Harlem New York: Jazz, Soul Food & the Cultural Heart of Black America

Harlem is one of the most culturally significant neighbourhoods in American history — the birthplace of the Harlem Renaissance, the centre of African American intellectual and artistic life in the 20th century, the neighbourhood that gave the world jazz as a performance art, and a community that has survived urban decline, gentrification pressure, and constant reinvention while maintaining a cultural identity that is irreplaceable. Walking through Harlem is understanding something essential about New York and about America that no other neighbourhood teaches.

125th Street is the main artery: the Apollo Theater at 253 W 125th is the most important venue in the history of Black American music — James Brown, Ella Fitzgerald, Michael Jackson, and Aretha Franklin all performed here, most famously at Amateur Night (still running on Wednesdays, tickets required). The Studio Museum in Harlem at 144 W 125th focuses exclusively on African American art and has launched more significant American artists than almost any other institution in the country. The Harlem State Office Building (now the Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building) has a public plaza with rotating art installations.

For food: soul food in Harlem is non-negotiable. Sylvia's on Lenox Avenue has been the institution since 1962 — fried chicken, cornbread, sweet potato pie, and weekend gospel brunch that fills with a congregation-sized crowd every Sunday. Red Rooster on Lenox, Marcus Samuelsson's restaurant, takes the soul food tradition into contemporary territory. Patisserie des Ambassades on Malcolm X Boulevard for Senegalese pastries is a reminder that Harlem's African community has transformed the neighbourhood again in the past thirty years.

The Hamilton Heights and Sugar Hill sections north of 145th Street are the most architecturally intact Harlem — brownstones and limestone rowhouses from the early 20th century when this was the most fashionable Black neighbourhood in the world.