Harlem Travel Guide

Harlem has been experiencing its second Renaissance

Peter Stuyvesant founded Stuyvesant, Peter the settlement Nieuw Haarlem (named after the Dutch city) in a hilly area in 1658, and it kept its rural character for a long time. In 1832 the first train connection to the urban south of Manhattan was built, and Harlem developed into a refined summer resort. One by one, settlements of solid brownstone houses like Morningside, Hamilton or Washington Heights (named after the later president, who had his troops camped here in the War of Independence against the English) were built. After the turn of the 20th century the subway connection from Harlem to south Manhattan started a building boom, but the apartments turned out to be unrentable. So Philip A. Payton Jr., an African American real estate agent, persuaded the owners who were concerned about their income to rent the empty apartments to the steadily growing African American population. Thus the “Black capital of America” was founded. As early as 1910 almost all of Harlem's residents were African American. With them came writers, painters and musicians. In the 1920s the neighbourhood flourished in the first Harlem Renaissance.

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