Neighborhood Guide

Harlem

Harlem stretches from the East River west to the Hudson River between 155th Street; where it meets Washington Heights — to a ragged border along the south. Central Harlem begins at 110th Street, at the northern boundary of Central Park; Spanish Harlem extends east Harlem's boundaries south to 96th Street, while in the west it begins north of Upper West Side, which gives an irregular border west of Morningside Avenue.

Harlem has been a major African-American residential, cultural, and business center. Originally a Dutch village, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands. Harlem was annexed to New York City in 1873. Harlem has been defined by a series of boom-and-bust cycles, with significant ethnic shifts accompanying each cycle. Black residents began to arrive en masse in 1904, with numbers fed by the Great Migration. In the 1920s and 1930s, the neighborhood was the locus of the "Harlem Renaissance", an outpouring of artistic and professional works without precedent in the American black community. However, first, with the job losses in the time of the Great Depression and especially after World War II with deindustrialization in New York, rates of crime and poverty increased significantly.

New York's revival in the late 20th century has led to renewal in Harlem as well. By 1995, Harlem was experiencing social and economic gentrification.