Hotel Theresa | 2082 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd.

Walk east on W. 125th St. to the intersection of 125th and Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Blvd. Gather at the Adam Clayton Powell statue and look diagonally (southwest) to the former Hotel Theresa (2082 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd.), now a huge white office building with a White Castle on the ground floor.

By Henry Castillo

The Hotel Theresa opened at this intersection, known as the Great Black Way. Architects George and Edward Blum designed this white-painted apartment hotel, which spans one block and 13 stories with 300 rooms. The Theresa had an all-white clientele and staff for its first twenty-eight years. In 1940, the hotel began accepting all races and hiring Black staff and management. It became known as the "Waldorf of Harlem." The Hotel Theresa was partially racially integrated when most mid-Manhattan hotels wouldn’t accept Blacks. African Americans could perform at clubs, hotels and theaters, but they couldn’t sleep in hotel rooms or eat in hotel restaurants outside of the Hotel Theresa.

In 1940, the following announcement appeared in the New York Age, the most influential Black newspaper from 1897 to 1953:

Harlem Hotel Seeks Negro Trade; Picks Manager: The Hotel Theresa at Seventh Avenue and 125th Street, which catered to white patronage for several years, has changed its policy as of March 20 and will cater to both races, under Negro management with a Negro staff, according to an announcement by Richard Thomas, publicity manager of the hotel. In carrying out its new policy for the accommodation of Negroes and whites, the Gresham Management Company, operators of the Theresa, appointed Walter Scott as the hotel’s manager. Extensive renovations and improvements of the service and facilities of the hotel have been undertaken. A staff of 80 persons has been employed.

When famous Black music stars like Josephine Baker, Ray Charles, Jimi Hendrix, and Nat King Cole went to Harlem for a night’s sleep, the Hotel Theresa’s rooms, bars, and swanky shops signaled that they had finally arrived-- at least in Harlem.

In 1941, heavyweight champion Joe Louis attracted 10,000 fans when he stayed at the Theresa after a victory at the Polo Grounds. Soon afterwards, John H. Johnson was a guest at the Theresa when he started a new pocket-sized magazine called the Negro Digest. And after splitting with the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X rented offices at the hotel for his Organization of Afro-American Unity.

The hotel became a destination for political radicals when Fidel Castro and his staff came to New York in 1960 to address the United Nations. They first checked in to the Shelburne Hotel in Midtown, but they moved to the Hotel Theresa in Harlem when the Shelburne demanded $10,000 for alleged damage that included cooking chickens in their rooms. The Theresa benefited from worldwide publicity when Nikita Khrushchev, the premier of the Soviet Union, Jawaharlal Nehru, the prime minister of India, and Malcolm X all visited Castro there. Castro’s entourage rented eighty rooms for a total of $800 per day.

At the end of 1960, John F. Kennedy made a presidential campaign stop at the hotel with Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. (whose statue stands in front of the state building on West 125th Street). “I am delighted to come and visit,” said Kennedy. “Behind the fact of Castro coming to this hotel, Khrushchev coming to Castro, there is another great traveler in the world, and that is the travel of a world revolution, a world in turmoil. I am delighted to come to Harlem, and I think the whole world should come here, and the whole world should recognize that we all live right next to each other, whether here in Harlem or on the other side of globe.”

In 1971, the hotel was converted to an office building named Theresa Towers. New York City declared it a landmark in 1993.