1.
National Register of Historic Places
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The National Register of Historic Places is the United States federal governments official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation. The passage of the National Historic Preservation Act in 1966 established the National Register, of the more than one million properties on the National Register,80,000 are listed individually. The remainder are contributing resources within historic districts, each year approximately 30,000 properties are added to the National Register as part of districts or by individual listings. For most of its history the National Register has been administered by the National Park Service and its goals are to help property owners and interest groups, such as the National Trust for Historic Preservation, coordinate, identify, and protect historic sites in the United States. While National Register listings are mostly symbolic, their recognition of significance provides some financial incentive to owners of listed properties, protection of the property is not guaranteed. During the nomination process, the property is evaluated in terms of the four criteria for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places, the application of those criteria has been the subject of criticism by academics of history and preservation, as well as the public and politicians. Occasionally, historic sites outside the proper, but associated with the United States are also listed. Properties can be nominated in a variety of forms, including individual properties, historic districts, the Register categorizes general listings into one of five types of properties, district, site, structure, building, or object. National Register Historic Districts are defined geographical areas consisting of contributing and non-contributing properties, some properties are added automatically to the National Register when they become administered by the National Park Service. These include National Historic Landmarks, National Historic Sites, National Historical Parks, National Military Parks/Battlefields, National Memorials, on October 15,1966, the Historic Preservation Act created the National Register of Historic Places and the corresponding State Historic Preservation Offices. Initially, the National Register consisted of the National Historic Landmarks designated before the Registers creation, approval of the act, which was amended in 1980 and 1992, represented the first time the United States had a broad-based historic preservation policy. To administer the newly created National Register of Historic Places, the National Park Service of the U. S. Department of the Interior, hartzog, Jr. established an administrative division named the Office of Archeology and Historic Preservation. Hartzog charged OAHP with creating the National Register program mandated by the 1966 law, ernest Connally was the Offices first director. Within OAHP new divisions were created to deal with the National Register, the first official Keeper of the Register was William J. Murtagh, an architectural historian. During the Registers earliest years in the late 1960s and early 1970s, organization was lax and SHPOs were small, understaffed, and underfunded. A few years later in 1979, the NPS history programs affiliated with both the U. S. National Parks system and the National Register were categorized formally into two Assistant Directorates. Established were the Assistant Directorate for Archeology and Historic Preservation and the Assistant Directorate for Park Historic Preservation, from 1978 until 1981, the main agency for the National Register was the Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service of the United States Department of the Interior. In February 1983, the two assistant directorates were merged to promote efficiency and recognize the interdependency of their programs, jerry L. Rogers was selected to direct this newly merged associate directorate
2.
New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission
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The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission is the New York City agency charged with administering the citys Landmarks Preservation Law. It is the largest municipal preservation agency in the nation, according to the Landmarks Preservation Law, a building must be at least thirty years old before the Commission can declare it a landmark. City law also allows for the Commissions decision to be overturned if an appeal is filed within 90 days, the goal of New York Citys landmarks law is to preserve the aesthetically and historically important buildings, structures, and other objects that make up the New York City vista. These regulations are designed to allow property owners to continue to use and maintain their properties. The commission preserves not only significant buildings, but the overall historical sense of place of neighborhoods that are designated as historic districts. The Commission helps preserve the Citys landmark properties by regulating changes to their significant features, the role of the Commission has evolved over time, especially with the changing real estate market in New York City. The Landmarks Preservation Commissions first public hearing occurred in September,1965 over the future of the Astor Library on Lafayette Street in Manhattan, the building was designated a New York City Landmark. Subsequently, the building was reused as The Public Theater. Twenty-five years later, the Commission was cited by David Dinkins as having preserved New York Citys municipal identity and this success is believed to be due, in part, to the general acceptance of the commission by the citys developers. The Commission was headquartered in the Mutual Reserve Building from 1967 to 1980, and later the Old New York Evening Post Building from 1980 to 1987. As of April 16,2014, there are more than 31,000 landmark properties in New York City, the total number of protected sites includes 1,332 individual landmarks,115 interior landmarks and 10 scenic landmarks. Some of these are also National Historic Landmarks sites, and many are National Registered Historic Places, one of the most prominent decisions in which the Commission was involved was the preservation of the Grand Central Terminal with the assistance of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. This success is cited as significant due to the Commissions origins following the destruction of Pennsylvania Station. In 1989, the Commission designated the Ladies Mile Historic District, the next year marked the first time in the Commissions history that a proposed landmark, the Guggenheim Museum, received a unanimous vote by the Commission members. One of the most controversial properties was 2 Columbus Circle, which remained at the center of a discussion over its future for a number of years. Cultural landmarks, such as Greenwich Villages Stonewall Inn, are recognized as not for their architecture. A commission-designated historic district for the South Street Seaport has been active since 1977 and was extended on July 11,1989 and this group included the Historic Districts Council, the Save Our Seaport community group, the New Amsterdam Market, and the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance. They had encouraged others to write letters to the Landmarks Preservation Commission to support formal designation or district protection, however, in 2013, the Landmarks Preservation Commission declined to hold a hearing to consider this landmark designation or to expand the district
3.
Manhattan
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Manhattan is the most densely populated borough of New York City, its economic and administrative center, and the citys historical birthplace. The borough is coextensive with New York County, founded on November 1,1683, Manhattan is often described as the cultural and financial capital of the world and hosts the United Nations Headquarters. Many multinational media conglomerates are based in the borough and it is historically documented to have been purchased by Dutch colonists from Native Americans in 1626 for 60 guilders which equals US$1062 today. New York County is the United States second-smallest county by land area, on business days, the influx of commuters increases that number to over 3.9 million, or more than 170,000 people per square mile. Manhattan has the third-largest population of New York Citys five boroughs, after Brooklyn and Queens, the City of New York was founded at the southern tip of Manhattan, and the borough houses New York City Hall, the seat of the citys government. The name Manhattan derives from the word Manna-hata, as written in the 1609 logbook of Robert Juet, a 1610 map depicts the name as Manna-hata, twice, on both the west and east sides of the Mauritius River. The word Manhattan has been translated as island of hills from the Lenape language. The United States Postal Service prefers that mail addressed to Manhattan use New York, NY rather than Manhattan, the area that is now Manhattan was long inhabited by the Lenape Native Americans. In 1524, Florentine explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano – sailing in service of King Francis I of France – was the first European to visit the area that would become New York City. It was not until the voyage of Henry Hudson, an Englishman who worked for the Dutch East India Company, a permanent European presence in New Netherland began in 1624 with the founding of a Dutch fur trading settlement on Governors Island. In 1625, construction was started on the citadel of Fort Amsterdam on Manhattan Island, later called New Amsterdam, the 1625 establishment of Fort Amsterdam at the southern tip of Manhattan Island is recognized as the birth of New York City. In 1846, New York historian John Romeyn Brodhead converted the figure of Fl 60 to US$23, variable-rate myth being a contradiction in terms, the purchase price remains forever frozen at twenty-four dollars, as Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace remarked in their history of New York. Sixty guilders in 1626 was valued at approximately $1,000 in 2006, based on the price of silver, Straight Dope author Cecil Adams calculated an equivalent of $72 in 1992. In 1647, Peter Stuyvesant was appointed as the last Dutch Director General of the colony, New Amsterdam was formally incorporated as a city on February 2,1653. In 1664, the English conquered New Netherland and renamed it New York after the English Duke of York and Albany, the Dutch Republic regained it in August 1673 with a fleet of 21 ships, renaming the city New Orange. Manhattan was at the heart of the New York Campaign, a series of battles in the early American Revolutionary War. The Continental Army was forced to abandon Manhattan after the Battle of Fort Washington on November 16,1776. The city, greatly damaged by the Great Fire of New York during the campaign, became the British political, British occupation lasted until November 25,1783, when George Washington returned to Manhattan, as the last British forces left the city
4.
New York City
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The City of New York, often called New York City or simply New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2015 population of 8,550,405 distributed over an area of about 302.6 square miles. Located at the tip of the state of New York. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has described as the cultural and financial capital of the world. Situated on one of the worlds largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, the five boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898. In 2013, the MSA produced a gross metropolitan product of nearly US$1.39 trillion, in 2012, the CSA generated a GMP of over US$1.55 trillion. NYCs MSA and CSA GDP are higher than all but 11 and 12 countries, New York City traces its origin to its 1624 founding in Lower Manhattan as a trading post by colonists of the Dutch Republic and was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. It has been the countrys largest city since 1790, the Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is a symbol of the United States and its democracy. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world, the names of many of the citys bridges, tapered skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world. Manhattans real estate market is among the most expensive in the world, Manhattans Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is one of the most extensive metro systems worldwide, with 472 stations in operation. Over 120 colleges and universities are located in New York City, including Columbia University, New York University, and Rockefeller University, during the Wisconsinan glaciation, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth. The ice sheet scraped away large amounts of soil, leaving the bedrock that serves as the foundation for much of New York City today. Later on, movement of the ice sheet would contribute to the separation of what are now Long Island and Staten Island. The first documented visit by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown and he claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême. Heavy ice kept him from further exploration, and he returned to Spain in August and he proceeded to sail up what the Dutch would name the North River, named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange
5.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
6.
George Keister
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George Keister was an American architect. He also designed Woodbridge Hall at 431 Riverside Drive, which faced demolition in 1996, Keister was a skilled but little known architect who was active in New York City from the mid-1880s into the third decade of the twentieth century. He had a partnership with Frank E. Wallis and in the 1890s. Although barely a score of his buildings have been identified, the collection indicates a gifted, rising 13 stories on West 44th Street, this fine neo-medieval/neo-Renaissance composite was one of the tallest buildings in the area. Among Keisters other notable commissions is the eccentrically massed First Baptist Church on the northwest corner of Broadway, like Belascos Stuyvesant, it features stained glass in its ceiling, although here rendered more boldly as a splendid stained glass barrel vault in appropriate ecclesiastical terms. Hotel Gerard was built in 1893 and added to the National Register of Historic Places on February 10,1983, the Belasco Theatre is a Broadway theatre opened in 1907 at 111 West 44th Street in midtown-Manhattan. The theatre opened as the Stuyvesant Theatre on October 16,1907 with the musical A Grand Army Man with Antoinette Perry, the First Baptist Church is at Broadway and 79th Street. A balcony was added in 1903, opened as Hurtig & Seamons New Theater, the Apollo was a burlesque house for white patrons. Performances from Harry Houdini, the Marx Brothers, David Warfield, George Burns, Eddie Cantor, John Barrymore, and Lionel Barrymore attracted New Yorks top theatre aficionados. The Opera House manager, George M. Cohan, was so successful in his career that the famous Hammerstein actually donated and erected a statue of him in Times Square, New York where it stands today. The original facade of the Bronx Opera House has been preserved, the Selwyn Theatre was a Broadway theatre designed and decorated in an Italian Renaissance style. Built in 1918 by the Selwyn brothers, Edgar and Archie, it was used for musicals, one of three theatres they built and controlled on 42nd Street, along with the Apollo and the Times Square Theatre, it originally had 1,180 seats. At the time of its opening, the design had several innovations, additionally, each dressing room was equipped with a shower and telephone. Eventually it was converted to cinema before closing and it was used briefly as a visitors center but stood vacant for years until a 1997 renovation and restoration. It is located at 227 West 42nd Street, New York City and it was originally a hotel and boardng house and was later converted into commercial lofts. It is located within the Madison Square North Historic District
7.
Neoclassicism
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The main Neoclassical movement coincided with the 18th-century Age of Enlightenment, and continued into the early 19th century, laterally competing with Romanticism. In architecture, the style continued throughout the 19th, 20th, European Neoclassicism in the visual arts began c.1760 in opposition to the then-dominant Baroque and Rococo styles. Each neo-classicism selects some models among the range of classics that are available to it. They ignored both Archaic Greek art and the works of Late Antiquity, the Rococo art of ancient Palmyra came as a revelation, through engravings in Woods The Ruins of Palmyra. While the movement is described as the opposed counterpart of Romanticism. The case of the main champion of late Neoclassicism, Ingres, demonstrates this especially well. The revival can be traced to the establishment of formal archaeology, the writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann were important in shaping this movement in both architecture and the visual arts. With the advent of the Grand Tour, a fad of collecting antiquities began that laid the foundations of many great collections spreading a Neoclassical revival throughout Europe, Neoclassicism in each art implies a particular canon of a classical model. In English, the term Neoclassicism is used primarily of the arts, the similar movement in English literature. This, which had been dominant for decades, was beginning to decline by the time Neoclassicism in the visual arts became fashionable. Though terms differ, the situation in French literature was similar, in music, the period saw the rise of classical music, and Neoclassicism is used of 20th-century developments. Ingress coronation portrait of Napoleon even borrowed from Late Antique consular diptychs and their Carolingian revival, much Neoclassical painting is more classicizing in subject matter than in anything else. A fierce, but often very badly informed, dispute raged for decades over the merits of Greek and Roman art, with Winckelmann. The work of artists, who could not easily be described as insipid, combined aspects of Romanticism with a generally Neoclassical style. Unlike Carstens unrealized schemes, the etchings of Giovanni Battista Piranesi were numerous and profitable and his main subject matter was the buildings and ruins of Rome, and he was more stimulated by the ancient than the modern. Neoclassicism in painting gained a new sense of direction with the success of Jacques-Louis Davids Oath of the Horatii at the Paris Salon of 1785. Despite its evocation of republican virtues, this was a commission by the royal government, David managed to combine an idealist style with drama and forcefulness. David rapidly became the leader of French art, and after the French Revolution became a politician with control of government patronage in art
8.
125th Street (Manhattan)
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It is often considered to be the Main Street of Harlem, and is co-named Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard. Notable buildings along 125th Street include the Apollo Theater, the Adam Clayton Powell Jr, the street was designated by the Commissioners Plan of 1811 that established the Manhattan street grid as one of 15 east–west streets that would be 100 feet in width. East of Morningside Avenue it runs east–west through central Harlem to Second Avenue, however, 125th Street continues to First Avenue, where it connects to the southbound FDR Drive and the Willis Avenue Bridge. West of Convent Avenue, 125th Street was rerouted onto what was, prior to 1920, what remains of the original alignment of 125th Street was renamed La Salle Street at that time. The remaining blocks run between Amsterdam Avenue and Claremont Avenue, a block of the original 125th Street in this area was de-mapped to make the super-blocks where the Grant Houses projects now exist. A proposal to convert the street into a Trans-Harlem Expressway died when funds were diverted from the proposed 125th Street Hudson River bridge at the western end. Beginning in the late 1990s, many sections of 125th Street have been gentrified and developed with such stores as MAC Cosmetics, Old Navy, H&M, CVS/pharmacy, and Magic Johnson Theaters. In collaboration with the community, the city has developed a plan for the 125th Street corridor focusing on reinforcing and building upon its strengths as an arts and cultural corridor. A rift in the crust runs along underneath this street from the East River to New Jersey and is known as the 125th Street Fault or the Manhattanville Fault. It is suspected to have caused a magnitude-5.2 earthquake in 1737, riverside Drive also elevates to cross over the fault valley. The following New York City Subway stations are located at 125th Street, the planned Second Avenue Subway will turn on 125th Street, serving a station at Lexington Avenue that would be the terminal for the second phase of the line and connect to the preexisting station. As of 2011, former president Bill Clinton maintains an office on 125th Street, notes Media related to 125th Street at Wikimedia Commons
9.
Seventh Avenue (Manhattan)
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Seventh Avenue – known as Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard north of Central Park – is a thoroughfare on the West Side of the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It is southbound below Central Park and a street north of the park. Seventh Avenue originates in the West Village at Clarkson Street, where Varick Street becomes Seventh Avenue South and it is interrupted by Central Park from 59th to 110th Street. Artisans Gate is the 59th Street exit from Central Park to Seventh Avenue, north of Warriors Gate at the north end of the Park, the avenue carries traffic in both directions through Harlem, where it is called Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard. Addresses continue as if the street was continuous through Central Park, the road has two northern termini, an upper level terminates at the western end of the Macombs Dam Bridge, traveling over the Harlem River, where Jerome Avenue commences in the Bronx. A lower level continues a bit north and curves into the lower level of West 155th Street. Seventh Avenue was originally out in the Commissioners Plan of 1811. The southern terminus of Seventh Avenue was Eleventh Street in Greenwich Village through the part of the 20th Century. It was extended southward, as Seventh Avenue South, to link up with Varick Street in 1914, extension of the avenue allowed better vehicular connections between midtown Manhattan and the commercial district in what is now TriBeCa. It also permitted construction of the New York City Subway IRT Broadway – Seventh Avenue Line which opened in 1918, the extension had been urged by civic groups to meet the commercial needs of Greenwich Village. A significant number of old buildings were marked for demolition in the extension, most of Seventh Avenue has carried traffic one-way southbound since June 6,1954. The portion north of Times Square carried two-way traffic until March 10,1957, Seventh Avenue is served by the 123 trains for most of its length, with N Q R W service between 42nd Street and Central Park South. The Seventh Avenue station also serves the B D E trains, north of the park, Powell Boulevard is served by the 155th Street station on the B D trains. It is also served by local buses. South of 14th Street Seventh Avenue is a thoroughfare in the West Village. The now defunct Saint Vincents Catholic Medical Center was a downtown hospital on Seventh Avenue. The first, temporary signs designating the section of Seventh Avenue as Fashion Avenue were dual-posted in 1972, Seventh Avenue intersects with Broadway and with 42nd Street at Times Square, with multiple buildings at the intersections. Notable buildings on Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, from Central Park north through Harlem, include, state Office Building Hotel Theresa Seventh Avenue is frequently mentioned in films, plays and books
10.
Eighth Avenue (Manhattan)
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Eighth Avenue is a north-south avenue on the west side of Manhattan in New York City, carrying northbound traffic below 59th Street. While the avenue has different names at different points in Manhattan, north of Frederick Douglass Circle, it resumes its Eighth Avenue designation, but is also known as Frederick Douglass Boulevard. The avenue ends north of 155th Street, and merges into the Harlem River Drive, the New York City Subway IND Eighth Avenue Line runs under Eighth Avenue. MTA Regional Bus Operations primarily operates two bus routes on the avenue, the northbound M20 serves Eighth Avenue between Abingdon Square and Columbus Circle, while the M10 serves the length of Eighth Avenue north of 59th Street in its entirety. The southernmost section is solely as Eighth Avenue between Abingdon Square and Columbus Circle. This portion of Eighth Avenue has carried traffic one-way northbound since June 6,1954, in fact, New York Citys annual gay pride parade takes place along the Greenwich Village section of Eighth Avenue. As its name indicates, CPW forms the edge of Central Park. It also forms the boundary of the Upper West Side. It runs 51 blocks from Columbus Circle to Frederick Douglass Circle, Central Park Wests expensive housing rivals that of Fifth Avenue on the Upper East Side. Most of these housing cooperatives were built around 1930, replacing late 19th century hotels with the same names, some, including The Century, The San Remo, and The Majestic, are twin towers. Other landmarks and institutions along its length include the New-York Historical Society, the area from 61st to 97th Streets is included in the Central Park West Historic District. The building located at 55 Central Park West is the infamous Spook Central from the movie Ghostbusters, the famed New York City restaurant Tavern on the Green is located off of Central Park West, at 66th Street, within the grounds of Central Park. In 1899, while exiting a streetcar, Henry Bliss was run over by a taxi at CPW and West 74th Street, becoming the first person to be run down and killed by a motor car in the Americas. North of Frederick Douglass Circle at 110th Street in Harlem, it is Frederick Douglass Boulevard, Frederick Douglass Boulevard eventually terminates near the Harlem River at the Harlem River Drive around West 159th Street. While Central Park West has its own system, address numbers on Frederick Douglass Boulevard continue from where they would be if Central Park West used the Eighth Avenue numbering system. Formerly described as being like Detroit in its urban blight, it is now gentrified, especially in the restaurants along its route and this gentrification is partly due to massive city investment. The share of whites jumped to 12.4 percent from 2.3 percent, median household income rose 28 percent, to $34,694. Notes New York Songlines, Eighth Avenue, a walking tour
11.
Harlem
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Harlem is a large neighborhood in the northern section of the New York City borough of Manhattan. Since the 1920s, Harlem has been known as a major African-American residential, cultural, originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands. Harlems history has been defined by a series of economic boom-and-bust cycles, African-American residents began to arrive by a lot in 1905, with numbers fed by the Great Migration. In the 1920s and 1930s, Central and West Harlem were the focus of the Harlem Renaissance, however, with job losses in the time of the Great Depression and the deindustrialization of New York City after World War II, rates of crime and poverty increased significantly. Harlems African-American population peaked in the 1950s, in the second half of the 20th century, Harlem became a major hub of African-American businesses. In 2008, the United States Census found that for the first time since the 1930s, less than half of residents were black, since New York Citys revival in the late 20th century, long-time residents of Harlem have been experiencing the effects of gentrification and new wealth. Harlem is located in Upper Manhattan, often referred to as Uptown by locals. Central Harlem is bounded by Fifth Avenue on the east, Central Park on the south, Morningside Park, St. Nicholas Avenue and Edgecombe Avenue on the west, and the Harlem River on the north. A chain of three large linear parks—Morningside Park, St. Nicholas Park and Jackie Robinson Park—are situated on steeply rising banks, on the east, Fifth Avenue and Marcus Garvey Park, also known as Mount Morris Park, separate this area from East Harlem. The bulk of the falls under Manhattan Community Board No.10. In the late 2000s, South Harlem, emerged from area redevelopment, the West Harlem neighborhoods of Manhattanville and Hamilton Heights comprise part of Manhattan Community Board No.9. The two neighborhoods area is bounded by Cathedral Parkway on the South, 155th Street on the North, nicholas/Bradhurst/Edgecome Avenues on the East, and Riverside Park/the Hudson River on the west. Morningside Heights is located in the southern most section of West Harlem, Manhattanville begins at roughly 123rd Street and extends northward to 135th Street. The northern most section of West Harlem is Hamilton Heights, the New York City Police Department patrols six precincts located within Harlem. The New York City Fire Department operates 9 firehouses in Harlem, as many as several hundred farmed the Harlem flatlands. Between 1637 and 1639, a few settlements were established, during the American Revolution, the British burned Harlem to the ground. It took a time to rebuild, as Harlem grew more slowly than the rest of Manhattan during the late 18th century. After the American Civil War, Harlem experienced an economic boom starting in 1868, the neighborhood continued to serve as a refuge for New Yorkers, but increasingly those coming north were poor and Jewish or Italian
12.
Music hall
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Music hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment that was popular from the early Victorian era circa 1850 and lasting until 1960. It involved a mixture of songs, comedy, speciality acts. The term is derived from a type of theatre or venue in which such entertainment took place and these theatres were designed chiefly so people could consume food and alcohol and smoke tobacco in the auditorium while the entertainment took place. This differed somewhat from the type of theatre, which until then seated the audience in stalls with a separate bar-room. By the mid-19th century, the halls cried out for many new, as a result, professional songwriters were enlisted to provide the music for a plethora of star performers, such as Marie Lloyd, Dan Leno, Little Tich, and George Leybourne. Music hall did not adopt its own unique style, the halls had recovered by the start of the First World War and were used to stage charity events in aid of the war effort. Music hall entertainment continued after the war, but became popular due to upcoming Jazz, Swing. Licensing restrictions had also changed, and drinking was banned from the auditorium, a new type of music hall entertainment had arrived, in the form of variety, and many music hall performers failed to make the transition. Deemed old fashioned and with the closure of many halls, music hall entertainment ceased, Music hall in London had its origins in entertainment provided in the new style saloon bars of public houses during the 1830s. These venues replaced earlier semi-rural amusements provided by fairs and suburban pleasure gardens such as Vauxhall Gardens and these latter became subject to urban development and became fewer and less popular. The saloon was a room where for a fee or a greater price at the bar, singing, dancing. The most famous London saloon of the days was the Grecian Saloon, established in 1825, at The Eagle,2 Shepherdess Walk. According to John Hollingshead, proprietor of the Gaiety Theatre, London, this establishment was the father and mother, later known as the Grecian Theatre, it was here that Marie Lloyd made her début at the age of 14 in 1884. It is still famous because of an English nursery rhyme, with the somewhat mysterious lyrics, Up and down the City Road In and out The Eagle Thats the way the money goesPop goes the weasel. Another famous song and supper room of this period was Evans Music-and-Supper Rooms,43 King Street, Covent Garden and this venue was also known as Evans Late Joys – Joy being the name of the previous owner. Other song and supper rooms included the Coal Hole in The Strand, the Cyder Cellars in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, the music hall as we know it developed from such establishments during the 1850s and were built in and on the grounds of public houses. In a theatre, by contrast, the audience was seated in stalls, an exception to this rule was the Britannia Theatre, Hoxton which somehow managed to evade this regulation and served drinks to its customers. Though a theatre rather than a hall, this establishment later hosted music hall variety acts
13.
African Americans
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African Americans are an ethnic group of Americans with total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa. The term may also be used to only those individuals who are descended from enslaved Africans. As a compound adjective the term is usually hyphenated as African-American, Black and African Americans constitute the third largest racial and ethnic group in the United States. Most African Americans are of West and Central African descent and are descendants of enslaved peoples within the boundaries of the present United States. On average, African Americans are of 73. 2–80. 9% West African, 18–24% European, according to US Census Bureau data, African immigrants generally do not self-identify as African American. The overwhelming majority of African immigrants identify instead with their own respective ethnicities, immigrants from some Caribbean, Central American and South American nations and their descendants may or may not also self-identify with the term. After the founding of the United States, black people continued to be enslaved, believed to be inferior to white people, they were treated as second-class citizens. The Naturalization Act of 1790 limited U. S. citizenship to whites only, in 2008, Barack Obama became the first African American to be elected President of the United States. The first African slaves arrived via Santo Domingo to the San Miguel de Gualdape colony, the ill-fated colony was almost immediately disrupted by a fight over leadership, during which the slaves revolted and fled the colony to seek refuge among local Native Americans. De Ayllón and many of the colonists died shortly afterwards of an epidemic, the settlers and the slaves who had not escaped returned to Haiti, whence they had come. The first recorded Africans in British North America were 20 and odd negroes who came to Jamestown, as English settlers died from harsh conditions, more and more Africans were brought to work as laborers. Typically, young men or women would sign a contract of indenture in exchange for transportation to the New World, the landowner received 50 acres of land from the state for each servant purchased from a ships captain. An indentured servant would work for years without wages. The status of indentured servants in early Virginia and Maryland was similar to slavery, servants could be bought, sold, or leased and they could be physically beaten for disobedience or running away. Africans could legally raise crops and cattle to purchase their freedom and they raised families, married other Africans and sometimes intermarried with Native Americans or English settlers. By the 1640s and 1650s, several African families owned farms around Jamestown and some became wealthy by colonial standards and purchased indentured servants of their own. In 1640, the Virginia General Court recorded the earliest documentation of slavery when they sentenced John Punch. One of Dutch African arrivals, Anthony Johnson, would own one of the first black slaves, John Casor
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Neoclassical architecture
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Neoclassical architecture is an architectural style produced by the neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century. In its purest form, it is a style derived from the architecture of classical antiquity, the Vitruvian principles. In form, Neoclassical architecture emphasizes the wall rather than chiaroscuro, Neoclassical architecture is still designed today, but may be labelled New Classical Architecture for contemporary buildings. In Central and Eastern Europe, the style is referred to as Classicism. Many early 19th-century neoclassical architects were influenced by the drawings and projects of Étienne-Louis Boullée, the many graphite drawings of Boullée and his students depict spare geometrical architecture that emulates the eternality of the universe. There are links between Boullées ideas and Edmund Burkes conception of the sublime, the baroque style had never truly been to the English taste. The most popular was the four-volume Vitruvius Britannicus by Colen Campbell, the book contained architectural prints of famous British buildings that had been inspired by the great architects from Vitruvius to Palladio. At first the book featured the work of Inigo Jones. Palladian architecture became well established in 18th-century Britain, at the forefront of the new school of design was the aristocratic architect earl, Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington, in 1729, he and William Kent, designed Chiswick House. This House was a reinterpretation of Palladios Villa Capra, but purified of 16th century elements and this severe lack of ornamentation was to be a feature of the Palladianism. In 1734 William Kent and Lord Burlington designed one of Englands finest examples of Palladian architecture with Holkham Hall in Norfolk, the main block of this house followed Palladios dictates quite closely, but Palladios low, often detached, wings of farm buildings were elevated in significance. This classicising vein was also detectable, to a degree, in the Late Baroque architecture in Paris. This shift was even visible in Rome at the redesigned façade for S, by the mid 18th century, the movement broadened to incorporate a greater range of Classical influences, including those from Ancient Greece. The shift to neoclassical architecture is conventionally dated to the 1750s, in France, the movement was propelled by a generation of French art students trained in Rome, and was influenced by the writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann. The style was adopted by progressive circles in other countries such as Sweden. A second neoclassic wave, more severe, more studied and more consciously archaeological, is associated with the height of the Napoleonic Empire, in France, the first phase of neoclassicism was expressed in the Louis XVI style, and the second in the styles called Directoire or Empire. The Scottish architect Charles Cameron created palatial Italianate interiors for the German-born Catherine II the Great in St. Petersburg, indoors, neoclassicism made a discovery of the genuine classic interior, inspired by the rediscoveries at Pompeii and Herculaneum. These had begun in the late 1740s, but only achieved an audience in the 1760s
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First Baptist Church in the City of New York
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The church is a conservative, independent, evangelistic, mission-oriented church in fellowship with the Southern Baptist Convention. The first attempt to establish a Baptist presence in New York City dates to 1711, a church was built on Gold Street but disbanded eight years later because of financial recession. Earlier attempts at forming a Baptist church in Flushing, Queens took place by William Wickenden, in 1745, Jeremiah Dodge settled in New York City, and began holding prayer meetings in his home. He was a member of the Fishkill Baptist Church, when he learned of Benjamin Miller at nearby Scotch Plains Baptist Church in Scotch Plains, New Jersey, he asked him to come and hold preaching services at the prayer meetings, which he did. Other ministers preached to this group from time to time, and in 1753, Gano served as pastor until 1776 when he became Chaplain in General Washingtons American Army. The congregations first sanctuary was at 35 Gold Street in Lower Manhattan, the church supported the American Revolution even though New York City was occupied by British forces from the summer of 1776 for the duration of the war. Elder Gano joined the army and was a chaplain to General George Washington, on his return to New York City after the revolution, Gano found thirty-seven members who restored the church building and grew thereafter to two hundred. When the Congress offered former revolutionary soldiers land on the frontier, there he started several Baptist churches. He was also a founder of the Baptist-affiliated Brown University in Providence, from 1801-02, the First Baptist Church built a new stone structure at its site on Gold Street. During the period they were located there, the congregations inhospitality to African-Americans provoked the founding of the Abyssinian Baptist Church, under the leadership of Dr. Spencer Cone, the congregation relocated in 1842 to a Gothic revial structure at 354 Broome Street at the intersection of Elizabeth Street. This was also the headquarters of the Baptist Home and Foreign Mission Board and this sanctuary is still in use today by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of St. Matthew. When the congregation outgrew the facility, it moved uptown to the intersection of East 39th Street. Under the leadership of Dr. Thomas Anderson, a Gothic brownstone sanctuary was constructed, the First Baptist Church relocated to the present facility in 1890. It occupies a site that, because of a bend in the direction of Broadway, is prominent from a distance down the avenue, the building is set at an agle of 45 degrees to the street grid. The building was designed by George M. Keister, who 25 years later designed the Apollo Theater in Harlem, a balcony was added in 1903. This created a capacity of one thousand. Two unequal towers over the entrance to the main auditorium are examples of Biblical symbolism. The taller tower represents Jesus Christ as the Head of the Church, the lower tower, which appears incomplete, was designed to represent the Church, which will remain unfulfilled until the return of Christ
16.
Adelaide Hall
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Adelaide Louise Hall was an American-born UK-based jazz singer and entertainer. Her long career spanned more than 70 years from 1921 until her death, Hall entered the Guinness Book of World Records in 2003 as the worlds most enduring recording artist having released material over eight consecutive decades. Adelaide Hall was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Elizabeth, in 1925, Hall toured Europe with the Chocolate Kiddies revue that included songs written by Duke Ellington. In 1926, Hall appeared in the short-lived Broadway musical My Magnolia that had a written by Luckey Roberts. Rogers, after which she appeared in Tan Town Topics with songs written by Fats Waller, Hall then starred in Desires of 1927, which toured America from October 1926 through to September 1927. In 1924, Hall married a British sailor Bertram Errol Hicks, born in Trinidad, soon after their marriage he opened a short-lived club in Harlem, New York, called The Big Apple and became her official business manager. Hall was hired to join the cast of the Chocolate Kiddies revue in New York, the initial tour started at Hamburg, Germany, on 17 May 1925, and ended in Paris, France in December 1925 visiting many major cities in-between. The revue was designed to give Europeans a sampling of black entertainment from New York, included in the cast were The Three Eddies, Lottie Gee, Rufus Greenlee and Thaddeus Drayton, Bobbie and Babe Goins, Charles Davis and Sam Wooding and his Orchestra. After the initial tour disbanded, Sam Wooding and his Orchestra continued touring the Chocolate Kiddies revue for several years later. In 1926, upon Halls return to New York after touring Europe with the Chocolate Kiddies, she was featured in Tan Town Topics, a revue containing songs written by Fats Waller and Spencer Williams. The cast included Fats Waller, Eddie Rector and Ralph Cooper, Adelaide Hall, Maude Mills, Arthur Gaines, Leondus Simmons and a dance troupe called the Tan Town Topics Vamps. The show opened at Harlem’s Lafayette Theatre on 5 April followed by a road tour on the eastern Theater Owners Booking Association circuit taking in Baltimore, Chicago. During July 1926, Hall appeared in residency with Lottie Gee, on Tuesday,5 October, Hall appeared again at Small’s Paradise at a special party, Handy Night, hosted by the venue to honour W. C. Handy and to celebrate the release of his published book Blues, An Anthology—Complete Words. For entertainment, Adelaide Hall, Lottie Gee, Maude White and Chic Collins provided a selection of jazz and blues numbers. From October 1926, Hall toured America playing the TOBA circuit until September 1927 in the highly praised show Desires of 1927, conceived by J. Homer Tutt, as the Pittsburgh Courier noted, Adelaide Hall and assistants have some show. Billed as the soubrette of the show, Adelaides performance included several songs. In October 1927, Hall recorded her wordless vocals on Creole Love Call, The Blues I Love To Sing and Chicago Stomp Down with Duke Ellington, the recordings were worldwide hits and catapulted both Halls and Ellingtons careers into the mainstream
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Lafayette Theatre (Harlem)
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The Lafayette Theatre was an entertainment venue located at 132nd Street and 7th Avenue in Harlem, New York that operated from 1912 to 1951. The structure was demolished in 2013, the Lafayette Theatre, known locally as the House Beautiful, was one the most famous theaters is Harlem. Located at 132nd Street and 7th Avenue, the 1, 500-seat two-story theater was built by banker Meyer Jarmulowsky. It was designed in the Renaissance style by architect Victor Hugo Koehler, the Lafayette Theatre opened in November 1912. In 1913 the Lafayette became the first major theater to desegregate, African-American theatergoers were allowed to sit in orchestra seats instead of the balcony, to which they were relegated in other New York theaters. The Lafayette Players, the resident stock company, played before almost exclusively African-American audiences both in plays from white theater repertory and in the classics, the theater and presented such Broadway hits as Madame X and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. From 1916–1919, the theatre was managed by Quality Amusement, robert Levy, the owner of this entertainment company, drew large audiences of both blacks and whites with his sophisticated productions and groundbreaking work with black actors. In 1923, Duke Ellington made his New York debut while performing in Wilbur Sweatmans band at the Lafayette and this was all due to producer/director Leonard Harper who Ellington lived with as a boarder in his larger Harlem apartment at the time. Other jazz musicians who performed at the Lafayette include Fletcher Henderson, Bennie Moten, Chick Webb, the Lafayette Theatre reached the height of its fame with the Voodoo Macbeth, a production of Shakespeares Macbeth, adapted and staged by Orson Welles that ran April 14–June 20,1936. This show had an all African-American cast and it was a production of the Federal Theatre Project which was part of the Works Project Administration. The overture was by James P. Johnson and such actors as Canada Lee. In 1951 the building was acquired by Williams Institutional Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, the original facade was replaced in 1990, to the distress of advocates of historic preservation. The building was demolished in 2013, replaced by an apartment building called the Lafayette. Lafayette Theatre at the Internet Broadway Database Google Street View, the church in 2011 New York City Department of Records 2225-27 Adam C Powell Blvd
18.
Louis Armstrong
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Louis Armstrong, nicknamed Satchmo or Satch, was an American trumpeter, composer, singer and occasional actor who was one of the most influential figures in jazz. His career spanned five decades, from the 1920s to the 1960s and he was also skilled at scat singing. Armstrong was one of the first truly popular African-American entertainers to cross over and he rarely publicly politicized his race, often to the dismay of fellow African Americans, but took a well-publicized stand for desegregation in the Little Rock crisis. His artistry and personality allowed him socially acceptable access to the upper echelons of American society which were restricted for black men of his era. Armstrong often stated that he was born on July 4,1900, although he died in 1971, it was not until the mid-1980s that his true birth date, August 4,1901, was discovered by the researcher Tad Jones through the examination of baptismal records. Armstrong was born into a family in New Orleans, Louisiana. He spent his youth in poverty, in a neighborhood known as the Battlefield. His father, William Armstrong, abandoned the family when Louis was an infant and his mother, Mary Mayann Albert, then left Louis and his younger sister, Beatrice Armstrong Collins, in the care of his grandmother, Josephine Armstrong, and at times his uncle Isaac. At five, he moved back to live with his mother, her relatives and he attended the Fisk School for Boys, where he most likely had early exposure to music. He hung out in dance halls close to home, where he observed everything from licentious dancing to the quadrille, after dropping out of the Fisk School at age eleven, Armstrong joined a quartet of boys who sang in the streets for money. He also started to get into trouble, Cornet player Bunk Johnson said he taught Armstrong to play by ear at Dago Tonys Tonk in New Orleans, although in his later years Armstrong gave the credit to Oliver. It has given me something to live for and he also worked for a Lithuanian-Jewish immigrant family, the Karnofskys, who had a junk-hauling business and gave him odd jobs. They took him in and treated him like family, knowing he lived without a father and he later wrote a memoir of his relationship with the Karnofskys, Louis Armstrong + the Jewish Family in New Orleans, La. the Year of 1907. Armstrong wore a Star of David pendant for the rest of his life and wrote about what he learned from them, how to live—real life, professor Peter Davis instilled discipline in and provided musical training to the otherwise self-taught Armstrong. Eventually, Davis made Armstrong the band leader, the home band played around New Orleans and the thirteen-year-old Louis began to draw attention by his cornet playing, starting him on a musical career. At fourteen he was released from the home, living again with his father and new stepmother, Gertrude, Armstrong got his first dance hall job at Henry Ponces, where Black Benny became his protector and guide. He hauled coal by day and played his cornet at night, later, he played in brass bands and riverboats of New Orleans, and began traveling with the well-regarded band of Fate Marable, which toured on a steamboat up and down the Mississippi River. He described his time with Marable as going to the University, in 1919, Joe Oliver decided to go north and resigned his position in Kid Orys band, Armstrong replaced him
19.
Bill Robinson
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Bill Bojangles Robinson was an American tap dancer and actor, the best known and most highly paid African American entertainer in the first half of the twentieth century. According to dance critic Marshall Stearns, Robinsons contribution to tap dance is exact and he brought it up on its toes, dancing upright and swinging, giving tap a …hitherto-unknown lightness and presence. His signature routine was the dance, in which Robinson would tap up and down a set of stairs in a rhythmically complex sequence of steps. Robinson is also credited with having introduced a new word, copacetic, into popular culture, via his repeated use of it in vaudeville and radio appearances. Robinson is remembered for the support he gave to fellow performers, including Fred Astaire, Lena Horne, Jesse Owens, Sammy Davis, Jr. and Ann Miller credited him as a teacher and mentor, and Miller credits him with having changed the course of my life. Gregory Hines produced and starred in a movie about Robinson for which he won the NAACP Best actor Award. In 1989, the U. S. Congress designated May 25, Robinsons birthday, luther Robinson was born in Richmond, Virginia and raised in its Jackson Ward neighborhood. His parents were Maxwell, a worker, and Maria Robinson. His grandmother raised him after both died in 1884 when he was eight years old—his father from chronic heart disease. Details of Robinsons early life are only through legend, much of it perpetuated by Robinson himself. He claimed he was christened Luther—a name he did not like and he suggested to his younger brother Bill that they should exchange names. Eventually, the exchange between the names of both brothers was made, the brother subsequently adopted the name of Percy and under that name achieved recognition as a musician. At the age of five, Robinson began dancing for small change, appearing as a hoofer or busker in local beer gardens, a promoter saw him performing outside the Globe Theater in Richmond and offered him a job as a pick in a local minstrel show. At that time, minstrel shows were staged by performers in blackface. Pickaninnies were cute black children at the edge of the singing, dancing. In 1890, at the age of 13, Robinson ran away to Washington, D. C. where he did odd jobs at Benning Race Track and he teamed up with a young Al Jolson, with Jolson singing while Robinson danced for pennies or to sell newspapers. In 1891 he was hired by Whallen and Martel, touring with Mayme Remingtons troupe in a show titled The South Before the War, performing again as a pickaninny and he travelled with the show for over a year before growing too mature to play the role credibly. In 1898, he returned to Richmond where he joined the United States Army as a rifleman when the Spanish–American War broke out and he received an accidental gunshot wound from a second lieutenant who was cleaning his gun
20.
Bessie Smith
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Bessie Smith was an American blues singer. Nicknamed the Empress of the Blues, she was the most popular female singer of the 1920s and 1930s. She is often regarded as one of the greatest singers of her era and was an influence on other jazz singers. The 1900 census indicates that Smith was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in July 1892, the 1910 census gave her age as 16. A birth date of April 15,1894, appears on subsequent documents and was observed as her birthday by the Smith family, the 1870 and 1880 censuses report three older half-siblings, but later interviews with Smiths family and contemporaries did not mention them among her siblings. She was the daughter of Laura and William Smith, a laborer and he died while his daughter was too young to remember him. By the time Bessie was nine, her mother and a brother had also died and her older sister Viola took charge of caring for her siblings. To earn money for their household, Smith and her brother Andrew began busking on the streets of Chattanooga, she sang and danced. Their favorite location was in front of the White Elephant Saloon at Thirteenth and Elm streets, in 1904, her oldest brother, Clarence, left home, joining a small traveling troupe owned by Moses Stokes. If Bessie had been old enough, she would have gone with him, said Clarences widow, thats why he left without telling her, but Clarence told me she was ready, even then. Of course, she was only a child, in 1912, Clarence returned to Chattanooga with the Stokes troupe and arranged an audition for his sister with the managers of the troupe, Lonnie and Cora Fisher. She was hired as a rather than a singer, because the company already included the well-known singer Ma Rainey. Smith eventually moved on to performing in various lines, making the 81 Theater in Atlanta her home base. She also performed in shows on the circuit and became its biggest star after she signed a recording contract with Columbia Records. Smiths recording career began in 1923 and she was then living in Philadelphia, where she met Jack Gee, a security guard, whom she married on June 7,1923, just as her first record was being released. Their marriage was stormy with infidelity on both sides, including numerous female lovers for Bessie, Gee was impressed by the money but never adjusted to show business life or to Smiths bisexuality. In 1929, when she learned of his affair with singer, Gertrude Saunders, Smith ended the relationship. Smith later entered a marriage with an old friend, Richard Morgan
21.
Vaudeville
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Vaudeville is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment. It was especially popular in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s, a typical vaudeville performance is made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill. A vaudeville performer is often referred to as a vaudevillian, Vaudeville developed from many sources, including the concert saloon, minstrelsy, freak shows, dime museums, and literary American burlesque. Called the heart of American show business, vaudeville was one of the most popular types of entertainment in North America for several decades, the origin of this term is obscure, but is often explained as being derived from the French expression voix de ville. A second speculation is that it comes from the songs on satire by poet Olivier Basselin. Some, however, preferred the term variety to what manager Tony Pastor called its sissy. Thus, vaudeville was marketed as variety well into the 20th century, with its first subtle appearances within the early 1860s, vaudeville was not initially a common form of entertainment. The form gradually evolved from the saloon and variety hall into its mature form throughout the 1870s and 1880s. This more gentle form was known as Polite Vaudeville, in the years before the American Civil War, entertainment existed on a different scale. Certainly, variety theatre existed before 1860 in Europe and elsewhere, in the US, as early as the first decades of the 19th century, theatregoers could enjoy a performance consisting of Shakespeare plays, acrobatics, singing, dancing, and comedy. As the years progressed, people seeking diversified amusement found a number of ways to be entertained. Vaudeville was characterized by traveling companies touring through cities and towns, a significant influence also came from Dutch minstrels and comedians. Vaudeville incorporated these various itinerant amusements into a stable, institutionalized form centered in Americas growing urban hubs, pastors experiment proved successful, and other managers soon followed suit. B. F. Keith took the step, starting in Boston. Later, E. F. Albee, adoptive grandfather of the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Edward Albee, circuits such as those managed by Keith-Albee provided vaudevilles greatest economic innovation and the principal source of its industrial strength. They enabled a chain of allied vaudeville houses that remedied the chaos of the booking system by contracting acts for regional and national tours. These could easily be lengthened from a few weeks to two years, Albee also gave national prominence to vaudevilles trumpeting polite entertainment, a commitment to entertainment equally inoffensive to men, women and children. Acts that violated this ethos were admonished and threatened with expulsion from the remaining performances or were canceled altogether
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Chorus line
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A chorus line is a large group of dancers who together perform synchronized routines, usually in musical theatre. Chorus line dancers in Broadway musicals and revues have been referred to by terms such as ponies, gypsies and twirlies. Ballet uses the term corps de ballet, a chorus girl or chorine is a female performer in a chorus line, and the word chorine is not to be confused with chlorine
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Swing music
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Swing music, or simply swing, is a form of American music that dominated in the 1930s and 1940s. The name swing came from the swing feel where the emphasis is on the off–beat or weaker pulse in the music, Swing bands usually featured soloists who would improvise on the melody over the arrangement. The danceable swing style of big bands and bandleaders such as Benny Goodman was the dominant form of American popular music from 1935 to 1946, the verb to swing is also used as a term of praise for playing that has a strong groove or drive. Notable musicians of the era include Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller, Count Basie, Woody Herman. Swing has roots in the late 1920s as larger ensembles began using written arrangements, a typical song played in swing style would feature a strong, anchoring rhythm section in support of more loosely tied wind and brass. The most common style consisted of having a soloist take center stage, Swing music began to decline in popularity during World War II because of several factors. By the late 1940s, swing had morphed into traditional pop music, or evolved into new styles such as jump blues, Swing music saw a revival in the late 1950s and 1960s with pop vocalists such as Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, and Ella Fitzgerald. Swing blended with other genres to create new styles, in country music, artists such as Jimmie Rodgers, Moon Mullican and Bob Wills introduced many elements of swing along with blues to create a genre called western swing. Gypsy swing is an outgrowth of Venuti and Langs jazz violin swing, in the 1970s, and 1980s, fans of big band music attended swing music performances at supper clubs. In the late-1980s a trendier, more urban-styled swing-beat emerged called new jack swing, in the late 1990s and into the 2000s there was a swing revival, led by Squirrel Nut Zippers, Brian Setzer, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, and Lavay Smith. In Canada, some of the early 2000s records by The JW-Jones Blues Band included swing revival elements, the 1920s saw parallel trends in jazz and popular music that would later converge into the swing style. New Orleans style jazz was based on a meter and contrapuntal improvisation led by a trumpet or cornet, typically followed by a clarinet. The rhythm section consisted of a tuba and drums, and sometimes a banjo, by the early 1920s guitars and pianos sometimes substituted for the banjo and a string bass sometimes substituted for the tuba. Further innovations in small ensemble playing led to development of the Chicago style identified with Louis Armstrong, a stint with the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra familiarized him with arranged ensemble playing that differed from the New Orleans style, in which saxophones became the dominant sound among the reeds. Armstrong brought those back to his smaller ensembles, the soloist played over an ensemble relegated to a supporting role in the background. The string bass also lent itself to playing in a 4/4 rhythm rather than the 2/4 rhythm dictated by the tuba. The new format gave the soloist the opportunity to play with more rhythmic freedom, but playing with swing remained the province of the soloist, not the ensemble. The late 1920s saw increasingly sophisticated arrangements used by bigger ensembles, some arrangements used call-response between horn sections to build the melody
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Duke Ellington
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Edward Kennedy Duke Ellington was an American composer, pianist, and bandleader of a jazz orchestra, which he led from 1923 until his death in a career spanning over fifty years. Ellington was based in New York City from the mid-1920s onward, in the 1930s, his orchestra toured in Europe. Some of the musicians who were members of Ellingtons orchestra, such as saxophonist Johnny Hodges, are considered to be among the best players in jazz, Ellington melded them into the best-known orchestral unit in the history of jazz. Some members stayed with the orchestra for several decades, a master at writing miniatures for the three-minute 78 rpm recording format, Ellington often composed specifically to feature the style and skills of his individual musicians. Ellington also recorded songs written by his bandsmen, for example Juan Tizols Caravan, and Perdido, after 1941, Ellington collaborated with composer-arranger-pianist Billy Strayhorn, whom he called his writing and arranging companion. With Strayhorn, he composed many extended compositions, or suites, following an appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival, in July 1956, Ellington and his orchestra enjoyed a major career revival and embarked on world tours. Ellington recorded for most American record companies of his era, performed in films, scoring several. His reputation continued to rise after he died, and he was awarded a special posthumous Pulitzer Prize for music in 1999, Ellington was born on April 29,1899, to James Edward Ellington and Daisy Ellington in Washington, D. C. Daisy primarily played parlor songs and James preferred operatic arias and they lived with his maternal grandparents at 2129 Ida Place, NW, in the West End neighborhood of Washington, D. C. Dukes father was born in Lincolnton, North Carolina, on April 15,1879, Daisy Kennedy was born in Washington, D. C. on January 4,1879, the daughter of a former American slave. James Ellington made blueprints for the United States Navy, when Ellington was a child, his family showed racial pride and support in their home, as did many other families. African Americans in D. C. worked to protect their children from the eras Jim Crow laws, at the age of seven, Ellington began taking piano lessons from Marietta Clinkscales. Daisy surrounded her son with dignified women to reinforce his manners, Ellingtons childhood friends noticed that his casual, offhand manner, his easy grace, and his dapper dress gave him the bearing of a young nobleman, and began calling him Duke. Ellington credited his chum Edgar McEntree for the nickname, I think he felt that in order for me to be eligible for his constant companionship, I should have a title. Though Ellington took piano lessons, he was interested in baseball. President Roosevelt would come by on his horse sometimes, and stop and watch us play, Ellington went to Armstrong Technical High School in Washington, D. C. He gained his first job selling peanuts at Washington Senators baseball games, in the summer of 1914, while working as a soda jerk at the Poodle Dog Café, Ellington wrote his first composition, Soda Fountain Rag. He created the piece by ear, as he had not yet learned to read, I would play the Soda Fountain Rag as a one-step, two-step, waltz, tango, and fox trot, Ellington recalled
25.
Dizzy Gillespie
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John Birks Dizzy Gillespie was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer, and singer. AllMusics Scott Yanow wrote, Dizzy Gillespies contributions to jazz were huge, Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and improviser, building on the virtuoso style of Roy Eldridge but adding layers of harmonic complexity previously unheard in jazz. His beret and horn-rimmed spectacles, his singing, his bent horn, pouched cheeks. In the 1940s Gillespie, with Charlie Parker, became a figure in the development of bebop. He taught and influenced other musicians, including trumpeters Miles Davis, Jon Faddis, Fats Navarro, Clifford Brown, Arturo Sandoval, Lee Morgan, Chuck Mangione. Gillespie was born in Cheraw, South Carolina, the youngest of nine children of James, James was a local bandleader, so instruments were made available to the children. Gillespie started to play the piano at the age of four, Gillespies father died when he was only ten years old. Gillespie taught himself how to play the trombone as well as the trumpet by the age of twelve, from the night he heard his idol, Roy Eldridge, play on the radio, he dreamed of becoming a jazz musician. He received a scholarship to the Laurinburg Institute in North Carolina which he attended for two years before accompanying his family when they moved to Philadelphia. Teddy Hills band was where Gillespie made his first recording, King Porter Stomp, Willis was not immediately friendly but Gillespie was attracted anyway. The two finally married on May 9,1940 and they remained married until his death in 1993. Gillespie stayed with Teddy Hills band for a year, then left, in 1939, Gillespie joined Cab Calloways orchestra, with which he recorded one of his earliest compositions, the instrumental Pickin the Cabbage, in 1940. After a notorious altercation between the two men, Calloway fired Gillespie in late 1941, the incident is recounted by Gillespie, along with fellow Calloway band members Milt Hinton and Jonah Jones, in Jean Bachs 1997 film, The Spitball Story. Calloway did not approve of Gillespies mischievous humor, nor of his approach to soloing, according to Jones. Finally, their grudge for each other erupted over a thrown spitball, Calloway never thought highly of Gillespie, because he didnt view Gillespie as a good musician. Once during a rehearsal, a member of the band threw a spitball, already in a foul mood, Calloway decided to blame this on Gillespie. In order to clear his name, Gillespie didn’t take the blame, Calloway had minor cuts on the thigh and wrist. After the two men were separated, Calloway fired Gillespie, a few days later, Gillespie tried to apologize to Calloway, but he was dismissed
26.
Chick Webb
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William Henry Webb, often known as Chick Webb was an American jazz and swing music drummer as well as a band leader. Webb was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to William H. from childhood, he suffered from tuberculosis of the spine, leaving him with short stature and a badly deformed spine, which caused him to appear hunchbacked. The idea of playing an instrument was suggested by his doctor to loosen up his bones and he supported himself as a newspaper boy to save enough money to buy drums, and first played professionally at age 11. Webb had three sisters, Bessie, Mabel and Ethel, Mabel married Wilbur Porter around 1928. At the age of 17 he moved to New York City, jazz drummer Tommy Benford said he gave Webb drum lessons when he first reached New York. He alternated between band tours and residencies at New York City clubs through the late 1920s, in 1931, his band became the house band at the Savoy Ballroom. He became one of the bandleaders and drummers of the new swing style. Drummer Buddy Rich cited Webbs powerful technique and virtuoso performances as heavily influential on his own drumming, Webb was unable to read music, and instead memorized the arrangements played by the band and conducted from a platform in the center. He used custom-made pedals, goose-neck cymbal holders, a 28-inch bass drum, although his band was not as influential and revered in the long term, it was feared in the battle of the bands. The Savoy often featured Battle of the Bands where Webbs band would compete with top bands from opposing bandstands. By the end of the battles the dancers seemed always to have voted Chicks band as the best. As a result, Webb was deemed the most worthy recipient to be crowned the first King of Swing, notably, Webb lost to Duke Ellington in 1937. Webb married Martha Loretta Ferguson, and in 1935 he began featuring a teenaged Ella Fitzgerald as vocalist, together Chick and Ella would electrify the Swing Era of jazz with hits such as A-Tisket a Tasket, which was composed by Van Alexander at Fitzgeralds request. Despite rumors to the contrary, Ella was not adopted by Webb, nor did she live with him and his wife, Sallye, according to Stuart Nicholson in his Fitzgerald biography. In November 1938, Webbs health began to decline, for a time, however, he continued to play and he disregarded his own discomfort and fatigue, which often found him passing out from physical exhaustion after finishing sets. Finally, he had an operation at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore in 1939. William Henry Chick Webb died from tuberculosis on June 16,1939. Reportedly his last words were, Im sorry, Ive got to go and he was roughly 34 years old
27.
Count Basie
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William James Count Basie was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. His mother taught him to play the piano and he started performing in his teens, dropping out of school, he learned to operate lights for vaudeville and to improvise accompaniment for silent films at a local movie theater in his home town of Red Bank, New Jersey. By 16 years old, he played jazz piano at parties, resorts. In 1924, he went to Harlem, where his career expanded, he toured with groups to the major jazz cities of Chicago, St. Louis. In 1929 he joined Bennie Motens band in Kansas City, in 1935, Basie formed his own jazz orchestra, the Count Basie Orchestra, and in 1936 took them to Chicago for a long engagement and their first recording. William Basie was born to Harvey Lee and Lillian Basie in Red Bank and his father worked as a coachman and caretaker for a wealthy judge. After automobiles replaced horses, his became an groundskeeper and handyman for several wealthy families in the area. Both of his parents had some type of musical background and his father played the mellophone, and his mother played the piano, in fact, she gave Basie his first piano lessons. She took in laundry and baked cakes for sale for a living and she paid 25 cents a lesson for piano instruction for him. Not much of a student in school, Basie dreamed of a traveling life and he finished junior high school but spent much of his time at the Palace Theater in Red Bank, where doing occasional chores gained him free admission to performances. He quickly learned to improvise music appropriate to the acts and the silent movies, though a natural at the piano, Basie preferred drums. Discouraged by the talents of Sonny Greer, who also lived in Red Bank and became Duke Ellingtons drummer in 1919. Greer and Basie played together in venues until Greer set out on his professional career, by then, Basie was playing with pick-up groups for dances, resorts, and amateur shows, including Harry Richardsons Kings of Syncopation. When not playing a gig, he hung out at the pool hall with other musicians. He got some jobs in Asbury Park at the Jersey Shore, around 1920, Basie went to Harlem, a hotbed of jazz, where he lived down the block from the Alhambra Theater. Early after his arrival, he bumped into Sonny Greer, who was by then the drummer for the Washingtonians, soon, Basie met many of the Harlem musicians who were making the scene, including Willie the Lion Smith and James P. Johnson. His touring took him to Kansas City, St. Louis, New Orleans, throughout his tours, Basie met many jazz musicians, including Louis Armstrong. Before he was 20 years old, he toured extensively on the Keith and TOBA vaudeville circuits as a solo pianist, accompanist, and music director for blues singers, dancers and this provided an early training that was to prove significant in his later career
28.
Andy Kirk (musician)
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Andrew Dewey Kirk was a jazz saxophonist and tubist best known as a bandleader of the Twelve Clouds of Joy, popular during the swing era. Kirk grew up in Denver, Colorado, where he was tutored by Wilberforce Whiteman, Kirk started his musical career playing with George Morrisons band, but then went on to join Terrence Holders Dark Clouds of Joy. In 1929 he was elected leader after Holder departed, renaming the band Clouds of Joy, Kirk also relocated the band from Dallas, Texas, to Kansas City, Kansas. Although officially titled as the Clouds of Joy, the band has also known to be called the Twelve Clouds of Joy due to the number of musicians in the band. They set up in the Pla-Mor Ballroom on the junction of 32nd and Main in Kansas City, Mary Lou Williams came in as pianist at the last moment, but she impressed Brunswicks Dave Kapp, so she became a regular member of the band. Kirk moved the band to Kansas City, and since their first recordings in 1929–1930, in mid-1936, he was signed to Decca and made scores of popular records until 1946. In 1938, Kirk and band held the top spot of the Billboard chart for 12 weeks with I Wont Tell a Soul, written by Hughie Charles and Ross Parker, in 1943, with June Richmond on vocals, he had a number 4 hit with Hey Lawdy Mama. Although the leader of the band, Kirk usually was not a soloist, utilizing the talent in his band for the spotlight instead. His genius lay in realizing how best to use of his band members skills Their pianist, and the bands arranger, was Mary Lou Williams. In 1948, Kirk disbanded the Clouds of Joy and continued to work as a musician and he also served as an official in the Musicians Union. Andy Kirk And His Clouds Of Joy, Souvenir Album, Vol, ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press,1989. Frank Driggs & Chuck Haddix Kansas City Jazz, From Ragtime to Bebop – A History, Oxford, Oxford University, Oxford 2005, ISBN 978-0-19-530712-2
29.
Nicholas Brothers
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The Nicholas Brothers were a team of dancing brothers, Fayard and Harold, who performed a highly acrobatic technique known as flash dancing. With a high level of artistry and daring innovations, they were considered by many to be the greatest tap dancers of their day. Their performance in the musical number Jumpin Jive featured in the movie Stormy Weather is considered by many to be the most virtuosic dance display of all time, Fayard Antonio Nicholas was born October 20,1914, in Mobile, Alabama. Harold Lloyd Nicholas was born March 17,1921, in Winston-Salem, the Nicholas Brothers grew up in Philadelphia, the sons of college-educated musicians who played in their own band at the old Standard Theater—their mother at the piano and father on drums. The brothers were fascinated by the combination of tap dancing and acrobatics, Fayard often imitated their acrobatics and clowning for the kids in his neighborhood. Neither Fayard nor Harold had any formal dance training, Fayard taught himself how to dance, sing, and perform by watching and imitating the professional entertainers on stage. He then taught his siblings, first performing with his sister Dorothy as the Nicholas Kids. Harold idolized his brother and learned by copying his moves. Dorothy later opted out of the act, and the Nicholas Kids became known as the Nicholas Brothers, as word spread of their talents, the Nicholas Brothers became famous in Philadelphia. They were first hired for a program, The Horn and Hardart Kiddie Hour, and then by other local theatres such as the Standard. When they were performing at the Pearl, the manager of The Lafayette, the brothers moved to Philadelphia in 1926 and gave their first performance at the Standard a few years later. In 1932 they became the act at Harlems Cotton Club. They astonished their mainly white audiences dancing to the jazz tempos of Bugle Call Rag and they performed at the Cotton Club for two years, working with the orchestras of Lucky Millinder, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington and Jimmy Lunceford. During this time they filmed their first movie short, Pie Pie Blackbird, in 1932, with Eubie Blake, the brothers attributed their success to this unique style of dancing, which was greatly in demand during this time. The brothers made their Broadway debut in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1936 and also appeared in Richard Rodgers and they impressed their choreographer, George Balanchine, who invited them to appear in Babes in Arms. With Balanchines training, they learned many new stunts and their talent led many to assume they were trained ballet dancers. By 1940, they had moved to Hollywood and for several decades alternated between movies, nightclubs, concerts, Broadway, television, and extensive tours of Latin America, Africa, and Europe. They toured England with a production of Blackbirds, which gave the Nicholas Brothers an opportunity to see, the Nicholas Brothers taught master classes in tap dance as teachers-in-residence at Harvard University and Radcliffe as Ruth Page Visiting Artists
30.
Carmen de Lavallade
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Carmen de Lavallade is an American actress, dancer and choreographer. Carmen de Lavallade was born in Los Angeles, California, on March 6,1931, to black Creole parents from New Orleans and she was raised by her aunt, Adele, who owned one of the first African-American history bookshops on Central Avenue. De Lavallades cousin, Janet Collins, was the first African-American prima ballerina at the Metropolitan Opera, De Lavallade began studying ballet with Melissa Blake at the age of 16. After graduation from Thomas Jefferson High School in Los Angeles was awarded a scholarship to dance with Lester Horton. De Lavallade became a member of the Lester Horton Dance Theater in 1949 where she danced as a dancer until her departure for New York City with Alvin Ailey in 1954. Like all of Hortons students, de Lavallade studied other art forms, including painting, acting, music, set design and costuming, as well as ballet and other forms of modern and she studied dancing with ballerina Carmelita Maracci and acting with Stella Adler. In 1954, de Lavallade made her Broadway debut partnered with Alvin Ailey in Truman Capotes musical House of Flowers, in 1955, she married dancer/actor Geoffrey Holder, whom she had met while working on House of Flowers. It was with Holder that de Lavallade choreographed her signature solo Come Sunday, the following year, de Lavallade danced as the prima ballerina in Samson and Delilah, and Aida at the Metropolitan Opera. She made her debut in John Butlers ballet Flight. She appeared in several productions, including Othello and Death of a Salesman. An introduction to 20th Century Fox executives by Lena Horne led to acting roles between 1952 and 1955. She appeared in films, including Carmen Jones with Dorothy Dandridge. De Lavallade was a principal guest performer with the Alvin Ailey Dance Company on the tour of Asia. Other performances included dancing with Donald McKayle and appearing in Agnes de Milles American Ballet Theatre productions of The Four Marys and she joined the Yale School of Drama as a choreographer and performer-in-residence in 1970. She staged musicals, plays and operas, and eventually became a professor, between 1990 and 1993, de Lavallade returned to the Metropolitan Opera as choreographer for Porgy and Bess and Die Meistersinger. In 2003, de Lavallade appeared in the rotating cast of the staged reading of Wit & Wisdom. In 2010, she appeared in a one-night-only concert semi-staged reading of Evening Primrose by Stephen Sondheim, De Lavallade had resided in New York City with her husband Geoffrey Holder until his death on October 5,2014. Their lives were the subject of the 2005 Linda Atkinson and Nick Doob documentary Carmen, the couple had one son, Léo
31.
Geoffrey Holder
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Geoffrey Lamont Holder was a Trinidadian-American actor, voice actor, choreographer, singer and director. He was known for his height, hearty laugh, and heavily accented bass voice combined with precise diction, from his film career, he is particularly remembered as the villain Baron Samedi in the 1973 Bond-movie Live and Let Die. Holder was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, and Tobago, One of four children, of parents who had emigrated to Trinidad from Barbados, Holder attended Tranquillity School and then secondary school at Queens Royal College in Port-of-Spain. At the age of seven, he made his debut in the company of his elder brother Boscoe Holder. In 1952, choreographer Agnes de Mille saw Geoffrey Holder dance in St. Thomas and she invited him to New York, he would teach at the Katherine Dunham School of Dance for two years. Holder was a dancer with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet in New York City from 1955 to 1956. He made his Broadway debut in House of Flowers, a musical by Harold Arlen and he also starred in an all-black production of Waiting for Godot in 1957. Holder began his career in the 1962 British film All Night Long. He followed that with Doctor Dolittle as Willie Shakespeare, leader of the natives of Sea-Star Island, in 1972, he was cast as the Sorcerer in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex*. The following year he was a henchman – Baron Samedi – in the Bond-movie Live and he contributed to the films choreography. In 1975, Holder won two Tony Awards for direction and costume design of The Wiz, the musical version of The Wizard of Oz. Holder was the first black man to be nominated in either category and he won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Costume Design. The show ran for 1672 performances, in 1978, Holder directed and choreographed the Broadway musical Timbuktu. Holders 1957 piece Bele is part of the Dance Theater of Harlem repertory, in the 1982 film Annie, Holder played the role of Punjab. He was in the 1992 film Boomerang with Eddie Murphy and he was also the voice of Ray in Bear in the Big Blue House and provided narration for Tim Burtons version of Roald Dahls Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He reprised his role as the 7 Up Spokesman in the 2011 season finale of The Celebrity Apprentice, Holder was a prolific painter, ardent art collector, book author, and music composer. As a painter, he won a Guggenheim Fellowship in fine arts in 1956, a book of his photography, Adam, was published by Viking Press in 1986. In 1955, Holder married dancer Carmen de Lavallade, whom he met when both were in the cast of the musical House of Flowers and they lived in New York City and had one son, Léo
32.
John W. Bubbles
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John William Sublett, known by his stage name John W. Bubbles, was a vaudeville performer. He performed in the duo Buck and Bubbles and he is also known as the father of rhythm tap. He was born in Louisville, Kentucky on February 19,1902, there, he formed a partnership with Ford L. Buck Washington in 1919. Their duo was known as Buck and Bubbles, Buck played on the stride piano and sang, and Bubbles tapped along. They were so popular that the duo moved to Manhattan, New York City in September of that year and they played together in the Columbia Theater, the Palace and played with artists Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor and Danny Kaye. They were on the Ziegfeld Follies of 1931 and they also became the first black artists to perform at the Radio City Music Hall. Though unable to read music, Bubbles was chosen by George Gershwin to create the role of Sportin Life in his opera Porgy, since he didnt understand the music score, Gershwin spent the time to teach it to him as a tap rhythm. Sublett caused some problems because he made up rhythms which caused confusion with other members of the cast. Sublett performed the role occasionally for the two decades. In 1920 he gave lessons in tap dancing to Fred Astaire, in the number Bojangles of Harlem from Swing Time Astaire dresses in blackface as the Sportin Life character and dances in the style of Sublett while ostensibly paying tribute to Bill Robinson. Sublett appeared in Hollywood films of the late 1930s and 1940s, including Varsity Show in 1937, Cabin in the Sky in 1943, in later life, he also made television appearances. During the Vietnam War, John Bubbles toured the war zone with the USO, in 1965, he appeared with Eddie Fisher on a USO tour, visiting many outposts and camps in the early war years. He appeared with Judy Garland in her 1967 concert at the Palace Theatre and that same year, he became partially paralyzed due to a stroke. In 1978, John Bubbles spoke at the Variety Arts Theatre in Los Angeles as a participant in a seminar on vaudeville, someone asked him who the best tap dancer was. Bubbles answered, Youre looking at him, then he added, Honestly, if I had to name the best dancer, it would be Fred Astaire. But he could ballroom, dance with a partner, all in all, hes the best. That same night, Bubbles mentioned that Astaire had brought him into the hall to work on Bojangles of Harlem. He performed at the Newport Jazz Festival in New York in 1979, Sublett died on May 18,1986, at his home in Baldwin Hills, California
33.
Blackface
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Blackface is a form of theatrical makeup used predominantly by non-black performers to represent a black person. The practice gained popularity during the 19th century and contributed to the spread of racial stereotypes such as the happy-go-lucky darky on the plantation or the dandified coon. In 1848, blackface minstrel shows were an American national art of the time, translating formal art such as opera into popular terms for a general audience. Early in the 20th century, blackface branched off from the show and became a form in its own right. Blackface was an important performance tradition in the American theater for roughly 100 years beginning around 1830, in both the United States and Britain, blackface was most commonly used in the minstrel performance tradition, which it both predated and outlasted. Later, black artists also performed in blackface, in some quarters, the caricatures that were the legacy of blackface persist to the present day and are a cause of ongoing controversy. Another view is that blackface is a form of cross-dressing in which one puts on the insignias of a sex, class, or race that stands in opposition to ones own. By the mid-20th century, changing attitudes about race and racism effectively ended the prominence of blackface makeup used in performance in the U. S. and it remains in relatively limited use as a theatrical device and is more commonly used today as social commentary or satire. Perhaps the most enduring effect of blackface is the precedent it established in the introduction of African-American culture to an international audience, there is no consensus about a single moment that constitutes the origin of blackface. Whites routinely portrayed the characters in the Elizabethan and Jacobean theater. The play attracted notice, and other performers adopted the style, from at least the 1810s, blackface clowns were popular in the United States. Rice introduced the song Jump Jim Crow accompanied by a dance in his act in 1828. Rice traveled the U. S. performing under the stage name Daddy Jim Crow, the name Jim Crow later became attached to statutes that codified the reinstitution of segregation and discrimination after Reconstruction. In the 1830s and early 1840s, blackface performances mixed skits with comic songs, stereotyped blackface characters developed, buffoonish, lazy, superstitious, cowardly, and lascivious characters, who stole, lied pathologically, and mangled the English language. By 1852, the skits that had part of blackface performance for decades expanded to one-act farces. The songs of northern composer Stephen Foster figured prominently in blackface minstrel shows of the period, though written in dialect and certainly politically incorrect by todays standards, his later songs were free of the ridicule and blatantly racist caricatures that typified other songs of the genre. Fosters works treated slaves and the South in general with a cloying sentimentality that appealed to audiences of the day. White minstrel shows featured white performers pretending to be blacks, playing their versions of black music, Minstrel shows dominated popular show business in the U. S. from that time through into the 1890s, also enjoying massive popularity in the UK and in other parts of Europe
34.
NAACP
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Du Bois, Mary White Ovington and Moorfield Storey. Its mission in the 21st century is to ensure the political, educational, social and their national initiatives included political lobbying, publicity efforts, and litigation strategies developed by their legal team. The group enlarged its mission in the late 20th century by considering issues such as police misconduct, the status of foreign refugees. Its name, retained in accordance with tradition, uses the common term colored people. The NAACP bestows annual awards to people of color in two categories, Image Awards are for achievement in the arts and entertainment, and Spingarn Medals are for outstanding achievement of any kind and its headquarters is in Baltimore, Maryland. The NAACP is headquartered in Baltimore, with regional offices in New York, Michigan, Georgia, Maryland, Texas, Colorado. Each regional office is responsible for coordinating the efforts of state conferences in that region, local, youth, and college chapters organize activities for individual members. In the U. S. the NAACP is administered by a 64-member board, julian Bond, Civil Rights Movement activist and former Georgia State Senator, was chairman until replaced in February 2010 by health-care administrator Roslyn Brock. For decades in the first half of the 20th century, the organization was led by its executive secretary. James Weldon Johnson and Walter F. White, who served in that role successively from 1920 to 1958, were more widely known as NAACP leaders than were presidents during those years. Departments within the NAACP govern areas of action, local chapters are supported by the Branch and Field Services department and the Youth and College department. The Legal department focuses on cases of broad application to minorities, such as systematic discrimination in employment, government. The Washington, D. C. bureau is responsible for lobbying the U. S. government, the goal of the Health Division is to advance health care for minorities through public policy initiatives and education. As of 2007, the NAACP had approximately 425,000 paying and non-paying members, the NAACPs non-current records are housed at the Library of Congress, which has served as the organizations official repository since 1964. The records held there comprise approximately five million items spanning the NAACPs history from the time of its founding until 2003, in 1905, a group of thirty-two prominent African-American leaders met to discuss the challenges facing people of color and possible strategies and solutions. They were particularly concerned by the Southern states disenfranchisement of blacks starting with Mississippis passage of a new constitution in 1890, through 1908, southern legislatures dominated by white Democrats ratified new constitutions and laws creating barriers to voter registration and more complex election rules. In practice, this caused the exclusion of most blacks and many whites from the political system in southern states. Black voter registration and turnout dropped markedly in the South as a result of such legislation, men who had been voting for thirty years in the South were told they did not qualify to register
35.
Tim Moore (comedian)
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Tim Moore was an American vaudevillian and comic actor of the first half of the 20th century. He gained his greatest recognition in the role of George Kingfish Stevens in the CBS television series Amos n Andy. He proudly stated, Ive made it a point never to tell a joke on stage that I couldnt tell in front of my mother, Moore was born Harry Roscoe Moore in Rock Island, Illinois, one of 13 children of Harry and Cynthia Moore. His father was a watchman at a brewery. Tim Moore dropped out of school to work at odd jobs in town and even danced for pennies in the streets with his friend. In 1898, Moore and Washburn went into vaudeville in an act called Cora Miskel and it was booked by agents and travelled through the United States and even Great Britain. By 1904, the act had performed with the Barnum & Bailey Circus, as Moore and Washburn grew older, the act became less effective and Miss Miskel sent them back to their parents in Rock Island. Shortly after this, Moore joined the show of Doctor Mick. Doctor Mick travelled through the Midwestern states, with songs and dances provided by Moore, the young man also worked in a carnival sideshow and gave guided tours as a native tour guide in Hawaii. Moore left Doctor Mick, first to become a stableboy and later a jockey and he also tried his hand as a boxer. He returned to performing about 1906, with a troupe of minstrels called The Rabbits Foot Company, by 1908, he was back in vaudeville and had met and married his first wife, Hester. They performed as a team, The Moores - Tim & Hester, appearing in the United States, in 1910, the couple was part of an act called the Four Moores. They next performed together in Georgia Sunflowers, a show that played the southern vaudeville circuit. The Moores drew glowing reviews, Hester for her singing and Tim for his comedy, by 1914, both Moores were co-stars of an act that was billed as Tim Moore and Tom Delaney & Co. Tim played the tuba and Hester played drums as part of a band. Moores own stock company was responsible for all aspects of it, the couple toured China, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the Fiji Islands and Hawaii with a vaudeville troupe. The marriage ended in divorce in 1915, and in September, after more than a year on the road in vaudeville in the United States, the Hawaiian Islands, Australia and New Zealand, he returned to boxing as Young Klondike, training in New Zealand. He fought there and in Australia, England, and Scotland, before this, Moore fought as Kid Klondike in the US, with Jack Johnson and Sam Langford as some of his opponents. Moore also made his way into films by 1915, playing the part of a musician in His Inspiration
36.
Stepin Fetchit
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Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry, better known by the stage name Stepin Fetchit, was an American comedian and film actor, who had his greatest fame throughout the 1930s. In films and on stage, the persona of Stepin Fetchit was billed as the Laziest Man in the World, Perry parlayed the Fetchit persona into a successful film career and became a millionaire. He was the first black actor to do so and he was also the first black actor to receive featured screen credit in a film. Perrys film career slowed after 1939, and after 1953, nearly stopped altogether, around that time, the actor and the character began to be seen by black Americans and Americans at large as an embarrassing and harmful anachronism, echoing and perpetuating negative stereotypes. The Stepin Fetchit character has undergone a re-evaluation by some scholars, little is certain about Perrys background other than that he was born in Key West, Florida, to West Indian immigrants. He was the child of Joseph Perry, a cigar maker from Jamaica and Dora Monroe. Both of his parents came to the United States in the 1890s, by 1910, the family had moved north to Tampa, Florida. Another source says he was adopted when he was years old and taken to live in Montgomery. His mother wanted him to be a dentist, so Perry was adopted by a quack dentist and he earned his living for a few years as a singer and tap dancer. Perry began entertaining in his teens as a character actor. By the age of twenty, Perry had become a vaudeville artist and his stage name was a contraction of step and fetch it. His accounts of how he adopted the name varied, but generally he claimed that it originated when he performed an act with a partner. Perry won money betting on a racehorse named Step and Fetch It, when Perry became a solo act he combined the two names, which later became his professional name. Perry played comic roles in a number of films, all based on his character known as The Laziest Man in the World. In his personal life, Perry was highly literate and had a concurrent career writing for The Chicago Defender and he made his reputation and earned a five-year studio contract with his performance in In Old Kentucky. The film featured a connection between Perry and actress Carolynne Snowden, a subplot that was decidedly an on-screen rarity for African-American actors working among a white cast. Perry starred in Hearts in Dixie, one of the first studio productions to boast a predominantly black cast. For his role as Joe in the 1929 part-talkie film version of Show Boat, Perrys singing voice was supplied by Jules Bledsoe, Fetchit did not sing Ol Man River, but instead a new song used in the film, The Lonesome Road
37.
Moms Mabley
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Loretta Mary Aiken, known by her stage name Jackie Moms Mabley, was an American standup comedian. A veteran of the Chitlin circuit of African-American vaudeville, she appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. Loretta Mary Aiken was born in Brevard, North Carolina on March 19,1894 to James Aiken and Mary Smith and she was one of a family of 16 children. Her father owned and operated several businesses, while her mother kept house. While working as a fireman in 1909, her father died when a fire engine exploded. In 1910, her mother took over their business, a general store. She was killed after being run over by a truck while returning home from church on Christmas Day, by age 14, Loretta had been raped twice and had two children who were given up for adoption. At the encouragement of her grandmother, Loretta ran away to Cleveland, Ohio, joining a traveling minstrel show starring Butterbeans and Susie. Loretta Aiken took her name, Jackie Mabley, from an early boyfriend, commenting to Ebony in a 1970s interview that he had taken so much from her. Later she became known as Moms because she was indeed a Mom to many other comedians on the circuit in the 1950s and 1960s and she came out as a lesbian at the age of twenty-seven, becoming one of the first openly gay comedians. During the 1920s and 1930s she appeared in androgynous clothing and recorded several of her early lesbian stand-up routines, Mabley was one of the most successful entertainers of the Chitlin circuit, another name for T. O. B. A. or Theater Owners Booking Association. Sometimes called the Tough On Black Asses Circuit, was the organization for which Mabley performed until the organization dissolved during the Great Depression. Despite Mableys popularity, wages for women in show business were meager. Nonetheless, she persisted for more than sixty years, at the height of her career, she was earning US$10,000 a week at Harlems Apollo Theater. She made her New York City debut at Connies Inn in Harlem, Mabley was one of the top women doing stand-up in her heyday, eventually recording more than 20 albums of comedy routines. She appeared in movies, on television, and in clubs, Mabley was billed as The Funniest Woman in the World. She tackled topics too edgy for most mainstream comics of the time and she also added the occasional satirical song to her jokes, and her cover version of Abraham, Martin and John hit #35 on the Billboard Hot 100 on 19 July 1969. At 75 years old, Moms Mabley became the oldest living person ever to have a US Top 40 hit, Mabley had six children, Bonnie, Christine, Charles, and Yvonne Ailey, and two given up for adoption when she was a teenager
38.
Pigmeat Markham
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Dewey Pigmeat Markham was an American entertainer. Though best known as a comedian, Markham was also a singer, dancer and his nickname came from a stage routine, in which he declared himself to be Sweet Poppa Pigmeat. He was sometimes credited in films as David Pigmeat Markham or Pigmeat Alamo Markham and he was born in the community of Hayti, Durham, North Carolina. His family was the most prominent on their street, which came to be called Markham Street in the Hayti District, Markham began his career in traveling music and burlesque shows. For a time he was a member of Bessie Smiths Traveling Revue in the 1920s, later, he claimed he originated the Truckin dance which became nationally popular at the start of the 1930s. In the 1940s he started making film appearances, in 1964 he recorded Open the Door, Richard. Markham was an act at New Yorks famed Apollo Theater where he wore blackface makeup and huge painted white lips. He probably played at the Apollo more frequently than any other performer, starting in the 1950s Pigmeat Markham began appearing on television, making multiple appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show. His boisterous, indecorous heyeah come da judge schtick, which made a mockery of formal courtroom etiquette, Markham would sit at an elevated judges bench, and deal with a series of comic miscreants. He would often deliver his judgments, as well as frustration with the accused, by leaning over the bench. Markhams most famous routine was discovered by the public only after Sammy Davis. Alexanders 1949 revue film Burlesque in Harlem, which documented the chitlin circuit, the phenomenal ripple effect of Daviss version of the judge led to Markhams opportunity to perform his signature Judge character himself as a Laugh-In regular during the 1968-69 television season. Archie Campbell later adapted Markhams routine, performing as Justus OPeace, on the version of Laugh-In, Hee Haw. Thanks to his Heyeah come da judge routine, which originally was accompanied by music with a beat, Pigmeat Markham is regarded as a forerunner of rap. His song Here Comes the Judge peaked at number 19 on the Billboard and he published an autobiography, Here Come the Judge. In the wake of his Laugh-In success, Markham died of a stroke at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx at the age of 77. He is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City, at the Party The Trial Anything Goes with Pigmeat Open the Door Richard The Worlds Greatest Clown The Best of Moms and Pigmeat Volume One Mr. Funny Man Thisll Kill Ya. If You Cant Be Good, Be Careful, Mr. Vaudeville Save Your Soul, Baby
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