Logo
Prev
Bookmark
Rotate
Print
Next
Contents
All Pages
Related Articles
Browse Issues
Help
Search
Home
'
National Geographic : 1977 Feb
Contents
And sometimes when the wind blows assertively from the southwest, ruffling the ornamental trees along 110th Street at the northern boundary of Central Park, it brings with it a nostalgic scent. I sniff again the salt tang of the sea I have journeyed across to Harlem. For me, there has always been alchemy in these sights, scents, and sounds of Harlem. I remark the texture of its essential life, with its battlefield element of the dead, the wounded, Surrounded by comforts rare in her com munity, one of Harlem's few homeowners, silver-haired Mrs. Lenon Holder Hoyte, gives a dinner party in a brownstone that overflows with her antique collection. The cut-glass chandelier once hung in her par ents' home on West 128th Street, torn down in 1949 to make way for a housing project. "The razing of such neighborhoods was the start of the middle-class exodus," she believes. "But I never considered moving." The retired art teacher now encourages suburban friends to return. An avid doll collector, Mrs. Hoyte recently opened Aunt Len's Doll and Toy Museum. She hopes to make it and her unusual home a legacy to Harlem so that "children can understand how some of us lived." the dying, and the survivors. I note the sentinel trees along the sculptured avenues and their side streets. I witness the glad ness and grief, bluster and burlesque, delecta tion and despair. I observe how squalor and degradation exist side by side with elegance and exaltation. And I here testify to the transmutation of all these diverse elements into hope. Dutch Settlers Provide a Name Harlem began as an Indian village on the banks of what is now the Harlem River be tween today's 110th and 125th Streets. In 1658 Dutch settlers named the community Nieuw Haarlem. A dozen or so years later, black slaves, whom the Dutch had begun to import in 1626, made the first road from low er Manhattan to Haarlem along the old Indian trail-today's Broadway. Before the American Revolution, gentle men farmers developed country estates here, and wealthy merchants built stately houses. As the 19th century arrived, the community was a tidy village whose residents enjoyed trotting races, cricket, and fishing. Gradu ally the surrounding farmland turned resi dential; in 1873 the Village of Harlem became part of the City of New York-and New York's first suburb. The migration of blacks to New York City began soon after the 20th centuryopened. The failure of Reconstruction in the South obliged numbers of blacks to settle elsewhere. Strenuous efforts to keep Harlem white To Live in Harlem... 185
Links
Archive
1977 Mar
1977 Jan
Navigation
Previous Page
Next Page