July 29, 2018 by Stephen Robertson
Summer did not just lead residents to depart Harlem for day trips and longer summer camps; it also brought visitors to the neighborhood. Some came as individuals to study or see family, friends and the city’s attractions, others as groups for large events.
Evidence of the presence of middle-class tourists in Harlem exists thanks to lists of those staying at the neighborhood’s hotels published in both the New York Age and Amsterdam News. Both papers consistently published guest lists from the Hotel Olga (AN, 1925-33; NYA, 1921-28), and less consistently from the Hotel Dumas (AN, 1925-29; NYA, 1924-26), YWCA (AN 1927-32; NYA, 1927-1932) Hotel Press (AN, 1925-28), and Hotel Grampion (AN 1931-32). (The largest hotel in Harlem, the Hotel Theresa on West 125th Street and 7th Avenue accepted only white guests until 1940).
Tourists also appear in the newspapers’ social pages, as residents hosted parties in honor of out-of-town guests. Those held in July 1930 included a dinner party at a home on West 134th Street for Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Westheimer, visiting from Georgia, and a bridge party in a St Nicholas Avenue address in honor of four women from Los Angeles (10). Mapping a small sample of visitors from July 1925 and 1930 suggests that the bulk came from the midwest and northeast, with smaller numbers from the upper South and Florida. In 1930 they came from further afield than in 1925, notwithstanding the growing Depression, visiting from the West Indies and as far west as Texas and California.