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- "Negros Move Into Harlem" 1905
"Negros Move Into Harlem" 1905
+ 69 East 125 Sold
The Harlem Neighborhood Block Association
April 29, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes
In 1905, the New York Herold published an article, "Negroes Move Into Harlem" that announced that:
During the last three years the flats in 134th Street between Lenox and Seventh Avenues, that were occupied entirely by white folks, have been captured for occupancy by a Negro population.... The cause of colored influx is inexplicable.
Black residents had, of course, been present in Harlem continually since the 1630s - enslaved by the Dutch and later English colonizers - and as the neighborhood modernized in the late 19th century, they could be found especially in the area around 125th Street and in the "Negro tenements" on West 130th Street.
By 1900, tens of thousands lived in Harlem. With the 1904 real estate crash, the worsening of conditions for Blacks elsewhere in the city, and the leadership of Black real estate entrepreneurs including Phillip Payton Jr., Harlem's Black population soared.
Because white landlords could not find white renters for their properties, Philip Payton stepped in as a fixer for vacant property.
69 East 125 Sold
GO-RE Partners has purchased 69 East 125th Street, and it’s sister building that fronts on 126th Street (at number 58) for $28.2 million. Together, the two buildings contain 75 apartments, with a mix of market-rate and income-restricted residential units, and the two buildings have a 421a tax abatement until 2043.
Greystone (a developer) purchased the parcels in a bankruptcy auction in 2014 for $11.5 million and started construction on two new apartment buildings, the 12-story 69 East 125th and the six-story 58 East 126th finished in 2017.
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