssinian Baptist Church is on West 138th St.