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Collection Data
- Description
- 409 Edgecombe Avenue, also known as Colonial Parkway Apartments, is a residential apartment building in the Sugar Hill section of Harlem that was home to many of the city's Black elite during the 1920s–1950s. The 409 Edgecombe collection consists of the personal effects of building residents, typically including correspondence, bills, receipts, and other ephemera. The collection is made up of the contents of trunks found in a storage room of the building by the 409 Edgecombe Avenue Tenant Association.
- Names
- 409 Edgecombe Avenue Tenant Association (Creator)
- Boyd, Carroll
- 409 Edgecombe Avenue Tenant Association
- Dates / Origin
- Date Created: 1878 - 1987
- Library locations
- Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division
- Shelf locator: Sc MG 804
- Topics
- Harlem (New York, N.Y.) -- History -- 20th century
- Harlem (New York, N.Y.) -- Social life and customs
- Genres
- Ephemera
- Correspondence
- Notes
- Biographical/historical: 409 Edgecombe Avenue, also known as Colonial Parkway Apartments, is a residential apartment building in the Sugar Hill section of Harlem that was home to many of the city's Black elite during the 1920s–1950s.
The thirteen-story building was designed by architects Simon Schwartz and Arthur Gross in the neo-Georgian style and completed in 1917. Though initially its tenants were exclusively white, the building opened to Black tenants December 1, 1927, and they soon comprised the majority of the building's residents. The building's luxury amenities attracted members of New York's Black upper class, and residents included a number of notable figures, such as NAACP leaders Walter Francis White and Roy Wilkins, artists Aaron Douglas and Elizabeth Catlett, journalist Marvel Cooke, author and activist W.E.B. Du Bois, and lawyer and future Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall. Langston Hughes dubbed the building "Harlem's House of Celebrities" and described it as a hub of social activity for writers and poets during the Harlem Renaissance, declaring it "one of Harlem's most fashionable addresses." By the 1950s, Jet magazine argued the glamour of the Sugar Hill neighborhood was fading as some residents moved elsewhere, but named 409 Edgecombe as an exception for retaining "anything approaching the high-styled living of yesteryear."
Ownership of the building has passed through various entities, from its initial owner Candler Holding Corp., to Nicolas Jones and the Colonial Parkway Corp. in 1918, to Metropolitan Life Insurance in 1930, to the Antillean Holding Company, a Black-owned investment group led by Augustine A. Austin, in 1942. After Austin's son Orin defaulted on the mortgage, Metropolitan Life Insurance again took over, and in 1976 the building was purchased by Harold Tamarin. Due to Tamarin's failure to pay taxes, the city took ownership of the building in 1979, and it was converted to an HDFC co-op. In 1993, the building was given landmark status by New York City.
- Content: The 409 Edgecombe collection consists of the personal effects of building residents, typically including correspondence, bills, receipts, and other ephemera. The collection is made up of the contents of trunks found in a storage room of the building by the 409 Edgecombe Avenue Tenant Association.
Please note that the belongings of some residents, including Walter White and Aaron Douglas, have been cataloged as separate collections; see under Separated Material for a full list.
- Physical Description
- Extent: 16 boxes, 1 oversize folder 6.34 linear feet
- Type of Resource
- Text
- Identifiers
- Other local Identifier: Sc MG 804
- NYPL catalog ID (B-number): b22769900
- MSS Unit ID: 186050
- Universal Unique Identifier (UUID): 35b20320-8b60-013e-3921-0242ac110003
