Word: harlem
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...Harlem is certainly not a harmless place for residents or itinerants, but neither is it the city's worst crime area. In any case, fear is no excuse for missing out on Harlem's cultural and historical bounty. Prudent visitors, black or white, can ride a tour bus or a subway uptown during the day, drive or call for a cab at night, stroll with a worthy purpose on a Sunday-go-to- meeting afternoon. They will feel as comfortable on Amateur Night, with its superefficient security staff, as they would at Carnegie Hall. They will be made as welcome...
...this, and see the Harlem beneath the cliches, beyond its familiar notoriety as a graveyard for Great Society programs. True, the place is not what it was during Harlem's toniest decades, when swells partied at the Cotton Club (now defunct) and Joe Louis stayed at the Hotel Theresa (today an office building). Nor is Harlem what it may become in a looming decade of gentrification and white encroachment. But it is, at its best, a community that radiates warmth to outsiders who dare to embrace it. During Sunday service at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, Pastor Samuel Proctor greets white...
Peter Stuyvesant established Nieuw Haarlem in 1658, and it was later connected to New Amsterdam with a ten-mile road built by black slaves. During the colonial period, Harlem became a retreat for the Bleeckers, Delanceys, Beekmans and Rikers and in the 19th century a chic suburb for the well-to-do. Then, around 1880, the city extended its elevated lines to the north. Handsome neighborhoods sprang up, and by the early 1900s, Harlem bustled with urbanity. But the speculators had built too much too fast. So in 1904 a black real estate agent named Philip A. Payton rented apartments...
...brownstones, inspiring churches, elegant warehouses -- still stand. It is one of the few perks of slumdom: if property values do not rise, venerable properties are less likely to fall. Most midtown movie palaces were razed ages ago, but New York's first, the Regent, retains its Venetian splendor in Harlem, though it now does business as the First Corinthian Baptist Church. Above the marquee of another ancient Harlem theater, the Nova, is chiseled its original name, THE BUNNY (in honor of movie idol John Bunny), flanked by two grinning stone rabbit heads...
...public: the Morris-Jumel mansion, once the home of Aaron Burr, and Hamilton Grange, the last abode of Alexander Hamilton. Near the Grange on still posh Sugar Hill is a quiet riot of Tudor and Romanesque residences that shelter the faculty of City University. Around the corner is Harlem's favorite archival trove, Aunt Len's Doll and Toy Museum, where Lenon Holder Hoyte, 83, will show off her collection of more than 5,000 dolls...