what about the plastic animals?

Harriet Goes Green

I pass by the Harriet Tubman statue every couple of weeks.  Something about it has been bothering me since this summer.  Yesterday I finally figured out what had changed.  Harriet's clothing is a lot greener than when she was installed two years ago.

Sticking with the neighborhood, Harlem Bespoke found an 1893 photo of 116th and Lenox - complete with cows!  Near as I can tell the swampy field is either where my building sits today or across Lenox from my building.  Very cool!

Harlem Roofline

Taking a break from saying anything today.  I just liked the top of this building on 126th Street.

Also, the police need your help.

Harlem Ups and Downs

While I was out of town the Baptist Temple Church down the block was declared structurally unsound by the Buildings Department.  The roof is gone, the interior gutted and the rest is rapidly disappearing.  The church originally was one of the grand synagogues from a century ago, when this neighborhood was mostly Jewish.

Also disappearing is the Corn Exchange Bank at 125th and Park.  I posted a couple pictures of the bank in a much more optimistic day five years ago.

On a happier note the building that will house the Museum for African Art is almost ready to top out.

P.S.  Sorry I haven't replied to any comments the last few days.  Something's happened to Typepad and I haven't received notification that people were leaving comments.

Charlie Parker Jazz Festival

Saturday would have been Charlie Parker's 89th birthday, so it was a good day to take in the Charlie Parker Jazz Festival at Marcus Garvey Park.  Despite the threatening skies everyone was having a good time.  Gary Bartz was playing when I arrived and the Frank Wess Quintet closed out the show with an excellent set.  Wess was burning up the stage with more energy than I expect to have when I'm 87 during the last number I saw.

I'm off to the land of fire until next weekend.

Michael Jackson Memorial at the Apollo

The impromptu memorial to Michael Jackson near the Apollo Theater is quite a sight.  The Jackson 5 won amateur night at the Apollo in 1967.  I walked by the theater yesterday and saw that the construction fence next to it has thousands of farewells on it, people were being interviewed by reporters, and there was an almost limitless variety of Michael Jackson ephemera for sale.

The Renaissance

I know somebody who lives in this building.  Forgotten NY recently walked around the Mt. Morris Park neighborhood just north of the Renaissance.

Obama in Harlem

Here's a couple of new Barack Obama sightings in Harlem.  The mural is toward the northern end of Frederick Douglass Blvd.  I first saw it on Flickr a few weeks ago and had to get a picture for myself.  I forget what the fried chicken place on St. Nicholas just south of 116th St. used to be called, but I noticed yesterday that it has been renamed Obama Fried Chicken, joining the other presidential fried chicken emporia.

The Dave Clark 5 in Harlem

The renovations to the building where the tire shop used to be at 117th and Frederick Douglass Blvd. have uncovered fragments of three old posters.  The yellow poster on the left is for a supreme court judge election in Manhattan and the Bronx.  There's not enough remaining of the blue poster to tell what it is about.

The Paramount Theatre, in the truly fabulous Art Deco Paramount Building, closed on August 4th, 1964.  Murray the K was on WINS-AM (now the all-news 1010 WINS), from 1958 until December 1964.  I couldn't find concert dates for the Dave Clark 5.  However, I found that they played the Ed Sullivan show three times in 1964 before the Paramount closed:  March 8th, March 15th and May 31st.  That would make these posters almost exactly 45 years old.  Check 'em out before they disappear for good.

Update:  A commenter on the Gothamist posting knew that the blue poster was a Johnson, Humphrey, Kennedy (Robert), campaign poster like this button.

Checking in on the Wall Collapse

Eleven people were injured on Friday when a wall collapsed at a construction site on Frederick Douglass Blvd.  I noticed something was up when I heard the helicopters hovering overhead on my walk home.  I wasn't able to get close enough to see what happened.  Luckily, Harlem Hybrid has a bird's eye view and lots of pictures.

I went by this afternoon but there wasn't much to see.  The wall to a pizzeria collapsed as workers were shoring up a retaining wall for a new building.  The Pizzeria was being cleaned out this afternoon and it looked like a new wall of concrete blocks was being constructed.

Westminster Hall

I should go back and take this picture from the median, so the bottom of the building doesn't get cut off.  Oh well.

Westminster Hall is down the street from where I live.  It is a bit of a mystery because I never see any activity there, yet the building is well-kept.  At one time it was a meeting hall and synagogue.  Eighty years ago one of the Lincoln's birthday celebrations in the city was held here.  In October 1932 Reverend Rollin Dodd of All Souls Protestant Episcopal Church used Westminster Hall in services "for about sixty Negroes and seventeen white worshippers" as a protest to the racial segregation in the All Souls Church. 

The most entertaining event I could find in old newspapers was the 21 July 1922 gambling raid of the Hall and a nearby building.  The New York Times reports that nearby residents "have looked with suspicion and curiosity" as cabs "unloaded men, many of them gaudily clad and wearing jewelry" on recen afternoons.  The police arrived that afternoon to find "a great uproar inside".  There were flying chairs and men rolling on the floor in battle, allegedly over a "dispute on the payment of bets on a horse running at Belmont Park".  The Times continues:

In one corner of the hall they found a black plush curtained booth.  Inside of this was a cabinet on which lay a large, heavily bound book.  The detectives thought it was a new gambling device till they learned from the proprieter, Jacob Brown, that he had rented the hall for religious purposes several days a week.

Brown seemed surprised when he learned of the arreset.  He said the man who hired the hall for the afternoons told him that they intended to hold a series of prayer meetings.  Brown added that his hall was used in the evening by a tango teacher.

Contrast that with the New-York Tribune's take on the raid:

To all outward intents and purposes the buildings... were living up to their accepted character as synagogues...  The scores of sportily dressed men who visited them in taxicabs and afoot were looked upon by dwellers in neighboring buildings as devout Hebrews.  The busy hum which issued from each of the hosues of worship was regarded as merely the drone of prayers.

Then into each of these religious scenes in turn were introduced the Hibernian persons of Inspector Ryan and Lieutenant McAuliffe...

Wistminster Hall... serves as a synagogue only for overflow services on Jewish holy days.  At one end of the chamber is ablack case in which are stored away the articles used in the Hebrew ritual.  This is surrounded by an embrodered canopy. 

The hall was filled when the inspector and his cohorts entered.  What religious atmosphere still clung to the place was supplied alone by the canopy.  Men stood on chairs and yelled strange litanies like "Lazuli, 3 to 1" and Lady Theresa, 7 to 2."

The hall had been rented for the purpose of conducting a special synagogue service, so Jacob Brown, the owner of the building, said afterward.  When the detectives came in a number of the gamblers evidently began to suffer qualms of conscience.  They faced about and began reciting Hebrew prayers at the top of their voices.  Their fellows, less religiously inclined, began a mad scramble for the stairs and fire escapes.

It is a shame we don't get writing like that in the newspapers anymore.