Building:
HomeBase III landed in a beautiful five-floor historical landmark townhouse building, comprised of 3 apartment floors, 2 large commercial spaces and a large back yard. It was built in 1910, but left empty for the last 40 years. As of recent, it was bought and carefully renovated, preserving much of the original architecture, including the façade, fireplaces and winding stairways. The space balances a beautiful combination of old and new architecture.
Landlord:
Harlem Lofts.
Special thanks to Harlem Lofts Inc. and Robert Pair.
Neighborhood
Sugar Hill is a neighborhood in the northern part of Hamilton Heights, which itself is a sub-neighborhood of Harlem. The name originated in the 1920s, when the area became a popular place to live for wealthy African Americans.
Named to identify the “sweet life” in Harlem, it was a popular residential area of rowhouses for wealthy African Americans during the Harlem Renaissance, including W.E.B. DuBois, Thurgood Marshall, Adam Clayton Powell, and Duke Ellington. Langston Hughes wrote about its relative affluence in relation to Harlem in his essay “Down and Under in Harlem” published in the The New Republic in 1944.
Sugar Hill was made a municipal historic district by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 2000. It is also a National Registered Historic Place.*
* Majority of historical information provided taken directly from Wikipedia.
About HomeBase III:
A diverse group of 17 international artists from different mediums inhabited a five-floor historical landmark townhouse in Sugar Hill, Harlem, and transformed the building by creating site-specific works about Home.
Directions: A Train (or the C, B or D) up to 145 St. Station.
Community:
HomeBase III featured a detailed program of free public events, including lectures by noted Harlem historian Michael Henry Adams and critically-acclaimed author Brian Keith Jackson, artist talks, performances by local musicians and poets, curator-led tours, parties. In the evening, guests and artists were invited to come together at St. Nick’s Pub, the oldest continuously operating Jazz pub in Harlem-and previously owned by Duke Ellington’s piano player, Lucky Roberts-for Sugar Hill beers and, of course, some jazz, by Home Skillet.
