East Harlem
3.5/5
()
About this ebook
Overshadowed by the fame of Harlem and the wealth of the Upper East Side, East Harlem is rarely noted as a historical enclave.
However, from the early 1800s through today, East Harlem has welcomed wave after wave of immigrants struggling for a place in the nation's most famous city. African Americans, Irish, Germans, European Jews, Italians, Scandinavians, Puerto Ricans, and Latinos are among the ethnic groups who have shaped this neighborhood, bringing with them their religious, social, and culinary traditions. East Harlem is the first volume to tell this neighborhood's history through images. Photographs of the iron, stone, and rubber factories, the tenements, the 100th Street community, famous politicians such as Fiorella LaGuardia, the Second and Third Avenue elevated subways, St. Cecilia's, and many other subjects capture East Harlem's past in one memorable collection.
Christopher Bell
Christopher Bell was born in Leicestershire England and has studied military history for most of his adult life, a member of the Royal Tigers Association he has worked closely with several veterans associations raising the awareness to the role and importance of line infantry in the British Army. Christopher spends his time between Leicestershire UK and Alberta Canada.
Read more from Christopher Bell
East Harlem Revisited Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Hope from the Bible: Finding Your Place in the Family of God Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHeroes of Princeton Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to East Harlem
Related ebooks
Harlem in the Twentieth Century Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Harlem Renaissance: A Celebration of Creativity Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAfrican Americans in Pittsburgh Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5African Americans of New Orleans Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Black History For Beginners Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Through the Eyes of Rebel Women, The Young Lords: 1969-1976 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlack Chicago: A Black History of America's Heartland Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWe Took the Streets: Fighting for Latino Rights with the Young Lords Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Building a Latino Civil Rights Movement: Puerto Ricans, African Americans, and the Pursuit of Racial Justice in New York City Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTarget Zero: A Life in Writing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Black Panthers For Beginners Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlackness in the White Nation: A History of Afro-Uruguay Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRevisiting Herstories: The Young Lords Party Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPhilosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSouthern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRoland Hayes: The Legacy of an American Tenor Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGrassroots Garveyism: The Universal Negro Improvement Association in the Rural South, 1920-1927 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Puerto Rican Citizen: History and Political Identity in Twentieth-Century New York City Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRevolutionary Threads: Rastafari, Social Justice, and Cooperative Economics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Boricua Passport Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBaldwin's Harlem: A Biography of James Baldwin Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The New Negro Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Puerto Rican Chicago Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Black Lives, White Lives: Three Decades of Race Relations in America Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Harlem Mosaics Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Last of the Po’Ricans y Otros Afro-Artifacts Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Sista Hood: On the Mic Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPost Black: How a New Generation Is Redefining African American Identity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stir It Up: The CIA Targets Jamaica, Bob Marley and the Progressive Manley Government Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Nine Lives of a Black Panther: A Story of Survival Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
United States History For You
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Killing the Guys Who Killed the Guy Who Killed Lincoln: A Nutty Story About Edwin Booth and Boston Corbett Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A People's History of the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the Remarkable American Life of a 109-Year-Old Man Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/51776 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Library Book Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fifties Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The White Album: Essays Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bowling Alone: Revised and Updated: The Collapse and Revival of American Community Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Disloyal: A Memoir: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer: An Edgar Award Winner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Emerald Mile: The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand Canyon Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Great Reset: And the War for the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Benjamin Franklin: An American Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Twelve Years a Slave (Illustrated) (Two Pence books) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes: Revised and Complete Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for East Harlem
3 ratings1 review
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5I was not born in England. I was born in the United States. I was raised and schooled in East Harlem. Please correct this error. You are writing about another Christopher Bell
Book preview
East Harlem - Christopher Bell
Gurock.
INTRODUCTION
East Harlem is located on the northern end of Manhattan on the East Side. Beginning at 96th Street and Fifth Avenue to the East River and ending at 142nd Street, the community is bounded by the Harlem and East Rivers and four bridges that connect East Harlem to the Bronx and Queens. For years, its neighbors have overshadowed East Harlem. To the west of the community lies Central Harlem, with its famed Harlem Renaissance, and to the south of the neighborhood lies the Upper East Side, with its opulence and wealth.
But East Harlem is significant in its own right, for its history parallels American history. As immigrants and, later, southern migrants sought the American Dream, they came to East Harlem to make their dreams a reality. Americans of every race, color, and creed at one time or another resided in East Harlem.
This continuity can be traced to the original inhabitants of the area: the Weckquaesqek Indians. The Weckquaesqeks were an offspring of the Mahican tribe related to the Algonquin Indians.
After Henry Hudson, a Hollander, arrived on the island of Manhattan in the early 1600s, the Dutch found the area ripe for cultivation. In 1626, Peter Minuit, another Dutchman, purchased Manhattan for $24, and the island was soon named New Amsterdam.
Following this transaction, 30 families left Holland and settled on the island of Manhattan. Two brothers from this group, Isaac and Henry DeForrest, along with African slaves, arrived in East Harlem and began to cultivate the area. In 1658, the area was named New Harlem (Nieuw Haerlem). Six years later, Dutch rule ended when Capt. Richard Nichols from England became the new sovereign of Manhattan and New Amsterdam became New York.
Although the Dutch would recapture New York in 1673, England regained authority the following year, and for the century following, East Harlem and the rest of Manhattan became a subject of the British Crown until the end of the Revolutionary War in 1783.
During this period, East Harlem was known for its mansions, estates, and farmland that adorned the area. In 1816, East Harlem’s first school was founded. African American farmers arrived in East Harlem 14 years later and settled on 130th Street. German and Irish immigrants soon followed and built shantytowns throughout the neighborhood with jetsam and crates discarded from a nearby factory.
The first big change occurred when the New York Harlem Railroad built tracks and hotels in East Harlem. New Yorkers took advantage of these new amenities, and new arrivals to the neighborhood led to a modest population that totaled 1,500 in the middle of the 19th century.
It was the Second and Third Avenue elevated subways (built in the 1880s), which connected working families in East Harlem to the factories downtown, coupled with the Tenement House Act of 1879, that led to the burgeoning tenement construction throughout East Harlem, turning the neighborhood into a dense community seemingly overnight. These tenements housed many European immigrants from Germany and Ireland, with smaller groups from Finland. Later, immigrants arrived from eastern Europe.
The immigrants found work in the masonry, iron, stone, and rubber factories that existed throughout East Harlem, but some workers were not so lucky. Italian immigrants were exploited by the padrone system that allowed cheap labor for little or sometimes no wages at all. The Italians, who arrived in the late 1870s, settled east of Third Avenue from 104th to 120th Streets in an area called Little Italy.
Religion became an important part of life for East Harlemites as synagogues and churches representing many denominations were concentrated throughout the neighborhood, including Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian Lutheran, Dutch Reform, German, African Methodist, Episcopalian, Catholic, and Hungarian.
East Harlem