Today, Harlem is synonymous in the American cultural imagination with African American culture, and especially African American artistic and literary culture. This association isn't incorrect, but Harlem has seen innumerable changes and been home to innumerable cultures over the course of its three-century long history. It has changed hands in complicated and often controversial ways, undergoing waves of gentrification and rising home prices as well as periods of rapid population growth. Its residents have included indigenous Lenape people, Dutch farmers, European immigrants, and Southern Black migrants.
Prior to European settlement, the island of Manhattan was home to the Lenape people. Their language is, in fact, the source of the name "Manhattan": they called the island "Mannahatta," which translates to "hilly island." Manhattan's abundant wildlife, temperate climate, and access to the freshwater Hudson river made it a relatively comfortable place to live, and a useful point from which to conduct trade. The nearby waterways were home to large whale, fish, and oyster populations, while wolves and bears roamed inland. Much of the island, particularly above the southern border of what is now Wall Street, was covered in forests of oak, chestnut, sycamore, and hickory trees. Where forests gave way to fields, local Lenape communities grew crops like squash and beans. Today's Broadway, one of Manhattan's busiest streets, evolved from a Lenape trade route that helped people move from north to south on the island.
In 1609, European settlers arrived in Manhattan and were struck by its abundance and usefulness for trade and agriculture. Thus began a long process of buying and seizing land from indigenous Lenape inhabitants: Wall Street gets its name from the defensive wall settlers built there. Harlem, however, was not settled by the Dutch until several decades later, in 1658. It is from these Dutch settlers that the neighborhood gets its English name. They called it Nieuw Haarlem (new Haarlem), after the Dutch city of Haarlem. While the European population in the southern part of Manhattan was denser, Harlem remained largely agricultural. But Manhattan continued to attract increasing numbers of people, and while Harlem's agricultural phase lasted for roughly 200 years, it began to urbanize in the nineteenth century. It officially became a part of New York in 1873, and new rail lines prompted the building of housing in the area.
This new, denser version of Harlem boasted cheap rents, tempting both internal migrants and transatlantic ones. German, Irish, and Jewish immigrants arrived from overseas, to the dismay of landlords: Jewish residents were seen as undesirable and drove rents down further. Following both racial violence in other parts of New York and the end of slavery in the U.S. South, African Americans began to arrive in unprecedented numbers. By the early decades of the twentieth century, Harlem was predominantly Black, despite some efforts by white landowners and residents to avoid renting and selling to African Americans. As the population grew, rents in Harlem grew more expensive, leading to crowding—but, largely because racism offered a permission structure for abandoning Black tenants, many landlords neglected their buildings in Harlem and created unsafe conditions. At the same time, the early twentieth century saw some of the most famous Black writers, artists, and musicians in American history take up residence in Harlem, finding inspiration in the neighborhood.
Today, gentrification threatens to drive longtime residents out of Harlem and create steeper housing costs for residents. At the same time, a newfound appreciation of the neighborhood's history and culture—as well as an influx of funding—has allowed for historic preservation efforts. Meanwhile, descendants of Harlem's original residents have increasingly sought recognition. In recent years, Lenape activists have worked both to increase New Yorkers' knowledge of contemporary indigenous issues and to safeguard Lenape art, culture, and even ecosystem management.
