Sugar Hill, Manhattan

Sugar Hill Historic District

row houses at 718-730 St. Nicholas Avenue (2014)
Location Roughly bounded by W. 155th St., 145th St., Edgecombe Ave. and Amsterdam Ave.
Manhattan, New York City
Coordinates 40°49′38″N 73°56′36″W / 40.82722°N 73.94333°W / 40.82722; -73.94333Coordinates: 40°49′38″N 73°56′36″W / 40.82722°N 73.94333°W / 40.82722; -73.94333
Area 75 acres (30 ha)
Built 1883-1930[1]
Architect Richard S. Rosenstock, Arthur Bates Jennings, Frederick P. Dinkelberg, Henri Fouchaux, Theodore Minot Clark, Neville & Bagge, Schwartz & Gross, George F. Pelham, Horace Ginsbern, C. P. H. Gilbert, Clarence True, John P. Leo, Samuel B. Reed, William Grinnell, William Schickel et al.[1]
Architectural style Queen Anne, Romanesque Revival, Renaissance Revival, Beaux-Arts, Neoclassical, Colonial Revival, Gothic Revival, neo-Grec, etc.[1]
NRHP Reference # 02000360[2]
Significant dates
Added to NRHP April 11, 2002
Designated NYCL Hamilton Heights/Sugar Hill HD: June 27, 2000
extension: October 3, 2001
Hamilton Heights/Sugar Hill Northeast HD: October 23, 2001
Hamilton Heights/Sugar Hill Northwest HD: June 18, 2002

Sugar Hill is a United States historic district in the northern part of the Hamilton Heights section of the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City.[3] It is roughly bounded by West 155th Street to the north, West 145th Street to the south, Edgecombe Avenue to the east, and Amsterdam Avenue to the west.[4] The equivalent New York City Historic Districts are:

The city districts were designated between 2000[5] and 2002,[1] and the Federal district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002.[2] The Federal district has 414 contributing buildings, two contributing sites, three contributing structures, and one contributing object.[6]

Parks

Parks in the neighborhood include Jackie Robinson Park, St. Nicholas Park, and smaller sites such as Johnny Hartman Square, Carmansville Playground, and William A. Harris Garden.

History

Sugar Hill got its name in the 1920s when the neighborhood became a popular place for wealthy African Americans to live during the Harlem Renaissance. Reflective of the "sweet life" there, Sugar Hill featured rowhouses in which lived such prominent African Americans as W. E. B. Du Bois, Thurgood Marshall, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Walter Francis White and Roy Wilkins.[7]

Langston Hughes wrote about the relative affluence of the neighborhood in his essay "Down Under in Harlem" published in The New Republic in 1944:

If you are white and are reading this vignette, don't take it for granted that all Harlem is a slum. It isn't. There are big apartment houses up on the hill, Sugar Hill, and up by City College -- nice high-rent-houses with elevators and doormen, where Canada Lee lives, and W. C. Handy, and the George S. Schuylers, and the Walter Whites, where colored families send their babies to private kindergartens and their youngsters to Ethical Culture School.[8]

Terry Mulligan's 2012 memoir "Sugar Hill, Where the Sun Rose Over Harlem"[9][10] is a chronicle of the writer's experiences growing up in the 1950s and '60s in the neighborhood, where her neighbors included future United States Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, early rock n' roll legend Frankie Lymon, and New York baseball great Willie Mays, among other well-known names.

Notable buildings

Among the many notable buildings in the Sugar Hill area are:[1]

See also

References

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission; Dolkart, Andrew S. (text); Postal, Matthew A. (text) (2009), Postal, Matthew A., ed., Guide to New York City Landmarks (4th ed.), New York: John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 978-0-470-28963-1, pp.189-208
  2. 1 2 National Park Service (2009-03-13). "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service.
  3. ↑ "Harlem - New York City Neighborhood - NYC". nymag.com. New York (magazine). 2003-03-10. Retrieved 2009-01-04.
  4. ↑ "Harlem, Hamilton Heights, El Barrio, New York City". ny.com. Retrieved 2009-01-04.
  5. ↑ Siegal, Nina (2000-06-15). "Landmark Status For Harlem Buildings; District Holds Hub of Black Culture". The New York Times. The New York Times Company. Retrieved 2009-01-04.
  6. ↑ Howe, Kathleen A. (January 2002). "National Register of Historic Places Registration: Sugar Hill Historic District". New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. Retrieved 2011-03-25. See also: "Accompanying 69 photos".
  7. 1 2 White, Norval; Willensky, Elliot & Leadon, Fran (2010), AIA Guide to New York City (5th ed.), New York: Oxford University Press, ISBN 9780195383867, p.546
  8. ↑ Hughes, Langston. "Down Under in Harlem". The New Republic (March 27, 1944): 404-5
  9. ↑ Terry Baker Mulligan website
  10. ↑ Henderson, Jane (6 May 2012). "Penned in St. Louis: Terry Baker Mulligan". St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Retrieved 22 February 2013.
  11. ↑ Perrone, Pierre (2011-10-04). "Sylvia Robinson: Hitmaker who co-founded Sugar Hill Records and became known as ‘the mother of hip-hop’ - Obituaries - News". The Independent. Retrieved 2013-09-15.


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