Harlem Renaissance

Author(s): Marilyn Dickey

Source: Landscape Architecture Magazine, Vol. 87, No. 2 (FEBRUARY 1997), pp. 48, 50-53
Published by: American Society of Landscape Architects
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44672830
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 ~r ; , , *: ^ i
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¡rn Four vacant lots at Í38th
-ťI
^ street have become the tot
lot of the Anne G. Newsome
Headstart Center, shown here,
which is used by Headstart
during the day and by the
community in the evening.
One lot at the entrance,
below, remains a grassy area.
i the midst of central
Harlem, where the drug trade
has flourished along squalid streets and
boarded-up buildings and vacant lots have
dominated the landscape, a new renaissance
is taking shape. Apartment buildings and
houses are being refurbished, businesses are
experiencing a welcome boost, and tree-
filled parks and safe playgrounds are being
fashioned out of abandoned lots.
The purpose of this renaissance is not just
to provide housing for a large homeless pop-
ulation, but also to make this area of Harlem
a sustainable community - to establish sta-
bility for the neighborhood by restoring
homeownership to middle-class families,
attracting mainstream businesses, affording
children safe places in which to play, creat-
ing gardens, and restoring community spir-
it and pride. It is an ambitious plan for such
a downtrodden neighborhood, but one that
is already producing results.
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Harlem Renaissance
Karen Phillips's emphasis on community input bring
to urban neighborhoodBy
revitalization.
Marilyn dickey
1
An important group behind this renais- Powell, Sr., and his son, Congressman Adam
sance is the Abyssinian Development Cor- Clayton Powell, Jr., were pastors there.
poration (ADC), an organization formed in The ADC is headed by Karen Phillips,
1987 by the then Reverend Calvin O. Butts ASIA, a member of the church and a land- i
III and some of his congregation at the scape architect with a master s degree from
Abyssinian Baptist Church, the oldest black Harvard and expertise in real estate devel- * 11
О
church in New York and among the most opment. Phillips's first memory of Harlem о
<D
influential in the country. The church has a was as a child in the 1950s, when she trav- oj
0 ^
rich history of activism in Harlem, going eled to New York from her home in a small
Z
back to the days when Adam Clayton rural Georgia town to visit relatives. 1 «
"Harlem was a thriving community of black
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people, with stores owned by black people," z
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she recalls. "It was a far cry from my little
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town in Georgia." m
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Phillips drew some of the inspiration for 1 ł
her work from a Harlem renaissance of a dif-
ferent sort. "This area in the twenties was z
i 4
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well known as the world center of African- I
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American life because there were people, ffl
some of whom were my relatives, who came
Landscape Architecture ' 48 I February 1997
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Practice admired as a child was a decaying, forsaken Right from the start she made it a priority
place. The Abyssinian Baptist Church, an to develop some open spaces along with
imposing bluestone Gothic structure, still building renovations, to involve people liv-
stood on 138th Street, but many other ing in the neighborhood at every step of the
up ... N orth to New York and Harlem, and
they could be very proud of where they buildings in the neighborhood had beenway, and whenever possible to hire African-
boarded up. The city of New York nowAmerican professionals to work on projects.
lived. There were beautiful buildings here
owned sixty percent of the property in "One of our goals is to help kids under-
and lovely tree-lined boulevards, and they
could work in the stores and hold their Harlem, and the neighborhood was scarred stand that people who look like them can
heads up high. That was a time when they with vacant lots on which crumbling old help create their playground and change
wrote beautiful words, made beautiful mu- brownstones, unfit for habitation, had been the character of the neighborhood," says
sic, and painted paintings. The renaissance razed years before. Drug dealers ruled the Phillips. "A lot of our architects have been
African- American - sometimes people with
a link to the community."
Open-space projects have several objec-
tives. They are designed to spruce up the
neighborhood, to offer a grassy refuge from
the hubbub of the street, and to give resi-
dents a place in which to garden and to sit
and talk with neighbors. Outdoor projects
also offer more instant gratification than
building projects, which typically take
about five years from concept to completion.
And refurbishing a park gives neighbors a
chance to chip in, cleaning up the space and
helping out with simple plantings or even
bolting together prefabricated park bench-
es. Phillips has noticed a growing sense of
community as homeless people work side
by side with homeowners, pulling
up weeds, taking out over-
growth, cleaning up garbage,
and sweeping the streets. Its
that sense of ownership that
Phillips hopes will instill
neighborhood pride and in-
spire people to assume active
roles in community upkeep.
Outdoor projects operate differ-
ently from building-construction
projects. The property for open spaces
is leased from the city rather than pur-
chased, and runds to maintain this proper-
ty are not part of the operating budget but
are raised through special events. The neigh-
bors help out there, too.
Two of the ADC's first projects were tran-
sitional housing for the homeless and a one-
hundred-unit building to house senior cit-
At 127th Street the ADC has designed a playground with separate play areas for tod- izens under a federal Housing and Urban
dlers and preteens as well as a place for adults to sit and watch the children at play. Development project. Another early pro-
ject was a tot lot located behind the Head-
of Harlem came about because it was such a neighborhood now, and crime and home- start building on 138th Street. Phillips
wonderful environment." lessness erased any hope of prosperity. enlisted the help of landscape architect
When Phillips returned to New York in As the chief executive officer of the ADC Elizabeth Kennedy to design the play area
the early eighties to work for the Port Au- Phillipss first task was to establish the scope and to draw up the schematic, which was X

thority of New York and New Jersey and of the organization to focus on a handful of then passed on to the New York Depart- I
M

then the New York State Urban Develop- projects within an area eleven blocks in one ment of Housing Preservation and Devel- z
z

ment Corporation the Harlem she had direction and four avenues in the other. opment for approval. о

Landscape Architecture | 50 | February 1997

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 The tot lot encompasses four vacant lots
and embraces a space approximately eighty
by one hundred feet in scope and includes
play equipment, grassy areas, and a fence
with a bright mural, painted by one of the
parents and neighbors that depicts children's
faces and a message about staying away from
drugs. Children from the Headstart pro- ^ Over 35 million
gram play> there during the daytime. In the ~ i " Г~^ ^ ^ т North America ļj^H
1 i V ■ - , „ Jt:- "ii • Developed in Europe and extensively used and
evenings the lot is open to the entire neigh-
borhood, and a paid supervisor keeps an eye • Unique self supporting design, wit
on things until closing. i A eliminating excessive hydrostatic pressure buildup,
In another project New York architect • Easy adaptability to curved layout, permits a variety

of planting options. Split or smooth face designs. Hj||

Hamlet Wallace refurbished a five-story
• With or without geogrid. ЯНВ
masonry building, the ground floor of which
is commercial space and the upper floors of Hokanson Buildg. Block Sacramento, CA (916)452-5233 Ц||
which are residential. The building origi-
nally opened onto the street, but Wallace
redesigned it so the doors open at the side of
the building. A vacant lot next door is being
planned for use as a garden entrance, with an
angled walkway, wrought-iron fence, and a
Unilock Canada, Inc. (905)873-0312
gate flanked by two brick pillars. A low
semicircular concrete wall near the entrance
- J9 SF Cone. Tech. (Licensor) Mississauga, ON (905)828-2868
is designed for socializing.
One of the keys to the ADC's success has
been neighborhood involvement. Early on
^
the organization formed a block association
to hold monthly meetings and represent the
CIRCLE 391 ON READER SERVICE CARD
neighborhood in making suggestions and

discussing plans. Members are actively in-
volved in each project, sometimes even tes-
tifying before the community planning
board, explaining what they want to do
with the property and why. And architects
and landscape architects routinely bring
their plans to the block association for
suggestions.
These meetings involve a lot of give and
take. In one park the block association want-
ed a tiered fountain that was beyond the
scope of the budget and would have been
too difficult to maintain. In another, they
wanted eight-foot-high walls, but the city
would allow walls no higher than six feet.
The block association's choices haven't
always produced award-winning designs,
says Phillips. In the case of one project, for
example, residents were offered the chance
to pick out the park benches, which Phillips
says were not of the calibre that a profes-
sional designer would have chosen. "We felt
it was more important that they take part
in the planning than for the project to look
like an award-winning landscape architec-
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ture design."
One measure of the ADC's success came
I Address

ļ City
when neighbors of an adjacent block peti-
^Please not

FEBRUARY 1

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 Practice

tioned to have the organization build a com-

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munity park from four adjacent vacant lots
on 127th Street. Landscape architect Glenn
Smith, ASLA, who was teaching design at
City College but has since become a Loeb
Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of
Design, agreed to produce a schematic pro
bono. Funds are still being raised to imple-
ment the plan, which is divided up into a
toddler area, a preteen area, and an adult area
that keeps the children's areas in clear view.
The neighbors vetoed a basketball court for
that park, concerned that older kids might
edge out the youngsters.
Input from the community has been im-
portant and at times has resulted in designs
tailored to the special needs of the neigh-
borhood that outside designers might have

В|?1Щ si^Ł ; * overlooked. When planning the 127th

Street playground, members of the block
Wi^^^^2c«^^MP^^^MpB1I^Éat wjBļļBfcdk or
association told Smith that break,
the fence
should not go all the way to the ground be-
cause it would collect litter from the street,
For morąjn|ormation ~ and free color catalog call or writ^Ž^ocairi^raic^gj^^^^gťi.
~ 4700 Mitchell 1st. "• N. Las Vegas, so it was NV
decided that the fence should be
8903ГИИР^^
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• Faxon top of a low wall. A thirteen-year-
(702) 643-2641
CIRCLE 155 ON READER SERVICE CARD old-girl pointed out that the rear of the
park, which abuts two vacant lots, needed
Safe and stable in a variety of conditions , a much higher fence because "knowing her
EZ Dock creates an attractive platform
contemporaries - mostly guys - they
that the public will enjoy, while reducing •^йЦВЙЯЯ^Ш
would just climb over a lower fence at
maintenance time and costs .
night," says Smith. Other neighbors were
concerned that the benches were too close
to the street. It would be too easy for drug
dealers to ply their trade with people sit-
ting in the park. The solution was to set
the benches back five feet and position
plantings just inside the fence to provide
additional separation.
The meetings with the block association
are a vital link to the community, says
Smith. "Typically they say lot of things that
just aren't possible and you know that as a
designer, but they do say a tremendous
amount about what their living environ-
ment is."

From start to finish the ADC's goal has

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been to educate neighborhood residents. '
The plan is to hire teenagers to maintain the
127th Street park and to teach them about
landscape maintenance. They would leam
to help with fund-raisers to pay for the
maintenance, lighting, water, and other
expenses. They would learn about opening
money management. And there will be an

Landscape Architecture I 52 I February 1997

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 Affordable Elegan
essay-writing contest through which chil-
dren can name the park.
The renaissance of Harlem is coming
along in fits and starts. There have been PAVERS AND RETAINING WALLS
roadblocks along the way. Often when the RESIDENTIAL AND ARCHITECTURAL APPLICATIONS
city administration changes hands, such
projects as the ADCs are stalled while new
officials are brought up to speed on the
plans. There are construction delays, and
time is always needed to raise funds to keep
the projects going. It's tremendously hard
work, and it can get discouraging, says
Lajuana Smith, a senior project director. "It's
the hardest thing I've ever done," she says.
"It's close to the heart. You see the fruits of
your labor, and you see the fruits of your
labor destroyed." Newly refurbished walls
are marred by graffiti, and people from out-
side the neighborhood dump construction
debris on vacant lots that have been leveled
and topsoiled. "It's difficult at times," she
adds, "and it's very rewarding at times.
Handsome brownstones with front
flower gardens have already been complet- CALL FOR FREE DESIGN ESTIMATE OR COLOR BROCHURE

ed and put on the market. Apartment

buildings are being restored and turned * ь 800.258.2353
into condos or reasonably priced rentals.
The neighborhood will soon boast a large, LLJI IÍ
I I LļII Ł/U
I III'
I CORONA,
li ICA4 I
91719 wHJI 1
well-stocked Pathmark grocery and such CIRCLE 406 ON READER SERVICE CARD

other chain stores as The Gap. Plans are be-

Legendary Lighting ВдД

ing formulated to refurbish the Renaissance
Ballroom and Theatre Complex as a center
for entertainment, which would be avail-
able for weddings and parties. It is hoped
that the new businesses will not only make
the neighborhood more attractive to po-
tential homeowners but will employ hun-
dreds of local residents as well.
Some projects have produced dramatic
changes in the neighborhood. "Whole
blocks that used to be drive-through drug
alleys are now renovated housing with
neighborhood gardens and an active block
association," says Phillips.
Phillips holds out a lot of hope for the
Harlem of the future. "Harlem has an image
as a very negative place, but it is a part of
Manhattan and one of the lowest density
parts and probably with more trees than
other areas as well. Some of that character is
what we're trying to restore.
"There is money to be made in our com-
munity," she adds. "Our job is to make sure Handcrafted Gas Lanterns &
that money gets recirculated among the Architectural Accent Pieces
people who live here." LA
Call for a Free Brochure
Marilyn Dickey is a Washington, D.C. -based 5230 Highway 25 • Brandon, MS 39042
freelance luriter. 1.800.235.6725
CIRCLE 113 ON READER SERVICE CARD

February 1997 | 53 | Landscape Architecture

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