Certain People (23 page)

In the early 1920s, one by one, the King Model Houses began to be sold to blacks who were, for the most part, professional people and therefore relatively affluent—doctors, lawyers, and educators. And the new black residents of these houses decided, at the outset, that their two streets would not be sucked into the burgeoning slum beyond. The trees were tended, the hedges clipped, the stone vases and window boxes were kept filled with flowering plants. Entrance railings and balustrades were painted, brass doorknobs and knockers were polished. Gardens and courtyards were maintained. Each neighbor tried so hard to compete with the others for the best-clipped
shrubbery, the best-polished brasswork, the best-washed steps, and the prettiest garden that the two parallel blocks were humorously given the name “Strivers' Row.”

“It could have been done in other parts of Harlem, too,” says one long-time resident of the Row. “There used to be many lovely old streets up here. Even when a house is broken up into tiny apartments, the facade and the appearance of the neighborhood can be kept up. It doesn't take that much money or that much time just to give doorways and window frames a regular coat of paint. Garbage doesn't have to be thrown in the streets or down airshafts. It's people who don't care who create slums, and then the slums create more people who don't care. It becomes a vicious circle. Attractive surroundings help make attractive people.”

Of course, what was intended as a shining example to other blacks of what could be done to create a pleasant neighborhood very quickly had the opposite effect. The more attractive and manicured Strivers' Row became, the more it found itself the object of mockery, jealousy, and bitter hostility among the other blacks of Harlem. A black playwright named Abram Hill, who died in 1939, and who wrote a play about the Row, used to recall how he had to pass through the neighborhood on his way to school and developed, with no real knowledge of the people who lived there, a terrible resentment of these blacks who clearly lived better than he—just from passing the grilled entrances and looking up at the carefully curtained windows of the Row. Meanwhile, as though afflicted with a kind of mass paranoia, the rest of Harlem all around the Row disintegrated into a horror of filth and poverty. “It's as though the rest of Harlem wanted to
force
us into becoming a ghetto,” says one Row resident. “They developed this blind hatred of us as society snobs. We weren't snobs. We just wanted to live in a nice neighborhood. There was no way to reach those people, but we resisted them. We've held on.” In resisting, Strivers' Row became more insular, withdrawn into itself, more inbred, proud, and prejudiced against ghetto blacks.

When the first black families began moving to the Row, there was the usual flurry of panic selling, and three- and four-story town houses could be picked up for bargain prices. James W. Banks, who is president of the 138th Street Block Association and an associate administrator of the Board of Elections—his father was one of New York's first black dentists—has lived on the Row for nearly all of his fifty-four years and recalls, “We were the sixth black family to move
in. My father bought our twelve-room house for nine thousand dollars.” Today, Row houses sell in the $50,000 range, compared with town houses of similar size and construction at more fashionable East Side Manhattan addresses which go for $100,000 and up. Another early Row resident was Dr. Louis T. Wright, the first black doctor at Harlem Hospital and later its Chief of Surgery, whose family lived on the Row for thirty-two years. Then there was Dr. Charles H. Roberts, another early New York black dentist, and Vertner W. Tandy, the first black architect to be licensed in New York State, and Lt. Samuel J. Battle, Manhattan's first black police lieutenant. Gerri Major, the former society editor of
Ebony
, grew up on the Row in the 1930s and remembers that “the social life was gay and wonderful, with luncheons, bridge parties, and formal, white-tie dances. Everyone seemed to have everything—cars, boats, summer homes. You have to remember the times. The ‘Black Movement' as such didn't exist.”

The oldest resident of Strivers' Row is probably eighty-six-year-old Mrs. Robert Braddicks, the widow of a banker and real estate broker, who has lived in the same fourteen-room house on West 138th Street for fifty-three years. Mrs. Braddicks insists that she has no intention of ever leaving the street. “Where would I go?” she asks. “I haven't lived in an apartment house for over fifty years, and I'm not about to start now. No, I don't feel as though I live in a ghetto. I live in my
home
.” Mrs. Braddicks, who also maintains a summer and weekend home in New Jersey, has become a symbol of the enclave's stability.

At one point, Strivers' Row was a popular address for successful show business personalities, and Fletcher Henderson, W. C. Handy, Stepin Fetchit, Eubie Blake, Noble Sissle, Flannery Miller, and Sidney Bechet all had homes on the Row at one time or another. More recently, Strivers' Row has become popular with young executives, businessmen, and professional people who work in Harlem, such as Jean Wade, the advertising director of the
Amsterdam News
, Walter Legall, who is an officer with a computer firm, and educator Charles L. Sanders. Booker T. Washington III, an architect, has become a Row resident, as has New York Supreme Court Justice Oliver Sutton. Today, there is a long waiting list for houses on the Row.

If anything, Strivers' Row today is more attractive and houseproud than ever. In 1967, New York's Landmark Preservation Commission declared the Strivers' Row houses a landmark, meaning that
no exterior changes can be made to any of the houses without the permission of the commission. This distinction has added to Row residents' feelings of security and self-satisfaction. Still, Strivers' Row remains a tiny island of comfort and affluence in the middle of a seething sea of desperation, danger, and urban indifference. Step around the corner, and you are in Harlem's lowest depths. In this situation, the Row has become a prime target for Harlem's criminal element. Mrs. Braddicks's house has been burglarized twice. Still, with the help of two powerful neighborhood associations, Row residents have been able to secure extra police protection for their little Andorra (it hasn't hurt to have judges and retired police officers living on the Row). Elaborate burglar alarm systems have been installed, along with powerful lights to illuminate the once-shadowy backyards at night. And a group of Row residents, consisting mostly of retirees, has been organized as a volunteer watch force “to keep an eye on things.” Thus Strivers' Row hangs on. “This has been a nice place to live for over fifty years,” says one resident. “It's going to remain that way for another fifty.”

Strivers' Row, then, has been more than a social whirl of elegant black-tie dinners, ladies' bridge parties, and balls. It has been the American Dream formed into a kind of reality to the families who live there. It was proof that the Dream, which had always been the property of white people, could be achieved by blacks as well, if they seized it—and held on. It was proof of the theories that W. E. B. DuBois advanced, that a “talented tenth” of the black population, by committing themselves to America and American ways and rejecting the “Back-to-Africa” ideas of men like Marcus Garvey, would rise, like cream, to the top. “We were brought up to believe that one could make it if one was determined enough,” one Row resident says. “We had our own world here.” In this world, the Row turned its back on the nightmare of the rest of Harlem. It didn't matter that murder, prostitution, and drug-dealing were going on within shouting distance of Strivers' Row. All this was placed out of sight and out of mind.

Strivers' Row's two block associations have rigid rules which are rigidly enforced: no trash or litter thrown in streets; keep hedges uniformly clipped; keep brasswork polished; no children playing in the streets; no peddlers or solicitors admitted through front entrances; all pickups and deliveries to be made through back entrances, courts, and alleyways; beautify gardens and window boxes; replace dead or ailing trees, and so on. In its pride, Strivers' Row has become
extraordinarily exclusive. In a survey conducted by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, it was noted that forty-one percent of the people living on Strivers' Row socialize only with their immediate neighbors on the Row. A mere twelve percent venture outside the area for any social activity. Nearly half do not socialize at all.

Recently there have been a few voices raised along the Row that have questioned the Row's encapsulated, ostrichlike existence, and that have suggested that Strivers' Row is painfully out of touch with the reality of modern times. Instead of an island, Strivers' Row might step out of its cocoon and become a responsible, involved leader of the total Harlem community. One such man is James Banks, Jr., who has tried to move the little community outward into the affairs, and terrible problems, of the much larger one. But so far he is in the minority. Others, happy as they are, see Strivers' Row as a symbol of what black people
could
have done with Harlem if they had cared enough, been bright enough, worked hard enough. Why didn't blacks do it in other neighborhoods? “Shiftless. Lazy,” sniffs one Row woman. “They're no good, those people. No good at all.” She turns immediately to the special amenities and luxuries that Strivers' Row provides. “Do you know that ours is the only neighborhood in
all of Manhattan
where you don't have to put your garbage out in the street in cans for collection?” she asks. “It's picked up, as it should be, from back alleys, the way it's done in Beverly Hills.”

Another Row resident, a young doctor named Raymond Ransom, says that he likes living on the Row and considers it an excellent place to raise his children. But he is also concerned about the “other” Harlem. “It's a little ludicrous,” he says, “to spend so much time and energy on the beautification of two blocks, and to turn the corners of Seventh and Eighth Avenues to be visually assaulted by some of the worst conditions in urban living, and not to have even a nodding acquaintance with any of those people, or any idea of what it is they're thinking about, or what they want or need.”

But, for the most part, the older residents of Strivers' Row do not even go so far as to say they see no hope for the “other” Harlem. To them, it might as well not exist.

16

… And Other Good Addresses

Strivers' row used to take pride in the fact that the two-block area was treated with “respect” by the rest of Harlem. Occasionally, a Harlemite might take a visiting friend from out of town for a stroll along the Row—to show it off, and to demonstrate that Harlem was not
all
a ghetto. But, for the most part, pedestrian traffic was low—much lower than in the rest of Harlem—and was limited to the comings and goings of the residents themselves, and their friends and to patients visiting the various doctors' and dentists' offices along the Row. Vehicular traffic was also light, which contributed to the quiet, parklike, turn-of-the-century atmosphere of the place. There was even a proposal to ban vehicular traffic from the two streets—residents with automobiles could always enter their houses and garages through the alleyways—but this plan was vetoed by the city on the grounds that the two streets provided necessary emergency access to nearby hospitals.

By the mid-1970s, however, there were some disturbing signs of change. At night, the little streets were increasingly being used as dragstrips, as owners of “hot” cars raced down Strivers' Row testing the power of their engines, their brakes screeching at the corners. Despite the addition of high-intensity streetlamps along the streets themselves and in the alleyways, incidences of mugging, burglary, and other crimes have increased alarmingly. The many doctors in the area are a particularly prime target for burglars, since they are assumed to keep large amounts of cash in their offices and also, rightly or wrongly, are supposed to keep stores of amphetamines and narcotics
in their refrigerators. Knocking on wood, Dr. George D. Cannon—of an old-line New York family, who owns a town house on West 139th Street and keeps his offices on the two lower floors of the house—says that he is the only physician in the neighborhood who has not been burglarized at least once. To maintain the security of his office, Dr. Cannon employs a full-time guard for six dollars an hour who does nothing but sit in his waiting room. Dr. Cannon also carries a loaded pistol in his hip pocket.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission, meanwhile, can do nothing to control the use to which the interiors of Strivers' Row houses are put, and, by the early 1970s, some forty-one percent of the buildings on the Row, though privately owned, had become rooming houses. Strivers' Row people who take in roomers tend to make genteel excuses for doing so. The older people, whose children have grown, married, and moved away, say they take in roomers for security, for companionship, to ward off loneliness. Others claim that a fifteen-room Manhattan town house is just “too much house” for one family. Few will admit that, as taxes and the cost of New York living have gone up, coupled with the effects of an economic recession, taking in roomers has become, for many, an important source of added income. Owners of rooming houses insist that Strivers' Row roomers are meticulously screened, must be people with legitimate occupations, with clean habits and of high moral character. Residents proudly point back to the year 1925, when they succeeded in having closed a 100-gallon still that was operating in the basement of 235 West 139th Street, and when, a year earlier, a building around the corner on Seventh Avenue was padlocked because it had been leased to a bootlegger. Still, the block associations have recently had to add another rule to their little list: “Roomers in houses should not be permitted to lean out of windows or to dress without pulling down shades.” R
OOMS TO
L
ET
signs placed in windows must be of a uniform size and lettering. But as more and more of these signs appear in Strivers' Row windows, more and more of the older residents like Dr. Cannon have begun to feel that preserving Strivers' Row may be a losing battle.