Everything about The Hotel Theresa totally explained
The
Hotel Theresa was a vibrant center of black life in
Harlem,
New York City, in the mid-20th century. The hotel sits at the intersection of
Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and
Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard (better known as 7th Avenue and 125th Street). It opened in
1913 and was from then, until the construction of the
Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building across the street in
1973, the tallest building in Harlem. It has a striking white brick facade and was known as the "
Waldorf Astoria of Harlem." From the time it opened until
1940, the hotel accepted only white guests plus a few black celebrities. This changed when the hotel passed to new management.
Louis Armstrong,
Sugar Ray Robinson,
Lena Horne,
Josephine Baker,
Dorothy Dandridge,
Duke Ellington,
Muhammad Ali,
Dinah Washington,
Ray Charles,
Little Richard, and
Jimi Hendrix all stayed in the Hotel or lived there for a time, as did
Fidel Castro, while in New York for the 1960 opening session of the United Nations, after storming out of the Hotel Shelburne because of that hotel manager's "unacceptable cash" demands. Castro's entourage rented 80 rooms at the Thersa for $800 per day.
The hotel profited from the refusal of prestigious hotels elsewhere in the city to accept black guests. As a result, black businessmen, performers, and athletes were thrown under the same roof.
After leaving the
Nation of Islam,
Malcolm X maintained his competing Organization of Afro-American Unity at the hotel and hosted meetings there. He met
Cassius Clay in the hotel on various occasions.
Bill Clinton's commerce secretary,
Ron Brown, grew up in the hotel, where his father worked as manager. U.S. Congressman
Charles Rangel (D-Harlem) once worked there as a desk clerk.
The hotel may have enjoyed its greatest prominence in
1960.
Nikita Khruschev visited New York in that year, during the week when Castro was staying in Harlem, and came to meet him in the hotel. Also, in October of 1960,
John F. Kennedy campaigned for the presidency at the hotel, along with
Eleanor Roosevelt and other powerful figures in the
Democratic Party.
The hotel suffered from the continued deterioration of Harlem through the
1950s and
1960s, and, ironically, from the end of segregation elsewhere in the city. As black people of means had alternatives, they stopped coming to Harlem. The hotel closed in
1967.
After remaining vacant for four years, the building was converted to office space in 1971, and now goes by the name "Theresa Towers," though a sign with the old name is still painted on the side of the building, and the old name is still commonly used. It now serves as an auxiliary campus for Teachers College, Columbia University. The building was declared a landmark by the City of New York in
1993.
Trivia
Sources
Barry Popik: Waldorf of Harlem (Hotel Theresa, now Theresa Towers)
, June 04, 2005
Meet Me at the Theresa : The Story of Harlem's Most Famous Hotel, Sondra Kathryn Wilson, 2004Further Information
Get more info on 'Hotel Theresa'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://hotel_theresa.totallyexplained.com">Hotel Theresa Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
