The most elite apartment building in Harlem

When the stately Beaux-Arts apartment building at 555 Edgecombe Avenue opened in 1916, it rented to white tenants only.

But the population of Harlem was already changing, from mostly Irish and Jewish residents to African-Americans.

By the 1940s, the building, located on 160th Street at the edge of the posh Sugar Hill neighborhood, was exclusively black.

Sitting high on a bluff and commanding gorgeous views of the treetops of Edgecombe Avenue and across the Harlem River, these 13 floors plus a penthouse were home to Harlem’s elite.

That included academics, entertainers, and athletes such as Count Basie, Joe Louis (below), Sonny Rollins, sociologist Kenneth Clark, and Paul Robeson (above).

And though today it’s officially within the borders of Washington Heights, 555 Edgecombe is historically identified as part of Harlem.

It’s not an especially distinctive building architecturally, but it is handsome and sturdy, an emblem of the neighborhood’s prime years as a center of artistic and activist achievement.

[Photo right: Property Shark]

A fading reminder of Harlem’s farming history

Flour? Hay? Grain? It’s almost hard to believe that this faded advertisement, on the side of a building on West 128th Street in Harlem, is for real.

But there it is, seemingly a reminder of the neighborhood’s long-ago incarnation as farmland.

It’s on the same block as the new St. Nicholas Park apartments, and if development trends in the area continue, the vacant lot that allows us to see the ad may not be empty much longer.

Futuristic housing never built in 1960s Harlem

Nuclear power plants? Landing pads for spaceships? Board game pieces?

Actually, they’re apartment buildings—and if visionary designer (some would say futuristic crackpot) Buckminster Fuller had his way, they may actually have been built in Harlem.

Fuller drew up these plans in 1964: His idea was to build 15 100-story structures spanning the entire width of Upper Manhattan, with each tower capable of housing 45,000 people.

It’s an intriguing idea—unless you had to live there.

But it wasn’t as crazy as Fuller’s 1960 plan, which was to cover Manhattan in a two-mile dome.

The point was to help control the weather and air pollution while keeping energy costs down.

Neither plan, of course, made it past fantasy stage.

Where is Fourth Avenue and 128th Street?

This mysterious address, chiseled into the corner of a red-brick tenement, doesn’t sound like it’s in Manhattan.

But it is; today we know it as Park Avenue and 128th Street. So what’s with the Fourth Avenue moniker?

Fourth was the original 1811 street grid name for the avenue. In the 1860s, a section of Fourth between 32nd and 42nd Streets was renamed the more pleasant-sounding Park.

By 1888, the city demapped Fourth in favor of Park from 32nd to the Harlem River. In 1959, with Park Avenue’s cache in full swing, Fourth Avenue from 32nd to 17th Streets was renamed Park Avenue South.

Let’s hope that what remains of chopped-up Fourth Avenue, from Union Square to the Bowery, doesn’t also fall victim to the Park Avenue moniker makeover.

More out-of-date Fourth Avenue signage still exists on the street today—like these examples here.

The last of Harlem’s free-standing mansions

The Harlem enclave known as Sugar Hill was named for the wealthy African-Americans who moved into the fine row houses there during the 1920s.

But the area began attracting big money makers decades earlier, in the 1880s. All that’s left of these Gilded Age pioneers are a handful of gorgeous, free-standing mansions.

Like the James Bailey House on St. Nicholas Place at 150th Street (at right). Call it the house the circus built: it’s the castle-like residence of James Bailey, of Barnum & Bailey Circus fame.

Bailey had the 12,000-foot Romanesque Revival beauty (left, in a 1930s NYPL photo) built in 1888.

Harlem Hybrid has amazing photos of the interior here.

Recently sold (since 1951, it had been a funeral home, fittingly) and currently hidden by scaffolding, the granite house changed hands for a mere $1.4 million.

More obscure is the Nicholas and Agnes Benziger House around the corner on Edgecomb Avenue.

Constructed in 1890 by a rich publisher, it’s crowned by a clay tile roof and gabled dormers.

Who lives there now? According to this site, it serves as housing for homeless adults. But on a recent visit, no signs of life could be detected.

Both homes are landmarked, reminders of uptown Manhattan’s rich, elite past.

Washington Heights’ lovely little country lanes

When you think of New York neighborhoods with lots of mews and alleys, the West Village and Brooklyn Heights probably come to mind.

But Washington Heights on the Harlem border has its share of tiny lanes as well. Two small streets in the 160s feature old-style lampposts, Belgian block paving stones, and pre-20th century residences. They make the area feel more like a time-warped country village than an urban center.

Sylvan Terrace (above), up a flight of stairs from St. Nicholas Avenue, is a two-sided stretch of 20 wooden row houses flanking a once-private lane. The three-story houses were built in 1882 and restored in the 1980s.

At the end of Sylvan Terrace is Jumel Terrace. Spanning 160th-162nd Streets, this quiet, leafy road is the home of the Morris-Jumel Mansion (above), the oldest house in the borough. Built in 1765 on high ground with views of Manhattan, it served as George Washington’s headquarters during the Revolutionary War.

The city purchased the mansion in 1903 and restored it as a museum. Up until the late 1800s, this part of Harlem was still pretty rural.