Sugar Hill Historic District

Sugar Hill is a hillside neighborhood in West Harlem, Manhattan, running from West 145th to West 155th Streets and east to Bradhurst Avenue and Colonial Park. The district includes 414 contributing buildings, chiefly late 19th and early 20th century row houses and apartment houses, along with two sites, three structures and one object. Row houses, often built speculatively as block-long compositions, show neo-Grec, Romanesque and Renaissance Revival details. Apartment houses by architects such as Henri Fouchaux, George Frederick Pelham and S. J. Kessler line St. Nicholas and Edgecombe Avenues, forming a dramatic skyline above the park. Before development, the area was farmland and large estates, and it was reached by new avenues and the 155th Street viaduct. The annotated building list also records residents from the Harlem Renaissance era, including writers, musicians and athletes. The district was listed for its architecture, its integrity, and its role in the social history of Harlem.