Harlem: Lost and Found [Hardcover]

Michael Henry Adams (Author), Paul Rocheleau (Photographer)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 3, 2001

Long identified with African-American style and culture, Harlem is also a pillar of New York's social and architectural history. In this beautifully illustrated study, historian Michael Henry Adams presents an evocative portrait of the various and divergent Harlems of yesteryear, from the Native American settlements discovered by the Dutch in the seventeenth century to the vibrant community of present-day preservationists.

In addition to the legacy of residential architecture—Dutch farmhouses, Native American longhouses, mansions and country villas, thoughtfully planned row houses, and handsome apartment buildings, the author examines schools, industrial facilities, stores, churches, and more. Harlem's spectrum of designers ranges from the well known—McKim, Mead & White, responsible for part of Strivers' Row; George B. Post & Sons, architects of the monumental Shepard Hall at the City College of the City University of New York—to practitioners who, though today mostly forgotten, designed much of the urban fabric of Harlem and New York City. All have contributed to an extraordinarily rich streetscape that today preserves the best of Harlem's past.

Editorial Reviews

Review

His knowledge of Harlem is encyclopedic, block by block and brownstone by brownstone. -- Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker

Michael Henry Adams reveals fully, for the first time, in this brisk and knowledgeable book. -- Robin Middleton, Department of Art History and Archaeology: Columbia University

From the Inside Flap

Like the 1920s Harlem described by Lincoln Kirstein as possessing "in its shadows the only authentic elegance in America," Harlem at the turn of the twenty-first century is again a dynamic neighborhood. Long identified with African-American style and culture, it is also a pillar of New York’s social and architectural history. In this beautifully illustrated study, historian Michael Henry Adams presents an evocative portrait of the various and divergent Harlems of yesteryear, from the Native American settlements discovered by the Dutch in the seventeenth century to the vibrant community of present-day preservationists.

Adams discusses distinct building styles and periods that parallel the growth of New York City and, in fact, the United States. In the late 1600s, Dutch farmhouses coexisted with Native American longhouses in colonial Nieuw Haarlem. By the mid-eighteenth century and later, mansions and country villas arose on large tracts of land. Particularly notable for presaging national enthusiasm for a revival of classicism are the neo-Palladian Morris-Jumel Mansion, the oldest residential structure in Manhattan (today restored and listed on the National Historic Register), and the Grange of founding father Alexander Hamilton. The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw the growth of both thoughtfully planned row houses, such as the West 138th and 139th Street residences today known as Strivers’ Row, and handsome apartment buildings.

In addition to the legacy of residential architecture, the author examines a number of other building types—schools, industrial facilities, stores, churches. Harlem’s spectrum of designers ranges from the well known—McKim, Mead & White, responsible for part of Strivers’ Row; George B. Post & Sons, architects of the monumental Shepard Hall at the City College of the City University of New York—to practitioners who, though today mostly forgotten, designed much of the urban fabric of Harlem and New York City. Indeed, whether great or anonymous, Adams never forgets the people who designed, built, and utilized Harlem’s historic structures: hard-working Dutch farm families; patriots George Washington, Alexander Hamilton,

John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson; wealthy Victorian homeowners such as James Anthony Bailey of Barnum & Bailey fame; Madam C. J. Walker, an African-American millionaire who hired New York’s first certified black architect, Vertner Woodson Tandy, to design her capacious house, now lost; and contemporary preservationist-residents. All have contributed to an extraordinarily rich streetscape that today preserves the best of Harlem’s past.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: The Monacelli Press; First Edition edition (December 3, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1580930700
• ISBN-13: 978-1580930703
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 1.2 x 11.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #500,781 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Harlem Lost?, January 23, 2003

By 

Michael Henry Adams (Harlem, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Harlem: Lost and Found (Hardcover)

Paul Rocheleau urged me not to worry about what I wrote stressing, "Most people only look at the pictures anyhow." Taking over ten years to research and write something, how tiresome it is to then be compelled to defend it. One is reluctant to do much beyond urging those who might disagree with what you've said to take a decade or two themselves and write their own work. After all no matter what one does or doesn't do the inadvertent error is sure to emerge. This was so for Galsworthy and for Langston Hughes. It will be for you as well. The Riviera Apartments, for instance, were designed by Rouse & Goldstone, not Schwartz & Gross. Mr. Charles Lovejoy is in fact Mr. Charles Loveday, and so it goes. It appears that Harlem Lost and Found will warrant a second printing at least, so thank goodness these mistakes and similar ones can be addressed.

What cannot be altered, however, is my understanding of Harlem's boundaries. Quite justifiably, I believe they can be identified as extending as far north as 168th St. "Not For Tourists Guide to New York City 2003", sponsored by JPMorgan Chase Community Development Group, at least agrees to this hallowed region extending north as far as 160th St. Well, actually, they call the region south to 134th St. between Bradhurst Ave. and the Hudson River 'Manhattanville/Hamilton Heights'. However, surely these neighborhoods are agreed to be in Harlem, are they not?

Unashamedly, I concede that my book was driven by handsome buildings. But, throughout its publication from circa 1910 through 1934, Harlem Magazine, an all white journal, included the very same structures that I have located north of 155th St. in its pages. Things do change, of course. Attempting to dissect Harlem into a series of hierarchically class-based districts, many, by the 1890s, designated all Manhattan west of St. Nicholas Ave. and north of 135th St. as 'Washington Heights'. Already by the 1860s the appellation was used from 155th St. north. But this initial usage much like that of 'Carmansville' was meant, I believe, to identify a subsection of greater Harlem. Certainly, the Audubon, Knapp, and Hooper families continued to identify their address as Harlem much as today many residents of the officially named 'Clinton' continue to give their address as 'Hell's Kitchen'.

In any case, perhaps the old-fashioned but unfashionable race card trumps other considerations? Asked in the 1950s by Joe McCarthy where he lived, Ralph Ellison said 150th St. and Riverside Drive. He qualified his answer, though, noting that the area had once been regarded as 'Washington Heights'. But stated that from his experience, "Wherever Negroes live uptown is considered Harlem." Surely this is the logic whereby the Audubon Ballroom and Theater, where Malcolm X was slain in 1965, was and continues to be identified as a Harlem landmark. No doubt, as more whites displace more blacks and Latinos throughout Upper Manhattan, Brian Keith Jackson's satirical references to name changes in the novel "The Queen of Harlem" will, in fact, occur more and more. It's this likelihood that makes me even more adamantly compelled to document the old understanding amongst blacks and many whites of what is Harlem.

How easy it is to regret what one has not done. If only I had a computer I might have addressed these issues earlier. If only I were more prosperous, I might have also included footnotes in Harlem Lost and Found and saved myself some grief. But as an author under contract to a small press it was difficult enough to pay for an index, I can assure you. As it was so dear, I especially wish the mystery reviewer at 800 RSD had consulted it. I reference Vaux & Withers twice. Once in relation to their Trinity Cemetery suspension bridge. Another time based on Francis R. Kowsky's 1980 monograph of Withers (Wesleyan University Press), on page 196, in the appended work list, I cite the George B. Grinnell house and stable on West 156th and 157th Sts. entered for 1869 and 1870. At no time, regarding this firm, do I ever mention either Mrs. John James Audubon or her dwelling.

As for my attribution of Audubon Park's ownership by George Bird Grinnell, on page 21 of the pamphlet "Audubon Park" published by the Hispanic Society in America in 1927 and reissued in 1987, a later George B. Grinnell relates of his relative, "Long before this, the greater portion of what had been Audubon Park, that is to say, all of it except the track where the old Audubon houses stand had become the property of a single owner, George B. Grinnell, from whose estate, in 1909, a large part of it passed into the hands of builders who covered much of it with tall apartment houses."

Similarly, so far as Jesse W. Benedict's earlier ownership of the park after 1864 goes, no less an historian than Audubon Park's own Reginald Pelham Bolton in his great book "Washington Heights, Manhattan, Its Eventful Past" asserts the same on page 111.

Regarding record sale prices at the Grinnell, the New York Times, it's true, might inflate values, but can I really be faulted for believing all the news that's fit to print?

Yes, indeed, whatever else it is, thanks mostly to Paul Rocheleau and designer Abigail Sturges, Harlem Lost and Found is a visual feast. Whatever its shortcomings, I hope that it is better written and researched than one critic suggests. Better than ever, I now appreciate the aphorism 'Some do, and others complain'. And anonymously, no less. Well, what can one say except God Bless America.

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful pictorial survey of upper Manhattan, November 26, 2002

By 

Matthew Spady "800rsd" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Harlem: Lost and Found (Hardcover)

Harlem Lost and Found (Architectural and Social History, 1765-1915), Michael Henry Adamss recently released volume on the architectural, social, and cultural history of Harlem, is a visual feast. With beautifully reproduced etchings and engravings, crisp black and white photos and brilliant color photographs by Paul Rocheleau, Adams presents Harlems past and present architectural splendor. He sets a lofty goal for himself  to place Harlems architecture in a context of history and people, living and dead, not only building and past residents but also those who preserve, cherish, and restore what has been built  and, visually, he succeeds.

Adams has an architects eye and, seemingly, a photographic memory that allows him to correlate examples of architectural styles and trends, even when the examples are blocks, neighborhoods, or, in a few cases, boroughs apart. Given the sheer number of structures in Harlem, this is no mean feat. The descriptive, concise prose that accompanies the pictures is engaging and, on the surface, sounds authoritative. Adams is at his best when developing broad architectural themes  his primary one being that neighborhoods evolve, socioeconomic and ethnic groups come and go, but architecture provides an anchor; it is a link with the past that, when lovingly preserved, becomes a bridge to the future. In the specifics of examples and historic detail, however, Adams is often careless. Sometimes, the result is a minor inconsistency from one section of the book to another; other times, however, the resulting inaccuracies mar the credibility of a book that professes to be history. There was a great deal of material to consider, and behind nearly every fact included lies a host of stories untold. writes Adams at the onset, In some cases, memory or notation of sources has been less than perfect; any resultant errors are my own. Amiable though that disclaimer might be, it does not excuse lax research.

Adams has an expansive view of Harlem that extends to descriptions of buildings in Washington Heights as well as thumbnail sketches of forgotten areas such as Carmansville, Minniesland, and Audubon Park. Therein lies a problem. Although early New Yorkers referred to the area north of Harlem as Harlem Heights, that name fell out of use well before the decades that form the heart of Adamss book. The present-day southern border of Washington Heights is 155th Street and has been since its inception more than 140 year ago. That boundary has appeared on city maps for decades and determines, among other things, voting districts and police precincts. Although blurred names and boundaries may seem negligible, they exaggerate Harlems geographical and cultural reach, which is not necessary  as the portions of the book that are devoted to the real Harlem clearly prove. Further, this exaggeration denies the annexed neighborhoods the individuality their respective histories have earned them.

While architectural trends north of 155th Street may serve to illustrate some of Adams themes, these neighborhoods did not share a social or cultural history with Harlem, much less with each other. The working-class and transient population that occupied row houses in 19th Century Carmansville (clustered around Amsterdam Avenue, to the east of Broadway) had little in common with the upper-middle class families who owned large houses surrounded by cultivated gardens in Audubon Park (to the west of Broadway). Although Minniesland and Aububon Park were different names for the same area  the former from approximately 1841 to the early 1850s and the latter from about then until approximately 1910  Adams leaves the reader with the impression that they were two different areas.

Attention to detail does not seem to a primary concern when Adams, admittedly a good storyteller, recounts history. He incorrectly identifies the major owner of Audubon Park (it was George Blake Grinnell, not Jesse Benedict), confuses two Grinnells (the older was George Blake, the younger George Bird), and attributes one of Madame Audubons houses to Vaux & Withers (who may have enlarged it decades after it was built). In more recent history, he incorrectly puts The Grinnell (an apartment building in Washington Heights) in Harlem, incorrectly states its date of co-oping, and grossly exaggerates an apartment sale-price there in 2000.

A beautifully produced book with an expensive cover price carries a certain amount of authority simply because it looks impressive. Through his inattention to detail, Adams undermines his own authority and prevents this book from being the definitive history it could have been. That said, this book is a superb pictorial survey of upper Manhattan, and deserves a place in every New York-o-philes library.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Jeepers, nice job Michael!, February 11, 2003

By 

Christopher Gray (Across the street from Zabar's) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Harlem: Lost and Found (Hardcover)

Wow, for once I find myself agreeing with Ian Fletcher - really great job, Michael. Every neighborhood should have a book like this - but only Harlem does! And, Michael, you're too sensitive about 1-800-Riverside - he/she made some reasonably fair criticisms - who among us are without sin? - but still endorses your book.

Hope you make a $million (Gianfranco Monacelli, are you listening?) - or at least enough for a computer.

Best, Christopher Gray