St. Nicholas Historic District

Located on the heights overlooking St. Nicholas Park, these four rows of houses were built in 1891 by David H. King Jr., the developer of the first Madison Square Park, the Equitable Building, and the base for the Statue of Liberty. King was a forward thinking developer and planner, who in the early 1890s in response to New York's rapid transportation problem, advocated for the creation of a viaduct to encircle Manhattan, as well as a depressed road to run through the center of the city.

For the King Model houses, as they were originally known, King commissioned three prominent architects to design these elegant structures, which represent the apex of land speculation and investment in Harlem. Their location—on the heights overlooking St. Nicholas Park—allows unobstructed views and gives the district a sense of openness. While each row of houses has a distinct design, the architects took great care to create a unified neighborhood, with uniform block fronts adding to its cohesiveness. James Brown Lord designed the twenty-five red brick houses on the south side of West 138th Street in a restrained, rhythmic Georgian style. The complete blocks on the north side of 138th Street, and the south side of 139th Street by architects Bruce Price and Clarence S. Luce are also Georgian inspired, incorporating buff-colored brick and Indiana limestone. McKim, Mead and White designed the remaining thirty-two Italian Renaissance style houses on the north side of West 139th Street in a brown mottled brick, with unusual window arrangements that pleasingly contrast with the other two groups.

While originally built to house upper-middle class white families, the King Model houses were made available to affluent African Americans in 1919. The houses became known as Striver's Row in the 1920s and 1930s, in reference to the desirability of the neighborhood. They housed an influx of prominent doctors, such as surgeon L.T. Wright, at one time the only African American member of the American College of Surgeons, and well-known entertainers, including W.C. Handy, the “father of jazz”; and musicians Fletcher Henderson and Eubie Blake. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., the first City Council member, and later Congressman, of African American descent, also lived in this prestigious development. The houses in the St. Nicolas Historic District still retain uniform block fronts, along with original signs warning one to “walk your horses”; a charming reminder of a by-gone era. ©2014