A Storied History
The roots of Strivers’ Row began with the famed contractor David H. King, Jr, developer of Madison Square Garden, the Mills Building, the Washington Arch, the Equitable building, and Hotel Renaissance. The townhouses in this new project, which were originally called the King Model Houses, were intended for upper-middle-class white residents, and featured modern amenities, dark woodwork, and views of City College. King's idea was that the project would be “on such a large scale and with such ample resources as to ‘Create a Neighborhood’ independent of surrounding influences.”
King Model Houses - The row on the north side of the 138th Street, between 7th and 8th avenues.
Entrance to one of the cross streets on the north side of 139th Street.
The houses sit back-to-back, which allowed King to specify that they would share rear courtyards. The alleyways between them – a rarity in Manhattan – are gated off; some entrance gates still have signs that read “Walk Your Horses.” At one time, these alleys allowed discreet stabling of horses and delivery of supplies without disrupting activities in the main houses. Today, the back areas are used almost exclusively for trash and parking.
An artist depiction of what the easements behind the row houses was to look like. Note the fountain.
King sold very few houses and the development failed, with Equitable Life Assurance Society, which had financed the project, foreclosing on almost all the units in 1895, during an economic depression. By this time, Harlem was being abandoned by white New Yorkers, yet the company would not sell the King houses to black residents, and so they sat empty until 1919–20, when they were finally made available to African Americans for $8,000 each. Some of the units were turned into rooming houses, but generally they attracted both leaders of the black community and upwardly-mobile professionals, or “strivers”, who gave the district its colloquial name.
The interior of a house on the south side of 138th Street.
The district was designated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1967, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.