- The Harlem Neighborhood Block Association's Newsletter
- Posts
- Lenox Ave
Lenox Ave
+ The Harlem Cafe
In 1928, Wallace Thurman described Lenox Avenue, seen here in an image from that time
Lenox Avenue knows the rumble of the subway and the rattle of the crosstown streetcar. It is always crowded, crowded with pedestrians seeking the subway or the street car, crowded with idlers from the many pool halls and dives along its line of march, crowded with men and women from the slum district which it borders on the west and Fifth Avenue borders on the east. Lenox Avenue is Harlem's Bowery. It is dirty and noisy, its buildings ill-used, and made shaky by the subway underneath. At 140th Street it makes its one bid for respectability. On one corner there is Tabb's Restaurant and Grill, one of Harlem's most delightful and respectable eating houses; across the street is the Savoy building, housing a first- dance hall, a motion picture theater and many small business establishments behind its stucco front. But above 141st Street Lenox Avenue gets mean and squalid, deprived of even its crowds of people, and finally peters out into a dirt pile, before leading to a car-barn at 147th St.
The Harlem Cafe
A 1937 photo on sale from Ebay - The Harlem Cafe:
D. C. who sent the photo to The Barnett Sisters, clarified that that this Depression-era photo is not of a cafe in Harlem, rather it’s from Brooklyn. Brooklyn, Illinois:
Reply