Jeremiah's
Vanishing New York

Here's what's left of the once great and gorgeous Lenox Lounge. There's nothing but a pile of brick and timber, a couple of broken walls, and the ghosts of Harlem past.


photo: Lynn Lieberman (AFineLyne)

Untapped Cities has more photos, if you'd like to rend your garments and beat your breast in grief.

The demolition began earlier this month after a long, sad story--which you can read here. And, yeah, it was the rent. It's almost always the rent. Regulations on commercial rent would have prevented this.

After 73 years of legendary life in Harlem, and after 4 years of sitting empty and wasted, the once great Lenox Lounge is currently being demolished. It is a terrible shame that could have been avoided.


today

If the city had commercial rent control, as it did for many years, it would have been avoided. If the City Council had passed the Small Business Jobs Survival Act, it might have been avoided. But City Hall refuses to protect small business people against landlord greed, claiming that it's a free-market society--which it is not.

Corporate chains in the city are regularly chosen by Business Improvement Districts and given millions of dollars in tax breaks and incentives. That's not laissez-faire. That's corporate welfare.

Thanks to City Hall's catering to big business, we have lost the Lenox Lounge, along with countless other precious local landmarks. For the soul of the city, the price of that loss is high.


Owner Alvin Reed, Daily News photo, 2012

In 2012, the landlord of the Lenox Lounge doubled the rent, from $10,000 to $20,000 per month. This was more than small business owner Alvin Reed could manage. The lease was given to Richie Notar of the Nobu luxury restaurant chain.

At the same time, Whole Foods announced a move to 125th Street--later we would learn that it would land in the empty lot directly across from the Lenox Lounge. In the Whole Foods Effect, rents near the store increase. That's exactly what happened in Harlem. And that Whole Foods would not have been there without the Bloomberg Administration's rezoning of 125th Street, a controversial process that has strangled the historic street in chains.

After being forced to close on New Year's Eve 2013, Alvin Reed stripped the Lenox Lounge of its antique facade, announcing that he would resurrect it all in another location. That did not come to pass.

The landlord sued Reed for stripping the place. Cultural history isn't worth much without those antique details. Notar backed out of the deal, telling the Daily News, "the scope of the project (mostly the overall condition of the building) became bigger than anticipated."

The Lenox Lounge was left to rot. Someone spray-painted "1939 - 2012: 80 YEARS FOR THIS” across the plywood that covered the door.


2016

As the big, shimmery building that will house Whole Foods rose across the street, the rent on the Lenox Lounge space doubled again--to $40,000 per month.

Then we learned that it would be completely demolished and replaced with a dull glass box containing a Sephora. Two glass boxes, two hollow mirrors, will soon reflect each other across Malcolm X Boulevard. What effect will that have on the people there?


Whole Foods coming

In 2011, cognitive neuroscientist Colin Ellard studied what happens to people on the sidewalk when they stand in front of a bland glass façade. He placed human subjects in front of the Whole Foods on the Lower East Side, strapped skin-conducting bracelets to their wrists, and asked them to take notes on their emotional states. He reported, “When planted in front of Whole Foods, my participants stood awkwardly, casting around for something of interest to latch on to and talk about. They assessed their emotional state as being on the wrong side of ‘happy’ and their state of arousal was close to bottoming out.” The instruments on their wrists agreed. “These people were bored and unhappy. When asked to describe the site, words such as bland, monotonous and passionless rose to the top of the charts.” Ellard then moved the group to another site nearby, “a small but lively sea of restaurants and stores with lots of open doors and windows.” Here, these same people felt “lively and engaged.” Their nervous systems perked up.

In his book Happy City, Charles Montgomery calls this “an emerging disaster in street psychology.” The loss of old buildings and small businesses, the homogenization from suburban chains and condo boxes, is more than an aesthetic loss. It is damaging us psychologically and physically. Montgomery writes, “The big-boxing of a city block harms the physical health of people living nearby, especially the elderly. Seniors who live among long stretches of dead frontage have actually been found to age more quickly than those who live on blocks with plenty of doors, windows, porch stoops, and destinations.”

The big shiny boxes are literally killing us.



Small old buildings and businesses, like the Lenox Lounge, have a positive effect on our mental health. Just walking past and looking at them can be an emotional and physical boost.

Today, as the Lenox Lounge is demolished, there is no boost, only despair. The inside has been gutted to the beams and bricks. Sunlight streams in through the busted roof and shines in the place where the walls were once flocked in zebra stripes and Billie Holiday sang of "Strange Fruit." On the sidewalk, black Harlemites walk past shaking their heads. They stop to take a final photo, a memory of what's been lost.

Last week we also learned that New York City has lost 30% of its black-owned businesses--in just the five years between 2007 - 2012. The Lenox Lounge was one of them. Its loss was not inevitable. It wasn't normal or natural or part of that tired cliche of "New York is always changing." It was part of a systemic process rooted in the racism and classism of redlining and urban renewal, what James Baldwin called "Negro removal." Today, he could use the same words for hyper-gentrification.

The Lenox Lounge is yet another casualty in the long battle for the soul of New York.


For additional reading, see Michael Henry Adams' "Last Call: Who's to Blame for the Destruction of the Lenox Lounge?"

VANISHING

Liberty House, at 112th and Broadway, is vanishing after 49 years in business. And it's no ordinary local shop.


photo: Jed Egan, New York magazine

It is the last of its kind, a small chain of New York shops first organized in 1965 by Abbie Hoffman and other civil rights workers in Mississippi to sell goods made by poor women of color, with the profits going back to the original communities, and to support the Civil Rights Movement.

I talked to co-owner Martha who told me the shop will shutter at the end of April. They'll be having a sale until then, from 20% to 50% off.

This time, it's not the rent. "People aren't shopping," Martha said. "They're going online. It's convenient. They tell me, 'I can sit at home and shop in my pajamas.' But people have to shop local or else there won't be any stores anymore."


photo via Liberty House Facebook page

The second-to-last Liberty House shuttered in 2007, also on the Upper West Side. It was a victim of rising rents.

Back then, a customer told the Times, “I don’t know how you stop these people. They’re throwing everyone out right and left, and it’s going to be a neighborhood of Duane Reades and Godiva chocolates. This store should have made it.”

Said one of the shop's partners, “The diversity of people, both incomes and interests, has lessened and we have more of what we used to call upwardly mobile people, who shop online or drive to malls, or get in cabs and go to Barneys.”

At this last Liberty House, Martha asks everyone to go up, buy something, and say goodbye to this piece of New York's history, a shop dedicated to liberation and economic justice--something we need now more than ever. They say farewell on their Facebook page:

This morning I shared the news that the Lenox Lounge might be demolished completely. Now Harlem Bespoke offers the architect's rendering of what's to come (thanks Andrew)--and it's horrifying:



Horrifying. Right down to the architect's choice to depict Harlemites as rich Anglo-Saxon conquerors with cell phones, shopping bags--and formal wear.

Is it possible that the former Lenox Lounge will be completely demolished? *UPDATE: Yes--and here's what's coming.

New York Yimby notes: "An anonymous Midtown East-based LLC has filed applications for a four-story, 18,987-square-foot commercial building at 286 Lenox Avenue."

So, either two stories will be added to the existing building, or the whole thing will be torn down and replaced.



The Lenox Lounge closed on New Year's Eve 2013 after 73 years in Harlem. The landlord had doubled the rent from $10,000 to $20,000 and handed the lease to Richie Notar, the jet-setting entrepreneur behind the Nobu luxury restaurant chain. "I don’t want to change a thing about how it looks," Notar told the Daily News, adding that his renamed Notar Jazz Club would be "not too much different than what it is now."

But lounge owner Alvin Reed stripped the vintage facade before he left, rather than have its history co-opted. Someone spray-painted "1939 - 2012: 80 YEARS FOR THIS” across the plywood that covered the door.

The landlord sued Reed for stripping the place. Notar backed out of the deal, telling the Daily News, "the scope of the project (mostly the overall condition of the building) became bigger than anticipated."

The Lenox Lounge was left to rot.


"R.I.P. Lenox Lounge"

Meanwhile, across the street, a giant glass box has risen, infesting 125th Street with more chains, including one infamous for its power to give hyper-gentrification a shot in the arm: Whole Foods.

The Whole Foods Effect is powerful. The creators of real estate site Zillow revealed how Whole Foods moves in to neighborhoods where home values are rising more slowly than the rest of the city. “But as soon as the Whole Foods opened its doors,” they wrote, “these nearby homes’ values took off,” increasing at twice the speed of other properties. In the Post in 2016, one real estate broker reported that Harlem landlords were planning to raise rents as soon as the supermarket opened.

Already, the Lenox Lounge landlord has doubled the rent--again--to $40,000 per month. And now, it's possible that every last trace of the grand old Lenox will be vanished.


Across from Lenox Lounge

Author Richard Price spoke at the New York Times' "Cities for Tomorrow" conference earlier this week. He talked a bit about gentrification in Harlem and "that eternal argument: Is this good for Harlem or bad for Harlem?"


NY Times photo

He said: "The big picture is: Everything that's happening now in Harlem, everything that's being built in Harlem is with someone like me in mind, preferably 30 years younger than me. The born-heres? They're looking around and seeing new restaurants, and high rises going up, and new trees planted, and they know it's not for them. It's like: You're in the way..."

"It's like white people discovered Harlem like Europeans discovered America, and the Indians are going, 'Really? What are we standing on, cream cheese?' ... So whatever's exciting and new is a little bit of a death knell."

He talked about the recent closure of Pathmark and the opening of Whole Foods on 125th Street: "The minute that Whole Foods went up--game over."

And he had some sound advice on how to be a decent neighbor in a gentrifying part of town, including "learn manners" and "patronize businesses that were there a hell of a lot longer than you were." Also: "Be a good guy. Have a heart."

Watch here at minute mark 16:15.

Showman's jazz club has been in Harlem since 1942. They've hosted many of the greats, including Sara Vaughan, Eartha Kitt, and Duke Ellington. With 74 years under their belt, they are Harlem's longest running jazz club -- after the wasteful and tragic destruction of the elder Lenox Lounge.

Last week, Showman's posted the following "farewell" announcement on their Facebook page:



Reader Carrie Butterworth sent in the tip and followed up with some questions for the owners. She reports: "Mona Lopez and Al Howard are selling the business so they can retire."

Lopez and Howard have been running the club for the past 38 years. (Howard was one of the NYPD detectives who took the call when Martin Luther King was stabbed by a woman with a letter opener. He was also a supervisor on the hunt for Son of Sam.)

Showman's has moved three times since 1942. Their original building, next to the Apollo, was destroyed by fire. "After playing at the Apollo," writes Butterworth, "the musicians used to go next door and play their own music, hence the name Showman's."

They were pushed out of their second location by the Harlem USA mega-development. And they've been in their current spot on 125th since 1998.


Washington Post photo

Butterworth says, "What I and so many other people enjoy about this bar is the sense of community and family. It's full of regulars--Harlem old-timers and people who are friends with the musicians--who show up every time to support their friends. If it's your birthday, they'll have a cake and some chicken and rice.

A lot of the new jazz clubs charge you a cover, then you have to buy dinner or drinks, and then they throw you out after the set, unless you want to buy another table charge. At Showman's, there's only a 2 drink minimum per set. You can stay all night. The barmaids, or as they call them 'star-maids,' know what you drink, and have it ready."

She does not know who is buying the building. However, she adds, "they claim they'll keep it as a jazz club."

Let's hope they do. Rezoned by the Bloomberg administration, 125th Street is being destroyed by chain stores and other developments. Let's hope the new owners keep Showman's accessible, affordable, and welcoming to all, just as it has always been.

The Trowel & Square Ballroom on Harlem's 125th Street had a great old sign. The typeface. The word "ballroom." And "social functions." Good stuff.



Anyway, it's gone.

The letters have been ripped down and the sign has been covered with a Ripco real estate banner. The Salvation Army thrift store on the first floor has also vanished. The entire building is available. It sold in 2014.



Located in the Croft Brothers Building, the Trowel & Square used to be the Tusken Ballroom, "used at least once as a meeting place by Malcolm X and his recently-formed Muslim Mosque, on June 22, 1964," according to Daytonian in Manhattan.

And next for this space? Probably another chain, as the whole of 125th Street is being wrapped in chains.

Recently, I took a walk by the once glorious Lenox Lounge. After three years, the building is still sitting empty -- and up for rent.

What happened to all those grand plans to take over this piece of Harlem history?



After 73 years in business, the club served its last drinks on New Year's Eve, December 31, 2012. The landlord had doubled the rent, from $10,000 to $20,000 per month, essentially forcing owner Alvin Reed out of business.

Richie Notar, of luxury restaurant chain Nobu, was taking over the spot. At the time, many suspected this was another--call it a history grab, like the takeover of Rocco Ristorante, Bill's Gay 90s, Minetta Tavern, and countless other historic dining and drinking establishments. Deep-pocketed new owners with mini restaurant empires like to cash in on the cachet that comes with the classics--after they turn them upscale, of course.

Instead of letting the newcomers profit on Harlem history, so infused in the club's aesthetic, Alvin Reed stripped the facade of the Lenox Lounge and took the neon sign with him.



In December 2013 Notar told the Daily News, “This is a gem of New York. I don’t want to change a thing about how it looks,” adding that the new club will be “not too much different than what it is now.”

Did he change his mind after Reed took the good stuff? He told the Daily News in 2015 that "the scope of the project (mostly the overall condition of the building) became bigger than anticipated," leading to delays. He has since moved on to another location.

After the closure, someone spray-painted on the plywood that covered the door: "1939 - 2012: 80 YEARS FOR THIS," pointing out the terrible loss. The message has since been painted over in black paint, but the accusation still lingers.

A local small business owner lost his business and Harlem lost a piece of its history so a landlord could double his money and a luxury restaurateur could expand his empire. And now? The Lenox Lounge is just another gutted storefront, another example of hyper-gentrification's "high-rent blight."



Walker Malloy has the real estate listing -- the landlord is now asking $40,000 per month for the lounge and its vacant neighbor.



Meanwhile, across the street, a massive new building is going up, with a Burlington Coat Factory and a Whole Foods inside.

The Pathmark supermarket on East Harlem's 125th Street closed this weekend amid controversy, more controversy, and the despair of 30,000 customers who have few places left to buy groceries.



After the Pathmark opened in 1999, a number of small grocers shut down, leaving residents dependent on the big supermarket.

The Times reported that the grocery store's intended role would be to increase development: "the Pathmark's popularity is having a big impact on the neighborhood. Not only has it altered the fortunes of the unsightly intersection where it is located, it is also helping to spur development across 125th Street."

At the time, Karen A. Phillips, chief executive of the Abyssinian Development Corporation, who put in the store, said the supermarket had "done what it was supposed to do -- inspire new commercial development" through the heart of Harlem.



Then, last year, Abyssinian sold the Pathmark site to mega-developer Extell for nearly $39 million. Extell, as you may know, is creating a giant luxury city at Hudson Yards, with hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks and other subsidies from Bloomberg.

Said Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito of the Abyssinian and Extell deal for Pathmark, “I believe they threw this community under the bus.”

A look inside the supermarket on Saturday evening revealed shelves already stripped bare, the registers closed, and the employees--200 of whom will now be out of work--gathering to say goodbye.



Also around 1999, the Abyssinian Development Corporation, with mega-developer Forest City Ratner (known for getting eminent domain land and subsidies from Bloomberg to develop Atlantic Yards), developed the Harlem Center to the west, a suburban-style shopping center with an Old Navy store, among other chains.

As promised, more development has come to 125th Street, especially after the major boost of Bloomberg's massive "river-to-river" rezoning in 2008, a brainchild of Amanda Burden, then director of the Department of City Planning.

The eureka moment came after a Roberta Flack concert at the Apollo, when Burden discovered there was simply nowhere to eat in Harlem--nowhere, not even at Sylvia’s or Manna’s or any of the other soul-food restaurants nearby. She realized that the neighborhood would have to change. “There should be a million different eateries around there,” she told the Times, “and this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to frame and control growth on 125th Street.”

Well, now Amanda Burden can eat at Red Lobster. There's one right next to the Apollo, just after the Banana Republic.



Since the rezoning, several mom-and-pops have been evicted and several chains have gone in.

How many?

I took a walk along 125th Street, from the Hudson River to the onramp of the Triborough Bridge. Along the way, I counted 77 national chains and 15 commercial banks -- even though Burden said that the rezoning would limit “bank exposure on the street level, positioning the banking floors on the second floor to encourage more vitality,” because "Banks can deaden an environment.”

The majority of those 92 chains and banks are located in the core of central 125th Street, which is maybe 7 blocks wide. That’s about 10 chains per block. And more keep coming. A new development under construction flies a banner that announces the future arrival of a Burlington Coat Factory.



As if the story can't get any worse for 125th Street, back on the easternmost end, just one block east of the Pathmark development, a group of businesses is under siege from the city government.
In 2009, the Bloomberg Administration blighted a whole block on 125th Street and 3rd Avenue, using eminent domain to claim it for a massive $700 million development project, the 1.7 million-square-foot East Harlem Media, Entertainment and Cultural Center, aka "MEC."

This, in addition to the eminent domain deal gifted to Columbia University at the westernmost end of 125th, means the street has been bookended in Bloomberg's land grabs.

Today this eastern, edge-of-the-earth block contains a dry cleaners, a hair braiding salon, a gas station, a flat-fix shop, an auto-body shop, a Baptist church, and other businesses. The city has already seized property, including a building from Demolition Depot. The owners are still fighting in court. Reported the Real Deal: "the de Blasio administration has not announced plans for the site, and is instead moving forward with the land seizure without defining a clear purpose for it."


blighted block

Call me crazy, but I don't think it's any coincidence that this block sits right over the Third Avenue Bridge from the waterfront of the South Bronx, where another Bloomberg rezoning helped to usher in major development.

Here, from Lugo's Flat Fix stand looking north, you can see clear to the so-called "Piano District," where luxury towers will soon be rising.

It would be naive to deny that it's all connected.

Up along the Hudson River Greenway, somewhere around Harlem, if you're going on foot or by bicycle and you're paying attention, you'll find some odd pieces of art.



Gathered from the detritus that washes up from the Hudson, they don't seem to be commissioned and have no sense of permanence.



They're built from driftwood, sticks, chunks of rope and floating bits, Styrofoam and lengths of corrugated tubing.



I wonder who made them and why. I wonder how long they'll last before they're washed and blown away, and if their creator will make something new in their place once they're gone.

A man named Tom Loback used to make them. He said there were other artists, too. From the Times:

Harlem's M&G Diner shuttered back in 2008 when the beloved soul food restaurant went on vacation and never returned. It had been around for maybe 40 years.

Most of the antique signage was removed and the spectacular facade was made miserably dull.

Now reader Christina Wilkinson sends in a shot of the new business in the space. It's called Capsule. They sell men's "streetwear," brands like G-Star, Billionaire Boys Club, Ralph Lauren.


Christina Wilkinson

Photographers James and Karla Murray took before-and-after photos of M&G awhile back.


James and Karla Murray: Click photo to enlarge

In the older shot, the façade is resplendent, its red awning announcing SOUL FOOD in a typeface slightly serifed, while above, neon signs fringed in lights deliriously announce “Southern fried chicken” that promises to be “old fashion’ BUT Good!” (The letter “i” is dotted with a star.) Is the “BUT” meant to mean “nonetheless,” to say that while the chicken is old-fashioned, it yet tastes good? I don’t think so. The “but good” is likely the idiomatic expression, dating back as far as the 1930s, to mean extremely and thoroughly. In which case, “old fashion'” is not something to apologize for, but something to celebrate.

Casting your eyes over the old M&G, there is so much to look at it, to be stimulated by, to feel and to think about. In the after photo, there is nothing. The signs, the typefaces, the awning, the yellow paint, the crooked doors--all gone, replaced by dull sheets of glass. No variation. No unevenness. No life.

Today, you can find an artifact of the old M&G at Marcus Samuelsson's Streetbird restaurant.

Last week, the Columbia Spectator published an op-ed entitled "Is Columbia really destroying Harlem’s authenticity?" Written by first-year student Cristian Zaharia, it supports the school's expansion into Harlem, which was made possible via eminent domain. Zaharia argues that Harlem's authentic culture is not African-American, but one of ever-changing cultures dating back to the Dutch, and that the expansion "will be the start of a new, fresh era for the neighborhood."

On his Facebook page, Harlem historian and activist Michael Henry Adams wrote a reasoned and impassioned response. It is reproduced here in full, with his permission:


Adams arrested while protesting the demolition of Harlem's Renaissance Ballroom and Casino, photo by Antwan Minter

Harlem has numerous lovely old buildings reflecting varied cultures, even former synagogues. But throughout history, nothing about Harlem has made it renown, world-wide, apart from black people. One may talk all one likes about other earlier Harlems populated by people who were not black. By contrast, these white Harlems were insignificant. African Americans alone--our culture, drive, and creativity--have accorded Harlem a status as fabled and fabulous as that held by Paris or Rome. Everything, anything else is superfluous, even meaningless, in terms of Harlem's well-deserved fame.

Entertaining any illusions about the possibility of preserving an authentic Harlem, absent African Americans, it's instructive to look downtown. What survives in Greenwich Village or Hell's Kitchen, to suggest an earlier historic black identity today? And so, yes, Columbia and by extension unknowing or unwitting students--through displacement and gentrification--are rapidly helping to destroy Harlem's irreplaceable heritage and rich legacy.

You are not alone. Many blacks, beguiled by white dollars, are just as eager to replace the houses, churches, schools, stores, theatres and other buildings where Langston Hughes, Georgette Harvey, A'Lelia Walker and other Harlem luminaries, lived, worked, played and prayed, with more luxury condominiums.

Indeed, whatever one has to suggest, even if it's making a black congregation's church into a private school for your kids, or a mansion just for you, they are cool with it. A fig leaf of 20% "affordable" housing, and an historic name, derived from some black hero, for the new condo building or the street or park nearby are nice, but hardly essential. Landmarking and preservation that enhance neighborhoods downtown are antithetical to them. "How much longer will blacks exert political sway over Harlem?" they reason, "while whites are buying, we had better sell up."

A few brave voices contest Columbia University’s contention that their Harlem expansion plans will be universally beneficial. "It's nothing but rubbish," says distinguished and scholarly architectural historian Robin Middleton, who formerly taught at Cambridge before joining the faculty at Columbia. "Columbia's plans are simply monstrous, like an Orwellian, Stalinist, or dystopian campus of factories. No one touting how much they cherish 'design excellence,' could possibly approve of what they are doing, unless of course if it were their job to do so. And, it is, isn't it?"

It was around the connected issues of Harlem being up-zoned, and observing Planning Commission Chair Amanda Burden much more closely, that I began to see who she really is and how it shapes what's at stake. Did it help the homeless to provide for evermore $900,000 condos, in a community where the yearly wage for half the residents is less than $36,000? Is it beneficial to small local merchants, allowing for 25-story towers where 19th-century buildings with just 6 floors once prevailed? What's the point of confiscating thriving businesses that want to be a part of a new revitalized Harlem? Why were they "compensated" at a rate pegged to the value of property prior to the zoning change allowing greater density? Why clear 17 acres, solely for Columbia's use, and leave only 2 of dozens of historic structures? Ought not the sole Planning Commission vote against this ill-conceived venture, cast by Karen Philips, a black woman who lives in Harlem, to have influenced the chair, who said, "The community is not going to buy in, unless it reflects their culture?"

For a long while, it seemed as if the teeming numbers of poor people here would mean Harlem's and Manhattanville's salvation. Reliable voters, housing project residents seemed sure to elect legislators who would act in their interests. Given the great numbers of low-income people here and the enmity that many affluent have to living among such people, it seemed as if gentrification might just be held at bay.

Now the marketplace seems poised to pressure the elimination of such oasis of affordable civility. More and more affordable housing and other matters affecting the poor are deemed issues only possible to address by warmly embracing the concerns and requirements of the rich. In a city of more than eight million, an utterly unwinnable solution to the massive problem of housing that's unaffordable to most is underway.

Seemingly commendable, government in partnership with developers, is making inclusion of "affordable" housing a condition for building. Ironically though, on average, 80% of all new housing is targeted for those who already have the greatest amount of choice, people who make up fewer than 20% of the population. Conversely, the "affordable" component, typically 20% of units in a new structure, will never meet an ever-growing demand among the city's working poor.

What will remain when it's all finished? No one can say for certain. Some romantically hope for the best. That, miraculously, the African American Cultural Capital at Harlem will somehow survive. Very likely, however, what's in store for Harlem instead is yet another Manhattan community like every other: one boasting the same stores, restaurants, banks, condos, and rich people. As one writer observed, "the same three stores, for the same two people."

About:
Michael Henry Adams is an accomplished writer, lecturer, historian, tour guide, and activist. Born in Akron, Ohio, he lives in Harlem. Michael trained at Columbia University's graduate historic preservation program. His books include "Harlem, Lost and Found: An Architectural and Social History, 1765-1915," and "Style and Grace: African Americans at Home." Currently, he's at work on the forthcoming "Homo Harlem: A Chronicle of Lesbian and Gay Life in the African American Cultural Capital, 1915-1995." He is a passionate supporter of historic preservation, for the Casino Renaissance the fire watch tower restoration and Villa Lewaro, Madam Walker's house at Irvington. Dismayed by Harlem's piecemeal destruction, he is seeking to establish a preservation advocacy organization to Save Harlem Heritage. For additional info, call 212-862-2556.

You can also follow him on Twitter: @harlemhellion


Previously:
Capturing Manhattanville
Rebranding Harlem
The eviction of 125th
On revanchist hyper-gentrification
Columbia wins right to seize private property in Harlem

Hyper-gentrification--the jet-fueled process in which city government and corporations collude to displace the existing culture and population of New York and replace it with something shinier, wealthier, and homogenized for your safety--is often used by real estate agents to rebrand and sell "newly discovered" neighborhoods.

Sometimes, the sell can be unabashed in its revanchist rhetoric. A reader sent in a newsletter from one real estate agent working to sell Harlem. I'll let the text speak for itself.



- "New Yorkers are always debating which hood is the hottest. Is Bushwick the next Williamsburg? NoHo the next Tribeca? It’s Harlem: buy now and you will thank me."

- "Harlem is getting a tech-led makeover, thanks to a new series of economic development initiatives aimed at combating the neighborhood's infamous high unemployment rates and widespread poverty."

- "Blue-collar retirees are watching their neighborhood, once crime-infested and poverty-stricken, being reborn and rechristened as money-hungry real estate investors mine for gold in the pocket between W. 125th St. and W. 150th St."



- "Harlem is facing another wave of gentrification, which will push prices up further than the current median."

- "Call it the Whole Foods Factor. The organic grocery has the power to remake neighborhoods, and it’s planning a new location at Lenox Ave. and 125th St."

- "That will add to a bevy of bars and restaurants that have opened up in the last few years, like Marcus Samuelsson’s Red Rooster and the 11 commercial banks on 125th Street from Lenox Ave to Morningside Ave. Some of the other retail giants following Whole Foods is H&M and Forever 21."



11 banks! And, ooh look! There's an Olive Garden, too!

After the closing and stripping of the famed Lenox Lounge on New Year's Day, this press release just came in from the publicist representing the club:

LENOX LOUNGE…THE FAT LADY NEVER SANG

Despite numerous reports to the contrary, the Lenox Lounge brand will continue without skipping a beat. Tyreta Foster, Esq. and Angélica Thomas, Esq. of Foster Lynch & Thomas, LLC negotiated in earnest throughout the 2012 Holiday Season with Eric Feinberg, Esq. to ensure that Lenox Lounge and its famed Art Deco sign would once again light up the heart of Lenox Avenue.

Alvin Reed, the owner of the lounge, finally inked the deal for the new location at 333 Lenox Avenue on New Year’s Eve. “Just as I restored Lenox Lounge in 2000, I am determined to expand the brand just 2 blocks away,” said Reed. Reed’s latest endeavor will feature 2 floors with an option of a third.

“Of course the famed Zebra Room will get a second act,” Reed continued. “Lenox Lounge has always been a spot where everyone--from Harlemites to foreign tourists--could hang out and listen to great music. Lenox Lounge has always been and will continue to be less commercial and more authentic.”

Michael Coker of Halstead Property and David Chkheidze of Massey Knakal Realty Services were the brokers on the transaction.


photo by Iman Abdulfattah

The Lenox Lounge closed on New Year's Eve after 73 years in Harlem. The landlord doubled the rent on its current owner Alvin Reed, from $10,000 to $20,000 per month, essentially forcing him out of business after 24 years of stewardship.

On New Year's Day, these heartbreaking photos appeared on Twitter and Instagram. Already the gorgeous chrome neon letters are gone and the door has been plywooded and padlocked. The historically detailed facade has been ripped off, leaving only the underbelly of weathered wood. It is painful to look at.

Photo: Nobodies of Note 1/1/13

The interior gutting has begun. The long wooden bar has been ripped out.

Photo: Hosea Johnson

Was this done by Alvin Reed or the new owners? Black Enterprise reported last month, "When Reed leaves he’ll be taking the iconic Lenox Lounge neon sign with him." Said Reed, “If they want to use Lenox Lounge, they will have to negotiate with me. I brought it back and I want to see it stay there. I want to keep the legacy alive. I am Lenox Lounge, and I will be Lenox Lounge for quite some time. And if they want Lenox Lounge, they want me.”

I guess the new owners decided not to negotiate.

Photo: CMTapper

The lounge is being taken over by Richie Notar, who runs the luxury restaurant chain Nobu. Robert DeNiro may also be involved. According to the Daily News, Notar will rename the place after himself, putting up a new sign to read NOTAR JAZZ CLUB. He will close it until March to renovate and add a bakery. "I don’t want to change a thing about how it looks," he said, adding it will be "not too much different than what it is now."

We know what that means. We've seen it all before (again and again and again). The Lenox Lounge will never be the same.


Before it closed, I went up for a final drink (or two), to be in that rare atmosphere one last time.

The bar was quiet on late afternoons, as the sun goes low and golden over Lenox Avenue, streaming across the wide-open space of the vacant lot across the way, a grassy field that will surely one day be crammed with condos and chain stores.

Black men drank at the bar and watched the football game. A few couples, mostly mixed-race couples, sat in the ragged, duct-taped booths sipping neon-vibrant cocktails and eating fried catfish, lazily reading the newspaper. The bar felt easy like this. A neighborhood joint decked out in faded glamor.


A walking tour went by the window with people snapping photos. Inside, the bartender explained to a couple of white tourists exactly what made the Lenox Lounge so special, "All kinds of people come in here. All ages and ethnicities. On any night you can find a doctor, a lawyer, sitting next to some guy with no teeth."


Originally owned by Ralph Greco (whom Jet magazine referred to as "ofay" in the 1950s) and built for white customers seeking black jazz, the Lenox Lounge was bought and revitalized by Harlem local Alvin Reed in 1988. He brought jazz back in the late 1990s and the white people came back with it. As Reed told the Times in 2000, ''I thought I was bringing jazz back to Harlem for black folks. I thought I would bring out a lot of locals."

But the black folks mostly stayed in the bar, while the zebra-skinned back room was frequented by whites and tourists. Said Reed in the Times, "A lot of whites are very disappointed because they are coming for our culture. They want to see how we pop our fingers and get with it, and they get in here, look around and it's nothing but white folks." By 2001, reported Ebony magazine, 90% of the customers were white.

As Reed told Ebony, "I didn't envision Whites walking in my door. But they made it work. I have to be totally honest. Without them, jazz would not be in here right now."


That was 2001, a tipping point for Harlem and the city at large. Bloomberg was taking over where Giuliani left off and everything was about to change at an unimaginable pace and intensity. You could see the shift, you could feel it, but you could also stay in denial. In our own neighborhoods, we all thought: It can't happen here.

In the same Ebony article, Charles Rangel said about gentrification: "I walk the streets of Harlem and I don't see it. Sure, I see Whites, but I don't see them moving in and attempting to take over Harlem."

What a difference a decade makes. From river to river, Harlem has since been colonized. East Harlem got rezoned and loaded with condos. Manhattanville was nabbed via eminent domain and handed over to Columbia University for bulldozing. And many in Harlem have fought the big rezoning of 125th Street to no avail. Said planning commissioner Amanda Burden in the Times, "this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to frame and control growth on 125th Street." Since then, the chains have moved in and many local businesses, like Alvin Reed's Lenox Lounge, have been pushed out.
Said a shaken and heartbroken Reed in the Daily News recently, “It’s like I don’t exist.”




Previously:
Lenox Lounge Vanishing
Lenox Lounge at 70