As praised by Langston Hughes in 1944, Sugar Hill is still one of the ‘best-kept secrets in New York. In addition to the beautifully preserved Victorian era architecture and views of the Hudson River, there is a rich history of performing arts and academia long associated with this corner of the city.

The Harlem music legacy runs deep in Sugar Hill. At one time, the neighborhood boasted over half a dozen Jazz clubs within an 8-block stretch. Many of the old clubs are now gone, but Sugar Hill remains a home to many musicians, dancers, writers, and art lovers. It is also currently home to the Dance Theatre of Harlem and the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art & Storytelling.

There is much to celebrate in the proud history of Sugar Hill, and in the current vibrancy of Sugar Hill. It remains a gem of a neighborhood on Harlem’s northernmost edge.

Located approximately nine miles north of the Battery (bottom of Manhattan), the heights overlooking Central Harlem became a popular venue for country homes erected by wealthy New Yorkers in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Early 20th century residents of the fast-developing neighborhood tended to be middle class professional people and their families, and a smaller number of immigrant owners from Germany, Italy and Ireland. It wasn’t until the late 1920’s and 1930’s, as the expanding black population increased pressure on Harlem’s housing stock, that prosperous black households moved to the Heights. The area soon became known as “Sugar Hill”, referring to a place where those with “sugar” (that is, money) settled. Many of the African Americans who moved here were not seeking refuge from crowded tenements in Central Harlem or from deplorable conditions in the South. Instead, they were artists, writers, and musicians, government workers, and professionals who had been able, despite prejudice within American society, to secure incomes that placed them within the middle class.

Amongst those that came for the “sweet life” on the hill were such prominent African Americans as W.E.B. Du Bois, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Walter Francis White, Roy Wilkins and Afro-Puerto Rican Arturo Schomburg. Terry Mulligan’s 2012 memoir “Sugar Hill, Where the Sun Rose Over Harlem” is a chronicle of the writer’s experiences growing up in the 1950’s and ‘60’s in Sugar Hill, 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.

Today, Sugar Hill boasts some of the most lovely, preserved and landmarked homes in the city. It remains a beautiful place to live and to visit. With a proud legacy of famous residents and historic sights, the neighborhood continues to capture the imaginations of both New Yorkers and tourists alike.

Adapted from: Touring Historic Harlem / Andrew S. Dolkart and Gretchen S. Sorin/New York Landmarks Conservancy press
Photo credit Bailey House: Beyond My Ken, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Photo credit City College of New York: Gigi Altarejos, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons