A Building Worth Remembering
“In the midst of the pervasive discrimination and segregation that had catalyzed the Black community’s uprising, what would this building have meant to Black Harlemites?”
On the afternoon of Sunday, November 17, a massive fire broke out at 217 West 123rd Street in New York City’s Harlem. After about three hours, the fire department gained control of the flames, but by then the conflagration had consumed most of the building (figures 1 and 2). Prior to this, 217 was unremarkable, a run-down structure nestled between two taller neighbors: a nineteenth-century brownstone and a twentieth-century apartment building. 217 might have remained unnoticed by us had it not been located near one of our apartments, and had we not witnessed its destruction with the eyes—and attendant curiosity—of art and architectural historians. Judging by the smell of the smoke, we had a hunch that it was a wood-frame building, and the hunch proved correct. Abandoned, it had been slated to be demolished in 2017 to make way for luxury condos.[1] Yet for two years the building was left unchanged, the condos unbuilt for reasons that remain unknown. Save for its dramatic end, 217 would have disappeared with no fanfare, no acknowledgement, its history obscured forever.
Figure 1. 217 West 123rd Street, New York, N.Y., constructed c. 1865-70. This photograph was taken on November 18, 2019, the day after the fire. Photograph by Jessica Larson and Aubrey Knox.
Figure 2. 217 West 123rd Street, New York, N.Y., constructed c. 1865-70. This photograph was taken on November 18, 2019, the day after the fire. Photograph by Jessica Larson and Aubrey Knox.
Our investigation raises questions regarding the preservation of everyday architecture, and the structures that historians choose to study. In Harlem, rapid development and gentrification erase history at such a pace that one might never know what has been lost. A building that was a modest home for a white middle-class family in the somewhat bucolic, underdeveloped Harlem of the 1870s transitioned into a mixed-use commercial and residential space by 1900.[2] 217 housed several prominent Black businesses in the 1930s that were positioned within a landscape of extreme racial tension and conflict. After the 1940s, the building lost nearly all architectural markers of its former socio-economic status and sank into disrepair and neglect, a sharp reminder of municipal antipathy towards investment in Harlem.
Figure 3. 217 West 123rd Street, New York City, N.Y. Tax photograph, dated 1939-1941. Courtesy of the New York City Municipal Archives.
To begin our inquiry, we located 217 in a tax photograph taken between 1939 and 1941 (figure 3). The image shows a three-story building with a mansard roof, decorative details, and a handsome porch and stair—altogether rather different in appearance than the building that burned down. A two-story rear addition is also visible, as is a building at the back of the lot that appears to be a garage. Two months after the fire most of the frame structure had been removed; only the masonry foundation and cellar remained (figures 4 and 5). The earliest fire insurance map on which 217 can be definitively located is from 1879, although it may be pictured on one from 1867 (the property lines are not drawn precisely enough to make a conclusion). We conclude that 217 was constructed in the mid-to-late 1860s when similar structures began to populate the area, particularly between 110th and 130th Streets.[3] New York City annexed Harlem in 1873, and with an expanded city speculative development increased; brownstones soon dominated the neighborhood. By 1882 the construction of frame housing was prohibited south of 155th Street.
Figure 4. 217 West 123rd Street, New York, N.Y., constructed c. 1865-70. The basement and foundation on January 12, 2020. Photograph by Jessica Larson and Aubrey Knox.
Figure 5. This photograph, taken on January 12, 2020, shows the discoloration left by 217’s front section and lean-to on the party wall of the neighboring brownstone. Photograph by Jessica Larson and Aubrey Knox.
The 1891 Sanborn map shows that the garage was originally built as a three-story masonry stable (figure 6). Private homes in Manhattan occasionally included stables on their lots, but this practice was increasingly uncommon after the 1860s. It is more likely that the stable was added to 217 to facilitate a small business that relied on regular deliveries.[4] An ad placed in the 1903 edition of The Tariff Review indicates that 217 was the depot location for “Dr. Brush’s Kumyss,” a drink made from fermented horse milk and peddled as a remedy for pneumonia and typhoid (figure 7). A Swedish family of four and two boarders lived at 217 in 1910; the male head of household and the two boarders held jobs pertaining to the milk depot.[5]
Figure 6. This detail, taken from a plate in the Bromley Atlas of Manhattan, features 217 West 123rd Street, in 1891. The yellow shading indicates the frame structure and the stable in the rear yard is marked by the “X.” Plate 35, Bromley Atlas of the City of New York Manhattan Island, 1891. Courtesy of the New York Public Library, Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division.
Figure 7. Advertisement for “Dr. Brush’s Kumyss” that indicates the company’s depot is located at 217 West 123rd Street. From American Druggist and Pharmaceutical Record 61 (1913): 73.
Eventually, automobiles replaced horses, and garages supplanted stables. The garage proved useful for Black businessman Benjamin F. Thomas, who operated his Broadway Auto School out of 217 from 1928 to 1942 (figure 8).[6] Who’s Who in Colored America hailed Thomas as a champion of the automobile as an invention uniquely capable of facilitating Black freedom.[7] In 1938, Thomas wrote in The Negro Motorist Green Book, “The automobile has been a special blessing to the Negro, for the Negro is getting better wages and doing more business in the automobile industry than any other industry in the world.”[8]
Figure 8. Benjamin F. Thomas, as shown in Who’s Who in Colored America? 6 (1942): 503.
217 lingered as a reminder of an earlier moment in Harlem’s history. By the 1930s, the surrounding lots had been developed into tenements with one notable exception: five buildings to the west became the 28th Precinct Police Station. On March 19, 1935, during the Great Depression, a Black Puerto Rican teenager shoplifted a penknife from a white-operated store on West 125th Street, two blocks north of this building (figure 9). The ensuing conflict brought to the surface longstanding animosity between the white business owners and African Americans and ignited what historians sometimes label the first “race riot” in Harlem.[9] Those arrested for participating were booked at the 28th Precinct, just steps from 217 (figure 10). In the midst of the pervasive discrimination and segregation that had catalyzed the Black community’s uprising, what would this building have meant to Black Harlemites? Did it signify something aspirational? Did it serve as a reminder of a bourgeois history nearly exclusively afforded to whites? Or perhaps there was something joyous in its difference—material evidence that the neighborhood and its community had changed and adapted.
Figure 9. 28th Precinct Police Station, 229 West 123rd Street, New York City, N.Y. Tax photograph, dated 1939-1941. Courtesy of the New York City Municipal Archives.
Figure 10. Prisoners being taken from the 28th Precinct Police Station in 1935. The caption reads, “The Harlem Race Riots: March 1935.” Photo by NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images. Used with permission.
What we do know is that in 1930 and 1931, the Black and Native American writer Olivia Ward Bush-Banks advertised her famed School of Expression in The Crisis and listed 217 as the Harlem location (figures 11 and 12). Through this school, Bush-Banks championed the New Negro movement’s emphasis on Black self-expression and assertion of identity through the performing arts.[10] The ad states that housing for students and guests was available, but it is unclear whether the accommodations were on-site. Housing conditions had changed radically in the neighborhood; at the time a Black family of seventeen from South Carolina resided in 217, all employed in service occupations such as porters and custodians. In 1900, only four residents, all white, lived at 217: a male stenographer, his wife, and two male boarders (a lawyer and an editor).[11] Regardless of its cramped interior, likely subdivided to accommodate so many residents, it seems reasonable that for a person so invested in self-presentation, Bush-Banks took account of the appearance of 217 when she chose it for her school. Trading on an architecture of respectability, this building signified the Black community’s right to social and economic uplift. The Mayor’s Commission on Conditions in Harlem, established by Fiorello LaGuardia following the 1935 uprising, assessed motivations of the participants with words that echo the life of 217 during the Harlem Renaissance: “[they had] acted as if there was a chance to seize what rightfully belonged to them, but had long been withheld.”[12]
“To lose everyday urban architecture is to lose the histories of so many who came before, those whose lives shaped these places as much as the built environment around them.”
Figure 11. Olivia Ward Bush-Banks, as shown in Olivia Bush, Original Poems by Mrs. Olivia Bush (1899).
After the 1940s, save tax photographs, the building is absent from the public record. Between 1940 and 1980, these tax photographs show that the mansard roof was remodeled, all ornamentation on the facade was erased, and the entirety was covered with drab rust-colored vinyl siding (figure 13). An extension to the top floor was clearly visible in the remnants of the building after the fire, the newer wood a brighter color than the original structure on the lower floors. Denuded, the building began its physical decline.
Figure 12. “Poise is Power.” The Bush-Banks School of Expression placed this advertisement in The Crisis, October 1931, 3.
Figure 13. 217 West 123rd Street, New York City, N.Y. Tax photograph, dated 1983-1988. Courtesy of the New York City Municipal Archives.
After the fire, Touchstone Homes LLC quickly cleared the lot. Like so much of the built environment in Harlem, 217 was erased so quickly that residents of the neighborhood may not have even noticed its disappearance. Would its storied history and value to the African American community in the 1930s have been remembered? Ironically, it is only its violent end in conflagration that led to such research. Recent efforts by historic preservationists, particularly those of color, have gained ground in the fight to protect common places and thus preserve histories that lie outside of high-style architecture.[13] 217 reveals the imperative of such studies, particularly in the current moment when communities of color are being pushed out of these neighborhoods by gentrification, and when the 1935 demonstrations have deep resonance in current protests against police brutality. To lose everyday urban architecture is to lose the histories of so many who came before, those whose lives shaped these places as much as the built environment around them.
Every effort was made to contact copyright holders and obtain permission to reproduce these images. If anyone has reason to believe any of these images were used without proper permission, please contact the authors and we will rectify the omissions. Those images not taken by the authors are subject to copyright and any future use requires separate permission.
NOTES
[1] Nikolai Fedak, “Permits Filed for 217 West 123rd Street, Harlem,” New York YIMBY, September 7, 2017.
[2] The 1880 Census does not include an entry for 217, but the building may have been previously listed as “213 West 123rd Street.” A family of five resided at 213--a husband whose occupation was “mason + builder,” his wife, two daughters and son along with a female servant from Ireland. “217 West 123rd Street” (1880) United States Federal Census for New York, New York County. National Archives and Records Administration: ED 536, Roll T9_892, p. 652 (1880).
[3] Landmark Preservation Commission, 17 East 128th Street House Designation Report, (LP-1237), prepared by Edward Mohylowski (New York: City of New York, 1982), 2-5.
[4] Clay McShane and Joel A. Tarr, The Horse in the City: Living Machines in the Nineteenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011), 109-17.
[5] “217 West 123rd Street” (1910) United States Federal Census for New York, New York County. National Archives and Records Administration: ED 554, Roll T624_1022, p. 656 (1910).
[6] “Committee For Reception To Nat’l Business League,” New York Age, August 11, 1928, 2.
[7] Thomas Yenser, ed., Who’s Who in Colored America?: A Biographical Dictionary of Notable Living Persons of African Descent in America, vol. 6 (Brooklyn: Thomas Yenser, 1942), 42.
[8] Benjamin F. Thomas, “The Automobile and What it Has Done for the Negro,” The Negro Motorist Green Book (New York: Green & Smith, 1938), 11.
[9] Cheryl Greenberg, Or Does it Explode?: Black Harlem in the Great Depression (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 3-6; Brian Purnell, “Harlem, USA: Capital of the Black Freedom Movement,” in Race Capital? Harlem as Setting and Symbol, ed. Andrew M. Fearnley and Daniel Matlin, 201-20 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019), 206.
[10] Elizabeth Anne Beaulieu, ed., Writing African American Women: A-J (Westport, Conn.; London: Westwood Publishing Group, 2006), 138.
[11] “217 West 123rd Street” (1930) United States Federal Census for New York, New York County. National Archives and Records Administration: ED 31-914, Roll T626_1573, p. 686 (1930); “217 West 123rd Street” (1900) United States Federal Census for New York, New York County. National Archives and Records Administration: ED 854, Roll T623_1119, p. 26 (1900).
[12] “Mayor’s Commission on Conditions in Harlem: Excerpts from the Complete Harlem Riot Report, March 19, 1935,” in A Social History of Racial Violence, ed. Allen D. Grimshaw (1969; rpt. New York: Routledge, 2017), 125.
[13] Casey Cep, “The Fight to Preserve African-American History,” The New Yorker, accessed May 18, 2020.
