Harlem's great stories: the Harlem Renaissance, the Apollo and where to eat and listen today

How Harlem became Black Harlem

Harlem began as a Dutch farming village, Nieuw Haarlem, founded in the 1650s. It stayed rural for two centuries, until elevated railways reached upper Manhattan in the late 1800s and developers raced to build elegant rowhouses and apartment buildings for the white middle class they expected to follow. Too many were built too fast. When the real estate market collapsed in the early 1900s, many buildings stood empty.

Philip A. Payton Jr., an African American real estate entrepreneur, saw the opportunity and began renting apartments to Black families, who had been squeezed into crowded, overpriced districts farther downtown. Within a few years, the Great Migration was bringing hundreds of thousands of Black Americans out of the South to Northern cities, while immigrants arrived from the Caribbean. By the 1920s Harlem was the largest and most vibrant Black community in the country.

The Harlem Renaissance

What followed was an explosion of creativity. Writers and artists called it the "New Negro" movement, after the 1925 anthology The New Negro edited by philosopher Alain Locke. Later generations called it the Harlem Renaissance.

• Langston Hughes wrote poems that set the rhythms of jazz and blues on the page. His brownstone at 20 East 127th Street, where he lived for the last two decades of his life, still stands.
• Zora Neale Hurston arrived in the 1920s and went on to write Their Eyes Were Watching God.
• Claude McKay, Countee Cullen and Jessie Redmon Fauset published poetry and novels, while Fauset also helped discover new talent as literary editor of The Crisis, the NAACP magazine edited by W.E.B. Du Bois.
• Aaron Douglas developed a bold, modernist visual style, and his murals for the 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library are among the movement's masterpieces.

Much of the conversation happened in living rooms. Heiress A'Lelia Walker, daughter of the self-made millionaire Madam C.J. Walker, hosted a famous salon she called the Dark Tower, while "rent parties," where tenants charged admission to cover the rent, gave stride pianists like Fats Waller and James P. Johnson somewhere to play.

From the Cotton Club to bebop

Harlem's nightlife in the Prohibition era was legendary, and complicated. The Cotton Club, where Duke Ellington's orchestra held a long residency from 1927 and Cab Calloway later led the band, featured Black performers but admitted white audiences only. A few blocks away, the Savoy Ballroom, which opened in 1926 on Lenox Avenue, welcomed dancers of all backgrounds and became the home of the Lindy Hop. Its house bands, including drummer Chick Webb's orchestra with a young Ella Fitzgerald, battled visiting bands in front of packed dance floors.

In the early 1940s, the after-hours jam sessions at Minton's Playhouse on West 118th Street helped give birth to bebop, as Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and drummer Kenny Clarke pushed jazz into faster, more complex territory. And in 1939, Billy Strayhorn wrote "Take the A Train" for Ellington's band, a tune inspired by the subway directions to Sugar Hill, Harlem's most prestigious address.

Where to eat and listen today

Harlem's food scene mixes Southern soul food, Caribbean and West African cooking and newer restaurants from celebrated chefs. A few long-standing favorites:

• Sylvia's on Malcolm X Boulevard (Lenox Avenue), opened by Sylvia Woods in 1962, is the name most people know. Come hungry for fried chicken, smothered pork chops and candied yams.
• Red Rooster, chef Marcus Samuelsson's restaurant nearby, puts a modern spin on Harlem comfort food and often has live music.
• Amy Ruth's, just off Malcolm X Boulevard, is known for its chicken and waffles.
• Along West 116th Street, you'll find Senegalese and other West African restaurants serving rich stews and grilled fish.

For music, look for small jazz rooms and supper clubs that keep Harlem's tradition alive. Minton's itself has closed and reopened several times over the years, so check whether it's open and hosting live sets during your visit. The National Jazz Museum in Harlem is a good place to learn about the history first. Menus, schedules and even venues change, so check what's on before you go.