West 147th-149th Streets Historic District

This Harlem district brings together 60 buildings on parts of three blocks between Seventh and Eighth Avenues: 58 tenements, a school and a two-story stable. Nearly all stand five or six stories tall and were built within a few years of one another, with the largest number erected in 1905. Brick facades with limestone ground floors, white glazed terra-cotta ornament and pressed-metal cornices give the streets a unified look, with detailing drawn from Renaissance and French Beaux-Arts models. The buildings reflect the speculative boom that followed the opening of the subway, when mostly immigrant builders put up housing for working-class families moving north from downtown. Most are 'new law' tenements built under the Tenement House Act of 1901, which required more light, air and open space. The school, P.S. 90, uses a Collegiate Gothic style. Many buildings were abandoned in the late twentieth century and were restored around 2000 to 2002, and the district keeps its historic character to a high degree.