Design
Mapping the Age of Every Building in Manhattan
A new tool called Urban Layers tracks Manhattan's rise, block by block, since 1765.
The Harlem Renaissance was the epicenter of new movements in dance, poetry, painting, and literature, and its impact still registers in all those art forms. If you want to trace the Harlem Renaissance, though, best look to Harlem itself.
Many if not most of the buildings in Harlem today rose between 1900 and 1940—and a new mapping tool called Urban Layers reveals exactly where and when. Harlem boasts very few of the oldest buildings in Manhattan today, but it does represent the island's densest concentration of buildings constructed during the Great Migration.