Harlem River

“ It is divided from the mainland on the north by a creek called the Harlem River, over which there is a bridge called King’s Bridge. The west of Manhattan Island is washed by the River Hudson, which separates it from the New Jersey shore, while part of the Sound, which is called the East River, runs round it on the south and east, dividing it from Long Island, till it is joined by the Harlem River on the north. The Harlem River forms a direct communication between the Hudson and East River. ”

“ While Brooklyn is growing, Harlem relatively is growing faster, at the northern end of New York island. The elevated railroads, of which there are four parallel to each other up and down the length of the island as far as the park, and three the whole length of the island, or to Harlem River, have rather exercised a recalling influence to the city from the suburbs, and the tendency is to extend New York across the Harlem River rather than across the Hudson or the East rivers and the bay, which are often embarrassed by fog, ice, and storm. ”

“ The pond snail passes into a winter sleep as soon as the temperature of the water is below 14° Cent., that is, they will not digest food or grow until the temperature of the water is at least up to 15° Cent. Those who have watched the Harlem River from McComb's Dam Bridge cannot have failed to notice the curious appearance of the muddy shores of the river and creeks at low tide. If the sun shines brightly, the dismal beach seems to quiver and scintillate in a most beautiful manner, reflecting the light like so many diamonds. ”

“ The water crosses Harlem River in two cast-iron pipes 3 feet in diameter, and one wrought-iron pipe 7 feet 6 inches in diameter, laid upon High Bridge, a magnificent granite arcade 1,460 feet long and 114 high. It comprises 15 arches, 7 of which have 50 feet span, and 8, those over the river, 80 feet. The fall is 1.10 foot per mile, the velocity of the water 11⁄2 mile an hour, and the possible discharge 115,000,000 gallons per day. ”

“ The first settlers were to receive lots to cultivate, be furnished with a guard of soldiers, and allowed a ferry across the Harlem River, for "the better and greater promotion of neighborly correspondence with the English of the North." [14] In 1776, the division was interspersed with houses and fields, especially in the stretch of plains or flat land just above One Hundred and Tenth Street, and from the East River to the line of Ninth Avenue. ”

“ Immense pipes are laid across the bed of the Harlem River, and pass through the country to Westchester County, where a whole river is turned from its course and brought to New York. From the reservoir in the city to Westchester County reservoir the distance is thirty-eight miles, and, if necessary, they could easily supply every family in New York with one hundred barrels of water a day!
I am very sorry to learn that Henry has been sick. He ought to go to the country and take exercise, for he is not half so healthy as Ma thinks he is. ”

“ And even as this old guide-book boasts of the, to us, insignificant Liverpool of fifty years ago, the New York guidebooks are now vaunting of the magnitude of a town, whose future inhabitants, multitudinous as the pebbles on the beach, and girdled in with high walls and towers, flanking endless avenues of opulence and taste, will regard all our Broadways and Bowerys as but the paltry nucleus to their Nineveh. From far up the Hudson, beyond Harlem River, where the young saplings are now growing, that will overarch their lordly mansions with broad boughs, centuries old; ”

“ The northern portion of the Park has greater natural attractions and less 57 ornamentation, the land ascending to a fine lookout on the western side, where there is a grand view over the Harlem River, displaying the tall arches of the "High Bridge" bringing the Croton Aqueduct across, and the tower alongside, which makes a high level reservoir. The expanding city, however, is extending its buildings over large surfaces north and west of the Park. ”

“ Nothing can be more dangerous. There is a fine swimming-beach at the upper part of the Harlem River, near Farmers' Bridge, on the Manhattan Island shore. There are bath-houses in plenty, and a long stretch of firm sandy shore. One of the best oarsmen of his year went swimming there a few years ago. He had just come to the end of five months' hard training and racing. During that long period swimming had been forbidden to men in the crew, because it was feared that they might tire themselves out at it, and use up strength that should be applied to rowing. ”

“ Take hold of that larboard oar, and pull it out of the mud. There's those three landlubbers up on the bank. They'd pelt us if they dared."
The three landlubbers were there, and they were making [Pg 668] loud remarks about the club, but the yacht was almost ready to float now, and no attention could be paid to them.
Just beyond the little creek where General George Washington kept his boat spread the busy waters of the Harlem River, with the great city of New York on both sides, but not very close to the edge of it. It was a very busy sheet of water indeed. ”

“ So long ago as the English occupation, the people of New York, feeling crowded, overflowed into Harlem, whence the Dutch farmers casting their eyes across the Kills, saw a country "fair to look upon." Means of getting across were soon considered and a ferry established connecting with the road to Harlem which branched off from the Post Road at Central Park. (Excursion IV, Section 1) . This ferry was at about Third Avenue and One Hundred and Thirty-first Street and a bridge was built in 1795. ”

“ Harlem is Harlem because it is part and parcel of [Pg 6] greater New York. Its rhythms are the lackadaisical rhythms of a transplanted minority group caught up and rendered half mad by the more speedy rhythms of the subway, Fifth Avenue and the Great White Way.
Negro Harlem is located on one of the choice sites of Manhattan Island. It covers the greater portion of the northwestern end, and is more free from grime, smoke and oceanic dampness than the lower eastside where most of the hyphenated American groups live. Harlem is a great black city. There are no shanty-filled, mean streets. ”

“ Harlem, the so-called citadel of Negro achievement in the New World, the alleged mecca of the New Negro and the advertised center of colored America’s cultural renaissance. Harlem, a thriving black city, pulsing with vivid passions, alive with colorful personalities, and packed with many types and classes of people.
Harlem is a dream city pregnant with wide-awake realities. It is a masterpiece of contradictory elements and surprising types. There is no end to its versatile presentation of people, personalities and institutions. ”

“ So Harlem, in its African aspects, had been created. So Harlem was slowly growing, east and west, north and south, growing, slowly growing. Might it not eventually happen, as more Negroes, coming from the South, coming from the West, to take advantage of the opportunities promised by this new metropolis, encroached farther and farther on white territory, that Manhattan, which already had been Indian, Dutch, English, and finally the melting-pot for every nation, become a Negro island? ”

“ Negro Harlem is best represented by Seventh Avenue. It is not, like Fifth Avenue, filthy and stark, nor like Lenox, squalid and dirty. It is a grand thoroughfare into which every element of Harlem population ventures either for reasons of pleasure or of business. From 125th Street to 145th Street, Seventh Avenue [Pg 9] is a stream of dark people going to churches, theaters, restaurants, billiard halls, business offices, food markets, barber shops and apartment houses. Seventh Avenue is majestic yet warm, and it reflects both the sordid chaos and the rhythmic splendor of Harlem. ”

“ Evil faces leer at you from doorways and windows. Brutish men elbow you out of their way, dreary looking women scowl at and curse children playing on the sidewalk. That is Harlem’s Fifth Avenue.
Lenox Avenue knows the rumble of the subway and the rattle of the crosstown street car. 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. ”

“ Happy individuals [Pg 43] will do solo specialties, will sing, dance—have Charleston and Black Bottom contests and breakdowns. Hard little tenement girls will flirt and make dates with Pool Hall Johnnies and drug store cowboys. Prostitutes will drop in and slink out. And in addition to the liquor sold by the house, flasks of gin, and corn and rye will be passed around and emptied. Here “low” Harlem is in its glory, primitive and unashamed.
I have counted as many as twelve such parties in one block, five in one apartment house containing forty flats. ”

“ There is little difference between any of them save that some are more dirty and more squalid than others. They are lined with ordinary, undistinguished tenement and apartment houses. Some are well kept, others are run down. There are only four streets that are noticeably different, 136th Street, 137th Street, 138th Street and 139th Street west of Seventh Avenue and these are the only blocks in Harlem that can boast of having shade trees. An improvement association organized by people living in these streets, strives to keep them looking respectable. ”

“ I also told you that you would have to support yourself, as I feel I have done all I can afford to do for you in sending you through college.
We need not go into the reasons for your leaving Philadelphia. We both agreed, in the circumstances, that this would be a wise move. You, quite naturally, chose Harlem as the alternative. Harlem is a great Negro city, the greatest Negro city in the world, and it is surely as full of pitfalls for young men as all great cities are. Unavoidably you will encounter your share of temptations. ”

“ There is no Negro settlement anywhere comparable to Harlem, just as there is no other metropolis comparable to New York. As the great south side black belt of Chicago spreads and smells with the same industrial clumsiness and stockyardish vigor of Chicago, so does the black belt of New York teem and rhyme with the cosmopolitan cross currents of the world’s greatest city. ”

“ Although various cities beckoned—Pittsburgh with its steelmills, Chicago with its stockyards, Detroit with its automobile factories—it was Harlem that became the Mecca for the southern Negro, the West Indian, and the African. One historian of Harlem states that it contains more Negroes to the square mile than any other spot on earth. Harlem became a Mecca likewise for white pleasure seekers from downtown and abroad, who, hunting the new thrill with the desperate eagerness of the post-war generation, rushed to what they considered a place of primitive abandon, of unfailing “joy of life.” ”

“ Throughout colored America, from Massachusetts to Mississippi and across the continent to Los Angeles and Seattle, its name, which as late as fifteen years ago has scarcely been heard, now stands for the Negro metropolis. Harlem is, indeed, the great Mecca for the sight-seer, the pleasure-seeker, the curious, the adventurous, the enterprising, the ambitious, and the talented of the Negro world ”

“ It is slowly pushing beyond the barriers imposed by white people. It is slowly uprooting them from their present homes in the near vicinity of Negro Harlem as it has uprooted them before. There must be expansion and Negro Harlem is too much a part of New York to remain sluggish and still while all around is activity and expansion. As New York grows, so will Harlem grow. As Negro America progresses, so will Negro Harlem progress. ”

“ Harlem is crowded with such folk. The three great major educational institutions of New York, Columbia, New York University and the College of the City of New York, have a large Negro student attendance. Then there are many never-will-be-top-notch literary, artistic and intellectual strivers in Harlem as there are all over New York. Since the well advertised “literary renaissance,” it is almost a Negro Greenwich Village in this respect. Every other person one meets is writing a novel, a poem or a drama. ”

“ That is why our comparison is taken with those nascent centers of folk-expression and self-determination which are playing a creative part in the world to-day. Without pretense to their political significance, Harlem has the same rôle to play for the New Negro as Dublin has had for the New Ireland or Prague for the New Czechoslovakia. Harlem, I grant you, isn't typical—but it is significant, it is prophetic. No sane observer, however sympathetic to the new trend, would contend that the great masses are articulate as yet, but they stir, they move, they are more than physically restless. ”

“ Everybody seems to be well dressed. The latest fashions prevail, and though there are the usual number of folk attired in outlandish color combinations and queer styles, the majority of the promenaders are dressed in good taste. In the winter, expensive fur coats swathe the women of Harlem’s [Pg 48] Seventh Avenue as they swathe the pale face fashionplates on Fifth Avenue down town, while the men escorting them are usually sartorially perfect. ”

“ Harlem! All else shut out, I saw the hall,
And you in your red shoulder sash come dancing
With Val against me languid by the wall,
Your burning coffee-colored eyes keen glancing
Aslant at mine, proud in your golden glory! ”

“ As the railroad tracks rise higher still, we run on the level with the upper-story windows out of which the tenants lean and gossip with one another.
The Jumel Mansion, New York City
4 M. HARLEM STATION (125th St.) .
(Train 51 passes 8:41; No 3, 8:57; No. 41, 1:12; No. 25, 2:56; No. 19, 5:41. Eastbound: No. 6 passes 9:11; No. 26 9:29; No. 16, 3:49; No. 22, 5:25.)
Old Harlem was "Nieuw Haerlem," a settlement established in 1658 by Gov. Peter Stuyvesant in the northeastern part of Manhattan Island. It existed for 200 years but is now lost under modern Harlem, which centers about 125th St. ”