Sugar Hill, Manhattan

Sugar Hill got its name in the 1920s when the neighborhood became a popular place for wealthy African Americans to live during the Harlem Renaissance. Reflective of the "sweet life" there, Sugar Hill featured rowhouses in which lived such prominent African Americans as W. E. B. Du Bois, Thurgood Marshall, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Walter Francis White, Roy Wilkins, Sonny Rollins and Afro-Puerto Rican Arturo Schomburg.{{cite aia5|page=546}}

Langston Hughes wrote about the relative affluence of the neighborhood in his essay "Down Under in Harlem" published in The New Republic in 1944:

Don't take it for granted that all Harlem is a slum. It isn't. There are big apartment houses up on the hill, Sugar Hill, and up by City College – nice high-rent-houses with elevators and doormen, where Canada Lee lives, and W. C. Handy, and the George S. Schuylers, and the Walter Whites, where colored families send their babies to private kindergartens and their youngsters to Ethical Culture School.Hughes, Langston. [https://newrepublic.com/book/review/down-under-in-harlem "Down Under in Harlem"]. The New Republic (March 27, 1944): 404-5

Terry Mulligan's 2012 memoir Sugar Hill, Where the Sun Rose Over Harlemr[http://terrybakermulligan.wordpress.com/ Terry Baker Mulligan website]{{cite news|last=Henderson|first=Jane|title=Penned in St. Louis: Terry Baker Mulligan|url=http://www.stltoday.com/entertainment/books-and-literature/penned-in-st-louis-terry-baker-mulligan/article_0b87a819-1fa0-552b-9f97-7ca499e00d55.html|access-date=22 February 2013|newspaper=St. Louis Post-Dispatch|date=6 May 2012}} is a chronicle of the writer's experiences growing up in the 1950s and 1960s in the neighborhood, where her neighbors included future United States Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, early rock n' roll legend Frankie Lymon, and New York baseball great Willie Mays.

Among the many notable buildings in the Sugar Hill area are:

• Nicholas C. and Agnes Benziger House, 345 Edgecombe Avenue (William Schickel, 1890–91) - has also been used as a hospital, nursery and housing for the homeless
• James A. and Ruth M. Bailey House, 10 St. Nicholas Place (Samuel B. Reed, 1886–88) - A Romanesque Revival residence built for James A. Bailey of the Barnum & Bailey Circus
• The Garrison Apartments, 435 Convent Avenue (Neville & Bagge, 1909-1910) - Originally Emsworth Hall, it became a cooperative apartment building in 1929 and is today the oldest continuously operated Black founded, owned, and managed co-op in New York City. Home to many Harlem trailblazers and history makers.
• 14 and 16 St. Nicholas Place (William Grinnell, 1883–84) - Queen Anne style detached frame houses clad in wood shingles
• Fink House, 8 St. Nicholas Place (Richard S. Rosenstock, 1885) - Queen Anne style house, would later be combined with...
• Baiter House, 6 St. Nicholas Place (Theodore G. Stein, 1893–94) - ...and used as a sanitarium, a hospital, a hotel, and a group home
• 713-721 St. Nicholas Avenue (Hugh M. Reynolds, 1890–1891) - Row houses in the Victorian Romanesque Revival style
• 718-730 St. Nicholas Avenue (Arthur Bates Jennings, 1889–1890) - A Romanesque Revival row
• 729 and 731 St. Nicholas Avenue (Theodore Minot Clark, 1886–1886) - two houses faced in Manhattan schist and shingles
• 757-775 St. Nicholas Avenue (Frederick P. Dinkelberg, 1894–1895) - A Renaissance Revival style row which is said to be "among the finest in the district."
• 409 Edgecombe Avenue Apartments (Schwartz & Gross, 1916–1817) - Originally the Colonial Parkway Apartments. Home to Babe Ruth as an infant, Aaron Douglas,{{Cite book|last=Taborn, Karen Faye|title=Walking Harlem : the ultimate guide to the cultural capital of black America|isbn=978-0-8135-9458-3|location=New Brunswick, New Jersey|oclc=1038016815|date=2018-05-21}} Thurgood Marshall, W. E. B. Du Bois, Marvel Cooke,[https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-dec-06-me-61800-story.html Elaine Woo, "Marvel Cooke; Pioneering Black Journalist, Political Activist", Los Angeles Times, December 6, 2000.] and Jules Bledsoe.{{Cite web |date=April 4, 1930 |title=United States Census, 1930 |url=https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/41660962:6224 |access-date=July 25, 2024 |website=Ancestry.com}}
• 555 Edgecombe Avenue. Several noted big band leaders lived here in the 1940s including Count Basie, Andy Kirk, Don Redman, Erskine Hawkins, Benny Carter and Cootie Williams.

File:Benziger House 345 Edgecombe Avenue from south.jpg|Benziger House

File:Bailey House 10 St. Nicholas Place from west.jpg|Bailey House

File:14 and 16 St. Nicholas Place from southwest.jpg|14 (right) and 16 (left) St. Nicholas Place

File:Fink House 8 St. Nicholas Place from northwest.jpg|Fink House

File:Baiter House 6 St. Nicholas Place.jpg|Baiter House

File:715-721 St. Nicholas Avenue.jpg|715 (left) - 721 (right) St. Nicholas Avenue

File:729 and 731 St. Nicholas Avenue.jpg|729 and 731 St. Nicholas Avenue

File:409 Edgecomb Av jeh.JPG|409 Edgecombe Avenue Apartments

File:Garrison Apts 435 Convent Ave NYC 10031.jpg|The Garrison Apartments, 435 Convent Avenue

• The Leslie Uggams Show featured a "Sugar Hill" sketch throughout its one-year run in 1969.[https://interviews.televisionacademy.com/shows/leslie-uggams-show-the "The Leslie Uggams Show"], Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation. Accessed February 15, 2024. "A major feature of the show was a continuing segment called 'Sugar Hill' about a working-class black family. Uggams played the wife of a construction worker in the sketch."Smith, Cecil. [https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-los-angeles-times-preview-of-the-les/141055934/ "Leslie Uggams Show Bows Sunday on CBS"], The Los Angeles Times, September 27, 1969. Accessed February 15, 2024, via Newspapers.com. "Perhaps the most choice item on Sunday's premiere hour is 'Sugar Hill,' the weekly adventures of a black family in a Harlem flat."
• The Sugarhill Gang, the first rap group with a single in the Top 40, took their name from the neighborhood; the band members were actually all from Englewood, New Jersey.{{cite news|last=Perrone |first=Pierre |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/sylvia-robinson-hitmaker-who-cofounded-sugar-hill-records-and-became-known-as-lsquothe-mother-of-hiphoprsquo-2365098.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220525/https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/sylvia-robinson-hitmaker-who-cofounded-sugar-hill-records-and-became-known-as-lsquothe-mother-of-hiphoprsquo-2365098.html |archive-date=2022-05-25 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |title=Sylvia Robinson: Hitmaker who co-founded Sugar Hill Records and became known as 'the mother of hip-hop' - Obituaries - News |newspaper=The Independent |date=2011-10-04 |access-date=2013-09-15}}
• The 1974 film Claudine, starring Diahann Carroll and James Earl Jones was filmed in the Sugar Hill neighborhood.{{cite web | url = https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071334/locations?ref_=m_tt_dt_loc | title = Claudine (1974) - Filming & Production - IMDb | access-date = March 18, 2020 | website = imdb.com}}
• The 1994 film Sugar Hill, about drug dealers in Harlem, stars Wesley Snipes.
• Sugar Hill is mentioned in the lyrics to the jazz standard "Take the 'A' Train" by Billy Strayhorn.
• It is also referred to by rapper AZ's "Sugar Hill" on his album Doe or Die.
• Henry "Red" Allen recorded "Sugar Hill Function", written by Charlie Holmes, on February 18, 1930.
• There is also a song by Rex Stewart and his Fifty-Second Street Stompers – one of the four Duke Ellington small groups – called "Sugar Hill Shim-Sham", which was recorded on July 7, 1937.
• The 1978 film Cindy, a modern retelling of Cinderella set in Harlem, includes a scene at the Sugar Hill Ball.O'Connor, John J. [https://www.nytimes.com/1978/03/24/archives/tv-harlem-setting-for-cinderella.html "TV: Harlem Setting for Cinderella"], The New York Times, March 24, 1978. Accessed December 28, 2022. "With the story's setting switched to Harlem during World War II, Cinderella is transformed into an ebullient, naive country girl brought to the big city by her father.... She finally gets to go to the famous Sugar Hill Ball only with the help of Michael, who lives on a fire escape of the tenement next door."

• List of New York City Landmarks
• National Register of Historic Places listings in New York County, New York
• Bushman Steps

Notes

{{Reflist}}

{{Commons category|Sugar Hill, Manhattan}}

• {{cite web|url=http://www.westharlemcpo.org/history/history_2.shtml|title=Hamilton Heights - West Harlem|work=westharlemcpo.org|publisher=Hamilton Heights - West Harlem Community Preservation Organization|access-date=2009-01-04|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081221230949/http://www.westharlemcpo.org/history/history_2.shtml|archive-date=2008-12-21}}

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Category:Neighborhoods in Manhattan

Category:Harlem

Category:Hamilton Heights, Manhattan

Category:Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Manhattan

Category:Historic districts in Manhattan

Category:New York City Designated Landmarks in Manhattan

Category:New York City designated historic districts