National Park Service Hamilton Grange U.S. Department of the Interior

Hamilton Grange National Memorial

At Home in Harlem

From it’s pre-history to the Nieuw Haarlem settlement and forward to present-day, Harlem has always been a dynamic and ever-changing neighborhood.

Early Harlem Before the arrival of settlers, the neighborhood Schenectady, New Amsterdam and Heemstede we call Harlem was inhabited by the Native (known today as Hempstead). Under English American People known as the Lenape. Named control, Nieuw Haarlem became Harlem. The for the Dutch city of Haarlem, under the village remained small and rural, growing slowly. leadership of Governor Peter Stuyvesant of the In the 1700s, Harlem became the area in which Dutch West India Company, the settlement of the wealthy of New York City, then confined to Nieuw Haarlem a farming village was the very southern tip of Manhattan Island, incorporated in 1660. In 1664, the English took vacationed. One such example is the oldest control of the Dutch colony of New Netherlands, remaining house in the borough of Manhattan, which included settlements such as the Morris-Jumel Mansion located in Washington Heights, built in 1765 for Roger Morris.

Harlem during During the American Revolution the Continental Through this encounter, Hamilton may have first Hamilton’s time Army under George Washington’s command been introduced to the area. Hamilton later often began to fortify the New York City area, including docked his little boat nearby when on fishing the area around Harlem, to prepare for a likely expeditions as he traveled up the Hudson. British invasion force. After early victories in the Yellow Fever epidemics flared each fall in New area the British had established their base in York City and, those with the ability to do so, North America at lower Manhattan. As the British moved to summer residences elsewhere. With marched north, they encountered the Continental that in mind, in the fall of 1799 the Hamilton and Army in Harlem. On September 16, 1776 the his in-laws, the Church’s, rented a country home Battle of Harlem Heights was fought in western in the Harlem Heights area. Then in 1800, Harlem near the area of what is now West 125th Hamilton purchased a fifteen acre parcel from the street. Captain Alexander Hamilton was among pharmacist Jacob Schieffelin, and an additional the ranks of the Continental Army who engaged twenty acres from Samuel Bradhurst, a the British. Although the Continental Army was physician. Once combined Hamilton’s property outnumbered 5,000 to 2,000, the British were had striking streams that led to a duck pond, and outflanked and nearly became surrounded, views of the Hudson River, East River and forcing them to retreat south to present-day 106th Harlem River. The property was bisected by St. and earning General Washington’s first victory Bloomingdale Road, a local segment of which is in the war. known today as Hamilton Place.

Contemporary Harlem The village of Harlem remained rural in the early many settled in Harlem, changing the 1800s, with country estates on the heights neighborhood demographics quickly. By 1930, overlooking the Hudson River. The Schieffelin Harlem was approximately 70% African home was to the West of the property and the American, up from approximately 10% in 1910. Bradhursts to the East (Bradhurst Avenue in The period between the World Wars came to be Harlem is named for Samuel Bradhurst). In known as the Harlem Renaissance for the central Harlem lay the Hamilton’s property, which notable figures and their works that arose from stretched from approximately West 140th St the neighborhood. Notables such as Langston north to West 145th St, and from St. Nicholas Hughes, W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Arthur Avenue west to Broadway. Alexander Hamilton’s Schomburg, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, and home, when completed in 1802, was located in Duke Ellington flourished in the serenity of the vicinity of present-day West 143rd St and Harlem. Convent Avenue. Hit hard by job losses during the Great As the City’s development spread, the character Depression, Harlem entered into a decline that of the area would soon change. The lasted decades. This decline was exacerbated Commissioner’s Plan of 1811 set forth a grid plan by inequality in civil rights and population on Manhattan Island from 1st Street north to declines of nearly a third of the community’s 155th Street. It would be nearly 60 years before residents. the grid arrived at 155th Street; however land Harlem entered an era of revitalization in the speculators in the 1850s through 1870s began to 1990s that continues into the present. With recognize the changes to come and began to extensive new construction and rehabilitation of parcel out land among the many large estates. older buildings, Harlem continues to be an In the early 1900s, African Americans began to exciting and changing place that honors its past migrate to the North to escape the Jim Crow and looks forward to its future. South. As the subway system extended uptown

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