In “City Block” by A.J. Liebling, he profiles “the most populous city block in the United State, and probably in the world.” The city block to which Liebling is referring is in Harlem between Seventh and Lenox Avenues and 142nd and 143rd Streets. He begins by saying that this block in Harlem is the most populous, with Knickerbocker Avenue coming in second and London Terrace in Chelsea in third place. Liebling says that although the block in Harlem is the most populous, its buildings have less stories than the buildings on Knickerbocker Avenue and in Chelsea. He then proceeds to describe how every free space on this block is filled with square buildings that house the numerous residents that live there. Most of the space on this Harlem block is taken up by apartment buildings and Liebling writes that there are a few shops and only one saloon in the whole area. An interesting line in this paragraph is when Liebling says that the housing was built before African Americans lived there “but they seem to have been designed with a certain prescience as if the architects knew that this would be the most congested district in the city.”

Liebling then goes on to profile the specific avenues and streets that comprise this populous block, separating them into the different African Americans that live in the area. For the most part, the residents of the area are too poor for this area as evidenced by the line “rents are high in relation to the means of the residents.” Liebling mentions that the rents are “$60 for five rooms” and “$80 for eight rooms” which most of the residents cannot afford. As a result, many people lodge together in order to be able to afford rents. But Harlem was not always in the state that it was in during the time this article was written. A longtime resident of Harlem, Mrs. Hankinson, said that there where more white people who lived in Harlem, saying it was “like Park Avenue” with doctors living there and six houses that allowed African Americans to live there.

I do not think that Liebling does a good job at being completely objective because he does not interview any of the poorer residents of the area in order to gain their insight about the Harlem city block. Instead he asks a shop owner and a longtime resident who does not seem to have a problem affording the rent in the area. This does not give the full picture of the quality of life that people live with on this block, and is not a very objective point of view. Had Lieblng sought answers from residents who had less income, of different genders and with different sized families, the profile of this city block would not seem so one sided.