This trip was definitely more interesting than anticipated. Given that I was born and raised in Harlem, I have walked down these streets before, but I never much stopped to think about the history of every street. I guess when something’s ordinary you just don’t really pay a lot of attention to it. But when we were on 140st and 141st street and Lenox Ave talking about the Savoy Ballroom and how dancers used to line up by skin tone from dark to light, there’s really so much history that one doesn’t realize that has happened. Who could have imagined that a legendary ballroom and nightclub have stood where apartments now stand?

 taken from Google Images

Savoy Ballroom on 140-141sts Lenox Ave.

  taken from Google Images

What stands in its place today

It was cool to visit through St Nicholas Houses again, where we saw my high school, HCZ Promise Academy I.  I used to walk through St Nick Houses everyday to get to school. Honestly that was the first time in a long time where I’ve gotten that close to my school in a long time. When the school was first constructed in 2013, everyone disliked the idea that you had this nice, expensive school in the middle of the “dangerous” projects, but Geoffrey Canada envisioned that the school acted much like a community center for people in the area with a hope of providing aid to a greater disenfranchised community.

 front of Promise Academy I School, main campus of the Harlem Children Zone. On 129th Street between St Nicholas and Frederick Douglass Blvd

, picture taken from Google Images