The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) has announced new historic district markers commemorating the Central Harlem–West 130th–132nd Streets Historic District in Manhattan. LPC Executive Director Lisa Kersavage was joined by State Senator Cordell Cleare, Assemblymember Jordan J.G. Wright, Councilmember Yusef Salaam, Manhattan Community Board 10, the New York Landmarks Preservation Foundation (NYLPF), and Save Harlem Now! for the installation ceremony. The district, designated by LPC in 2018, encompasses more than 160 primarily late-19th-century row houses between West 130th and West 132nd Streets from Lenox Avenue to Seventh Avenue.
Developed during Harlem’s speculative building boom, the district reflects the neighborhood’s architectural evolution as well as its transformation in the early 20th century into the nation’s largest Black urban community. From the 1920s through the 1960s, the area became home to a significant concentration of Black leaders, artists, and institutions central to the Harlem Renaissance and the Civil Rights Movement. Many of the residential buildings were adapted for cultural, civic, religious, and political uses that shaped both local and national history.
Notable sites within the district include the National Headquarters for the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom at 170 West 130th Street, where Bayard Rustin coordinated planning efforts; the headquarters of the New Amsterdam Musical Association at 107 West 130th Street, the nation’s oldest African American musical association; and Friendship Baptist Church at 144–146 West 131st Street, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a sermon in 1955. Other historic institutions in the district include The Frogs clubhouse and the former Colored Branch of the YWCA in Harlem on West 132nd Street.
The historic district is located near the 2 and 3 trains at 135th Street and the B and C trains at 135th Street.
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Terrible. Now nothing will ever be built or renovated there, and everything will be triple the cost and triple the amount of time.
Wow, actual physical signs of gentrification are now being installed. RIP Harlem.
160 properties is a drop in the bucket. Historic Harlem has come this far and shouldn’t now be torn down for new glass box condos. The District needs to be greatly expanded. The other boroughs have plenty of space to grow. Manhattan doesn’t need to keep being leveled.
Curious to the effects this preservation will have on costs in said area.
This is one way to prevent ‘gentrification.’
Look! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a new historic district!
its a sad sign for the neighborhood when the church needs a roll down steel gate at the front door lmaoo
That’s the beauty and culture that has to be preserved.