Manhattan’s Long-Gone San Juan Hill

The pianist James P. Johnson wrote “Charleston” to accompany a dance.

James P. Johnson (1894-1955) Known as the "Father of Stride Piano," he perfected the East Coast style. |Click here for more videos about San Juan Hill

In the early 20th century, Lincoln Square’s streets-capes hugged the ground with rows of tenements and brownstones, punctuated by warehouses and industrial lofts. Its residents were mostly working class and poor, with a notable contingent of artists and bohemians. On its eastern fringe stood a variety of theaters and music halls. Squeezed into the middle, roughly from 59th to 65th Streets between Amsterdam Avenue and the 11th Avenue railroad tracks, was San Juan Hill, one of the largest black neighborhoods in Manhattan before the rise of Harlem.

Photo Credit: Lee Sievan (1907-1990). San Juan Hill. 1939. Museum of the City of New York.

Historian Marcy Sacks, author of “Before Harlem: The Black Experience in New York City before World War I” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006). As I stand outside two of the neighborhood’s last old houses, 242-244 West 61st Street, with new construction looming beside them.

San Juan Hill’s “tall, monotonous tenements” were “the worst type which the city affords.” Up to 5,000 people lived jammed into a single block; beds were often used in shifts, shared by boarders. Neighborhood was named to honor the United States Army’s black 10th Cavalry, which fought at the battle of San Juan Hill during the Spanish-American War in 1898.

Before Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant became the largest African-American communities in the city, there was San Juan Hill. Centered on Amsterdam Avenue and 62nd Street, it was home to thousands of working-class and poor black New Yorkers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The neighborhood’s name supposedly came from an all-black cavalry unit that fought at the battle of San Juan Hill during the Spanish-American War.

Like most parts of the city then, San Juan Hill’s streets were lined with tenements. There was a vibrant jazz scene, but also racial tension at the turn of the century with whites on the east side of Amsterdam.

San Juan Hill met its demise after World War II. First, several blocks were demolished to make way for the Amsterdam Houses, a pretty typical red-brick, high-rise public housing complex.

Then, in the 1950s, much of the neighborhood was deemed a slum, and it was torn down to make way for Lincoln Center.

The High Priest of Modern Jazz "His Royal Highness" Maestro Thelonious Sphere Monk, this is where Monk's family settled coming from Rocky Mount, NC at the age of five or six. at 243 West 63rd Street, New York, NY. — at New York City Lincoln Center.

Canada Lee (the adopted name of Lionel Cornelius Canegata) was a noted 20th Century jockey, boxer, and actor. Born on May 3, 1907 in New York City’s San Juan Hill district.

Herbie Nichols was born in San Juan Hill (Amsterdam Avenue, West End Avenue, 59th Street, and 65th Street), Manhattan to parents from St. Kitts and Trinidad and grew up in Harlem.