Community Cultural Associate to State Senator Bill Perkins and author of Harlem: Lost and Found, Michael Henry Adams, writer, activist and preservationist shares his knowledge of the African American community's history on the Upper West Side ... 

------------------------------------------------- 

Since the start of Dutch settlement in New Amsterdam, African Americans have been residents of the Upper West Side of New York.  As slaves, they worked on small farms in Bloomingdale, as well as laboring servants on great estates, like the Apthorp family's summer house.

In the late 1940s, the Evangelist Daddy Grace acquired Emory Roth's majestic Eldorado Apartments on Central Park West, considering it to be the crown jewel of his real estate porfolio.  By the 1950s, the West Side had become a favored refuge for inter-racial couples like Sammy Davis, Jr. and May Britt.  No concentration of black New Yorkers was comparable to residents like Harry Belafonte, Dr. and Mrs. Aurthur Logan, and others who sought in the 1960s to create an exemplary, idealistically integrated community here, on the Upper West Side, that embodied the efforts of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Below, a selection of notable African American's who have called the Upper West Side home:  

Harry Belafonte

Resided at 300 West End Avenue  

The musician (he is best known as "the King of Calypso") and civil rights activist began as a club singer in New York as a means to pay for his acting classes.  He is the first African American to win an Emmy Award, in 1959.  Mr. Belafonte has appeared in TV and film alongside such notables as Julie Andrews, Lena Horne, Dorothy Dandridge, Anthony Hopkins ... and Jim Henson's muppets!

Ertha Mae Kitt 

Resided at 270 Riverside Drive, at West 99th Street  

A woman who needs no introduction.  Except perhaps from the equally infamous Orson Welles: Ertha Kitt was "the most exciting woman in the world." (The Times of London, April 11, 2008) 

 

Vertner Woodson Tandy 

Maintained an office at 35 West 66th Street 

Mr. Tandy has the distinction of being the first black registered architect in new York State, in addition to having co-founded the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity at Cornell University, his alma mater.  

Duke Ellington 

Resided at 333 Riverside Drive, at West 106th Street 

The Duke's legacy lives on along West 106th Street, the thoroughfare having been christened "Duke Ellington Boulevard" in 1977.  He owned several properties on Riverside Drive, just around the corner of 106th Street, where he resided along with his family members. 

Josephine Premice  

The precise address of Josephine Premice's home on the Upper West Side may be elusive, but praise for her electrifying stage presence abounds.  Called "razzle-dazzle" in comparison to contemporary Lena Horne's "cool fire", Ms. Premice was a Tony-nominated stage actress. 

Dorothea Towles Church  

Resided at 270 Riverside Drive, at West 99th Street   

From her childhood in Texarkana, Texas, to the runways of Paris, Dorothea Towles Church is known as the first successful black fashion model.  She parlayed her modeling experience into a career as a designer, showcasing many of her designs on tours of historically black colleges.

Richard Theodore Greener

Resided at (the former) 29 West 99th Street  

(now site of Park West Village) 

After earning the distinction of being the first African American graduate of Harvard College (class of 1870), but before adding to his resume "United States Commercial Agent in Vladivostok, Russia," Richard Theodore Greener was an Upper West Sider.  Mr. Greener called 29 West 99th Street home during his tenure, from 1885 to 1890, as a civil service examiner here in New York City.  His daughter was ... 

Bella de Costa Greene 

Resided, with her father Richard, at 29 West 99th Street

Dropping the "r" early on, Ms. Greene would eventually become personal librarian to infamous financier J.P. Morgan as he embarked on the commission of his Charles F. McKim-designed library.  Ms. Greene light-heartedly once remarked, "Just because I am a librarian, doesn't mean I have to dress like one."