The Savoy Ballroom was a large ballroom for music and public dancing located at 596 Lenox Avenue, between 140th and 141st Streets in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City.
Lenox Avenue was the main thoroughfare through upper Harlem. Poet Langston Hughes calls it the "Heartbeat of Harlem" in Juke Box Love Song, and he set his work "Lenox Avenue: Midnight" on the legendary street. The Savoy was one of many Harlem hot spots along Lenox, but it was the one to be called the "World's Finest Ballroom". It was in operation from March 12, 1926, to July 10, 1958, and as Barbara Englebrecht writes in her article "Swinging at the Savoy", it was "a building, a geographic place, a ballroom, and the 'soul' of a neighborhood".
It was opened and owned by white entrepreneur Jay Faggen and Jewish businessman Moe Gale. It was managed by African-American businessman and civic leader Charles Buchanan. Buchanan, who was born in the British West Indies, sought to run a "luxury ballroom to accommodate the many thousands who wished to dance in an atmosphere of tasteful refinement, rather than in the small stuffy halls and the foul smelling, smoke laden cellar nightclubs ..."
Dizzy Gillespie's Orchestra on the Savoy bandstand, between 1946 and 1948
Lithograph of the Savoy created for the New York City Works Progress Administration, 1935–1943
Dizzy Gillespie, playing the trumpet at the Savoy, 1947
Plaque commemorating the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem, New York City
Lenox Avenue – also named Malcolm X Boulevard; both names are officially recognized – is the primary north–south route through Harlem in the upper portion of the New York City borough of Manhattan. This two-way street runs from Farmers' Gate at Central Park North to 147th Street. Its traffic is figuratively described as "Harlem's heartbeat" by Langston Hughes in his poem Juke Box Love Song. The IRT Lenox Avenue Line runs under the entire length of the street, serving the New York City Subway's 2 and 3 trains.
Row houses on Lenox Avenue between 122nd and 123rd Streets are part of the Mount Morris Park Historic District
Co-signing of Lenox Avenue and Malcolm X Boulevard
Mosque No. 7 at 116th Street
The Ebenezer Gospel Tabernacle at 121st Street, formerly the Lenox Avenue Unitarian Church (1889)