267 House | 267 W. 136th St.

Keep walking east on W. 136th St. until reaching the parking lot and rebuilt townhouse where 267 House (267 W 136th St.) once stood, which will be just before the intersection of W. 136th St. and Frederick Douglass Blvd.

By Andrea Crow

Here you can see the parking lot and townhouse where the artists’ community at 267 West 136th Street formerly stood. During the 1920s, Iolanthe Sidney, an African American patron of the arts, owned the boarding house that once stood here. She allowed Black artists to live there free of charge so that they could devote more time to their art.

The major figures of the Harlem Renaissance gathered here. They took up residence in this artists’ community to exchange ideas, work on projects with their colleagues, and strengthen the interpersonal ties that made the era so revolutionary.

Residents and friends of 267 House published Fire!!, a literary journal devoted to young Black artists. Anthropologist and writer Zora Neale Hurston, who at this time was also the only Black student at Barnard College, joined poet Langston Hughes, writer and painter Richard Bruce Nugent, and editor Wallace Thurman in producing this journal. The journal contained essays, fiction, and poetry as well as visual art by the mural painter Aaron Douglas. In turn, Nugent’s homoerotic murals on the unusual red and black walls of 267 House inspired Douglas’s art.

Their art contended with a major barrier that galvanized 267 House artists and their publication: because Fire!! published frank sexual content, it was controversial within circles that argued for respectability in African American art.

Nugent’s queer stream-of-consciousness story, “Smoke, Lilies, and Jade,” epitomizes the journal’s aims to disrupt aspirations towards acceptability. Nineteen-year-old Alex walks around Harlem reflecting on his decision to become an artist. He contemplates his self-doubt in the face of his family’s skepticism and their annoyance with his decision to prioritize this path over a respectable career. He writes:

[N]o mothers aren’t jealous of their sons...they are proud of them...why then...when these friends accepted and liked him...no matter how he dressed...why did mother ask...and you went looking like that...Langston was a fine fellow...he knew there was something in Alex...and so did Rene and Borgia...and Zora and Clement and Miguel...and...and...and all of them...if he went to see mother she would ask...how do you feel Alex with nothing in your pockets...I don’t see how you can be satisfied...Really you’re a mystery to me...and who you take after...I’m sure I don’t know...none of my brothers were lazy and shiftless...I can never remember the time when they weren’t sending money home and when your father was your age he was supporting a family...where you get your nerve I don’t know...just because you’ve tried to write one or two little poems and stories that no one understands...you seem to think the world owes you a living...you should see by now how much is thought of them...you can’t sell anything...and you won’t do anything to make money...wake up Alex...I don’t know what will become of you........

It was hard to believe in one’s self after that...did Wilde’s parents or Shelley’s or Goya’s talk to them like that...but it was depressing to think in that vein...Alex stretched and yawned.

Alex’s musings are intertwined with his thoughts on the two people with whom he has fallen in love: a woman named Melva and a man named Beauty. In the background of his consciousness, he thinks through the ways in which the vibrant yet tenuous social circles in the Harlem Renaissance make it possible to follow his alternate destiny.

As Nugent’s fiction intimates, writers and artists worked together to support a thriving cultural life. At 267 House, even purely social events became opportunities to foster community in the face of extreme prejudice. One concrete example was the “rent party,” commonly held in boarding houses throughout this era. Guests would show up to a friend’s party with money to help him or her pay rent that month. Grassroots interventions like rent parties became increasingly necessary as predominantly white landlords in Harlem doubled or even tripled rents for Black tenants.

This practice of driving up prices-- and consequently driving out the Black community-- is still a major force shaping Harlem today. The universities that sponsored the creation of this memory walk-- Columbia and New York University-- remain two of the biggest and most rapidly expanding landowners in New York.

Thank you for joining us on our walk through Harlem. We hope you enjoyed it and invite you to share it with your friends and colleagues.

If you are interested in learning more about Women Mobilizing Memory or related events at the Center for the Study of Social Difference, please, check out our new anthology and sign up on our mailing list at the bottom of this page.

For your departure, the closest subway station at the close of the walk is the B/C subway station at W. 135th St. and Edgecombe Ave./St. Nicholas Ave., near the east end of St. Nicholas Park.