02/29/2024
Happy Black History Month from SLM. This month we took a look in our own backyard and found so many beautiful gems of history embedded in the urban landscape of Harlem.
We saw
• The Astor Row Houses (Roberta Washington)
• 1400 5th Avenue (Roberta Washington)
• Ivey Delph Apartments (Vertner Woodson Tandy)
• St Philips Church (Vertner Woodson Tandy)
• Kalahari Condominiums (Jack Travis)
New York City is a canvas painted with the diverse and historic contributions of the Black community. Read on for more details about our trip!
What are some of your favorite sites that we can visit next?
We begin with Roberta Washington’s restoration project on Astor Row. The most interesting part walking through was the wooden porches in front of these unique structures being used as a dynamic art space. There was such different architecture on either side of the street, but it spoke to the nature of new York
Her second project is a revolutionary ‘recycled green building’ building with the future in mind back in 2003. The small details of art on the facade, like the metal faces, were an excellent touch that brought the project down to the community scale.
The second two projects are by Vertner Woodson Tandy. His work in the city is the Ivey Delph Apartments (1948) by the City College of New York Shepard Hall building. Despite the challenging hillside location of the Ivey Delph Apartments, Tandy’s design seamlessly concluded the street of high relief residential and steep slopes.
Saint Philip’s Church, another Tandy project, also adds to the architectural diversity of the area, juxtaposed against a vividly painted school and a long horizontal greenhouse that throws the symmetry of the composition off center.
Finally, the work of Jack Travis shows the same bricks as those used in the St Philip church but uses color to connect the concepts of transparency and spirit into the landscape.
