Harlem

Known internationally as the iconic center of African-American culture, Harlem is one of the most famous neighborhoods in the United States. But though Harlem’s 20th-century renaissance changed our arts, culture and politics forever, its wonderfully rich and varied history spans centuries. Jonathan Gill presents the complete chronicle of this remarkable district in Harlem, a groundbreaking history boasting a tremendous wealth of detail and a host of fascinating figures.

In the autumn of 1609, explorer Henry Hudson’s ship, the Half Moon, sailed up the river that would come to bear his name, trading—and battling—with the natives of the island they called Mannahatta. This inauspicious collision of cultures, which occurred in large part just off the coast of present-day Harlem, was followed 17 years later, in nearly the same location, by Peter Minuit’s purchase of the island. The Dutch (specifically Peter Stuyvesant) gave the area its name, Nieuw Haarlem.

The rocky hills of upper Manhattan, so distinct from the rest of the island, made Harlem invaluable as a lookout point during the Revolutionary War. The Morris-Jumel Mansion (which still stands) served as General Washington’s headquarters in 1776, and a key battle was fought in the area. Later, Harlem’s lush forests made it a center of agriculture while the city was under British rule.

By the late 18th century, Harlem was still a colonial outpost miles distant from New York City’s urban ills—noise, overcrowding, disease—and such wealthy notables as Alexander Hamilton and John James Audubon built lavish estates in the remote country refuge. Well into the first half of the 19th century, the Harlem area was a patchwork of small towns that retained a remnant of the district’s bucolic charm.

Later in the century, however, the New York Central Railroad brought urbanization as well as waves of immigrants. Harlem is central to the American experience of Germans, Jews (including Harry Houdini and the Gershwin brothers), Italians, Irish, West Indians, Puerto Ricans and, later, Dominicans and West Africans. Harlem’s mix of cultures, races, religions, extraordinary wealth and refinement, and extreme poverty and violent crime has been both electrifying and explosive.

The Harlem renaissance of the 1920s put the neighborhood on the maps of a new generation of tourists and ushered in a new era of African-American achievement in the arts. Jazz, the musical, the American songbook, hip-hop and some of the bravest voices in American literature found their home in Harlem. So, too, did street-corner preachers, racial demagogues and civil rights pioneers.

A must for readers interested in early New York, this remarkable book will engender a new appreciation for the incomparable Harlem.