Harlem’s Coming of Age

Between the Civil War and World War I, Harlem was home to multi-ethnic and religious enclaves of Jews, Italians, Germans, Irish and African Americans. Concurrently, New York’s population growth exceeded a million, transforming Lower Manhattan into a densely congested slum of ethnic enclaves. By 1900 approximately a million and a half New Yorkers south of Fourteenth Street lived in slums. East Fourteenth Street to Third Avenue to the Bowery to Catherine Street was probably the most populated area in the world. Nearly a million were concentrated in the Lower East Side alone.

Aspiring to escape the congestion of an overcrowded, deteriorating community, ethnic groups looked elsewhere to live. They found relief in Harlem’s newly constructed homes. New settlers descended on Harlem as these new homes attracted buyers and renters, forming the beginnings of ethnic enclaves.

With the development of elevated railroads and the soon-to-be-completed underground rapid transit system, Harlem had all the superior advantages of a residential community. Harlem attracted its greatest number of ethnicities by the late 1890s. New homes in close proximity to the trains and a ready supply of relatively cheap apartments transformed Harlem’s landscape.

The City of New York, recognizing Harlem’s importance as a commuter suburb, committed vast expenditures to public improvements. Hills were leveled, marshes filled, and water systems up- graded. Harlem quickly became a destination for the affluent. In record numbers, apartment buildings and row houses were constructed filling up once underdeveloped land.

What avenue downtown could compare with Harlem’s broad thoroughfares, such as Lenox and Seventh Avenues? With grassy plots and trees on islands and spectacular buildings these avenues compared favorably with residences downtown. Harlem’s main thoroughfare, 125th Street, boasted the finest shops, restaurants and theaters. The Harlem Opera House, built by Oscar Hammerstein, was the most popular venue uptown. Fifth Avenue’s aristocrats in Harlem were similar to those further downtown. Harlem, a city within a city, was complete in every respect. With schools, hotels, and places to worship, Harlem had all the necessities for convenient living.

Prior to the Civil War, Harlem’s residents had been predominantly American Protestants or of western European descent. The opening of Harlem to large-scale residential construction in the 1870s saw Irish and German enclaves develop in search of work in the uptown construction industry. The Irish had been present in Harlem since the Civil War. Settling near and around Fifth Avenue, they built shanties and raised livestock. The Germans lived in shanties as well before their populations began acquiring wealth and establishing residency north of Central Harlem above 125th Street. As brownstones, tenements, and apartments replaced wooden shanties, both Irish and German hegemony ended by the first decade of the twentieth century. Between 1900 and 1910 the combined uptown Irish and German populations dropped from approximately one half to less than one fifth of Harlem’s total. Thus, Harlem by the first decade of the twentieth century housed three  new major ethnic neighborhoods: Russian and German Jews, Italians, and the beginnings of an African American community.

The ongoing shift in Harlem’s residential patterns continued throughout the late nineteenth century. Evidence of Jewish enclaves uptown was noted in the 1870s when Harlem was still a remote outpost of mostly German immigrants. In the ensuing years, areas undeveloped just a few years earlier saw heavy settlement of Russian and Ger- man Jews. From the 1880s through the 1890s Jews flooded into Harlem, replacing Germans as the dominant population and establishing a vibrant growing enclave as rapid transit lines and elevated railroads reached uptown. By 1910, Jews were the single largest ethnic group in Harlem, numbering well over 100,000, and constituting America’s second largest Jewish community after that to the Lower East Side.

Jewish enclaves declined in Harlem after the First World War. A common misconception is they left because of the influx of African Americans. Instead, it was the push factors of older construction and a physically deteriorating Harlem and the pull factors of new and better neighborhoods opening up in the outer boroughs of the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn, and as far away as Long Island that caused thousands of Jews to relocate.

Italians followed the Irish and Jews out of the congested Lower East Side to Harlem to work and search for better quality housing. They first ventured uptown in the 1870s as imported strikebreakers replaced Irish workers on the First Avenue Trolley. As construction opportunities expanded during the frenzy of Harlem’s first building boom, Italians made their way into the building trades. By the mid-1880s, 4,000 had arrived, settling exclusively on the east side between First and Third Avenues. Living with families and pooling expenses, they established an Italian enclave in Harlem. By the end of the 1890s Italians had pushed north to 115th Street and west to Third Avenue, pressing hard against the Irish, German, and Jewish enclaves. In 1910 some 59,000 Italians had relocated uptown, embracing all of East Harlem east of Third Avenue and south of 125th Street except for a small area from 99th Street to 104th Street where Jews clearly predominated. Relatively few Italians chose to settle outside the area, causing some to designate it as “Little Italy” in Harlem.

African American presence in Harlem predates the New Negro Movement of the 1920s. African Americans have lived in Harlem since it was settled in 1658. In the late 1880s a small enclave emerged following the building of the elevated trains. Prior to establishing enclaves in Harlem, African Americans lived in a midtown neighborhood known as San Juan Hill. Looking for a safe place free of violence, African Americans sought out Harlem where they would be free from racial tensions with neighboring Irish residents in the Hill. The Afro-American Realty Company, chartered by Phillip A. Payton, Jr. on June 15, 1904, provided the initial impetus behind the mass movement of African Americans to Harlem. Settling primarily north of 135th Street by the height of the Great Migration, where well over 300,000 African Americans lived within the five square miles of Harlem.