I finally finished my two Brooklyn tours through school and was back up in Harlem today. It was a long day of walking as those city blocks across are long. I started at the subway stop at 168th Street and walked down to 155th Street (the subway was not running to 155th Street over the weekend).
As usual when I have to walk down Broadway, I stopped at my new favorite bakery, Estrella Bakery at 3861 Broadway (check out the numerous reviews on TripAdvisor and DiningonaShoeStringinNYC@Wordpress.com) for chicken pastelitos and cubanitos.
The pastries at Five Star Estrella Bakery are wonderful
If you like hot snacks and sweet desserts, this will be your ‘go to’ place for a quick snack when walking up here. The food here is wonderful and the selection of baked items and snacks is extensive. It is still one of the reasons why I don’t complain about getting off at 168th Street when the C subway is not in service. I like to stop at one of the pocket parks on Broadway to relax and eat. It was a long afternoon of walking.
Don’t miss Five Star Estrella Bakery at 3861 Broadway
My walk over these three days took me from 155th Street to 145th Street from Riverside Drive to Lenox Avenue (there are still some side streets on the other side of Jackie Robinson Park that I have not finished yet). Don’t let these maps fool you, these are long blocks being walked in humid weather.
I started my walk today at the Hispanic Society of America Museum at 613 West 155th Street which is on the Boricua College-Manhattan Campus. It shares the campus with the American Academy of Arts & Letters, which closed down in June for the rest of the summer. The Hispanic Society of America is a free museum that is small enough that you can enjoy the visit for about an hour without being overwhelmed like you would at one of the bigger museums.
The Hispanic Society of America at 613 West 155 Street
It was a small but no less impressive collection of Spanish Art from different periods. The Hispanic Society of America was founded as a free museum and research library in 1904 by the American scholar and philanthropist Archer Milton Huntington (1870-1955). Over the past century, the Hispanic Society had promoted the study of the rich artistic and cultural traditions of Spain and Portugal and their areas of influence in the Americas and throughout the world. The Museum and Library constitute the most extensive collection of Hispanic are and literature outside Spain and Latin America (Hispanic Society of America literature).
The museum had a nice crowd that afternoon, (how these people found it I will never know. I never knew it existed) and the galleries were small but the work was impressive. Some of the pieces that stood out were Jouquin Sorallo y Bastida’s ‘Vision of Spain’ created between 1911-1919, with many traditional views of parts of Spain and ‘After the Bath’ done in 1908, which looked more like a contemporary beach scene. The one piece that stuck in my mind was a new piece to the collection, ‘The Four Fates of the Soul’, which showed Death, Heaven, Purgatory and Hell. The sculpture really proved it’s point and made me think that we really are being watched from above. Even the guard as I was leaving said it was a new piece to the collection but people really talked about it as they were leaving.
After the museum, I had about ten minutes to walk around Trinity Cemetery, which is a quiet but scenic place.
Trinity Church Cemetery plaque
https://trinitywallstreet.org/cemetery-mausoleum
The graves on this side of Broadway overlook the Hudson River and are so peaceful with beautiful views, it makes you think of where you want your final resting place to be located. To live eternity here says something. Even the views of New Jersey  are gorgeous. Be sure to get to the museum and the grave site early as they do close at 4:00pm.
Trinity Cemetery on 155th Street
I began my zig-zag trip of this part of Harlem at 154 Street and from there until 145th Street, the areas between Riverside Drive and Edgecombe Avenue house some of the most beautiful and elegant brownstones that I have seen in the city. So many of the them are under scaffolding as the new population moving up here is putting a lot of money into the renovations of these properties. The results are amazing with wooden doors, elegant metal work cleaned up and lively planters all around the stairs and the windows.
Sugar Hill Neighborhood
With the CUNY campus just south of this area, you can see that college population is spreading its wings all over the neighborhood as the students, even in the summer, are moving in or living in this neighborhood and invest in buying in the bodegas, restaurants and hanging around the parks. The more diverse population looks like it is really making an effort to work together for this neighborhood. The most beautiful of these blocks is concentrated between Amsterdam Avenue and Nicholas Street so take time to really look at these homes and see the love and care that is put into them.
Jackie Robinson Park where the students hang out.
Another stop I made was in the Hope Steven Garden at 153rd Street that runs through 152nd Street. This was an empty lot between all the buildings that has now been cleaned up and the neighborhood held their Annual Open House & Barbecue for the neighborhood. It was not much of a turnout at that point of the afternoon but all the neighborhood seniors looked at me like ‘oh oh, another one is moving in’. You begin to pick up on these things when you walk through neighborhoods that have not seen me before.
Hope Steven Garden at 505 West 142nd Street
Everyone was really nice though and some of the ladies were explaining how the neighborhood banded together to clean and landscape the garden. The garden now contains peach trees, berry bushes and a grape arbor while supporting a cat colony that lives in the garden. Some of the neighbors were grilling hamburgers and hot dogs and older residents were chatting amongst themselves. No one made a fuss about me eating and since I was not hungry, I did not partake in the barbecue but it looked pretty good.
Most of the residents sat around and chatted with their neighbors or busy working in the garden. As I sat down to rest, two of the women who volunteer here, looked like they wanted to recruit me to do the same as they told me the story of how the city’s water aqueduct runs underneath the garden so they can never build here and how bad the neighborhood had become and how it was coming back to life. It takes a big person to show the immense pride in a neighborhood.
I stopped back in Convent Garden again to visit Ms. Davis, who was chatting the afternoon away while getting her exercise working in their garden. She was telling me that they will be having a jazz concert with food on Labor Day Weekend and invited me to join in. This I don’t want to miss as it is my two favorite things, jazz music and food. The volunteers were really working away at making this garden the well maintained and colorful place that the garden is to the neighborhood. Everything is in full bloom right now.
Convent Garden in full bloom at Convent Street and St. Nicholas Avenue
The Sugar Hill neighborhood is really impressive and you could see that this was not one of the places that went downhill as the rest of Harlem decayed in the 60’s, 70’s and early 80’s. It was and still is an grand group of homes that their owners take a lot of pride in. Now that the rest of the city has caught up with it, it will be interesting to see what comes out of it the next few years.
Another small oasis exists on 149th Street, which is Maggie’s Garden. It was locked at the time but also another garden taken from an empty lot and brought back to life. Maggie Burnett, are Harlem resident, turned what was once a ‘rickety old house’ when torn down into an urban oasis starting in 1974. Fighting off drug dealers to build the garden, she got some help from New York Restoration Project and its founder, Bette Midler who assisted in 1999 helping clear the site and now it is a garden with trees, flowers, a full vegetable garden and a barbecue. You could not see all that from the locked gates. (Daily News article).
Maggie’s Garden at 564 West 149th Street
I was able to start my walk on the other side of Bradhurst Avenue on the other side of Jackie Robinson Park. I will let you know that the college students from CUNY have discovered the park and were sunning themselves the afternoon I walked around the park. Bradhurst Avenue has a lot of new buildings on it and the businesses include a Starbucks so you know that neighborhood is going through a transition.
Jackie Robinson Park at 85 Bradhurst Avenue
To let you know though, this transition stops here and the further you get away from the park, the seedier the area gets. By the time you hit Lenox Avenue, gentrification has not hit this area of the neighborhood and you should watch yourself. The buildings are beautiful and there is a police station a block in but it still needs a lot of work on this side of West 145th Street.
The end of the walk that day was at 145th Street and lunch at Harlem Brothers Pizza & Wings at 346 West 145th Street (Closed in 2021) which is right next store to Victorio’s Pizza that is more of the rave. The pizza was just average and the sauce did not have much flavor to it. The funny part was to listen to Indian music while eating my pizza. That was strange. My recommendation is go to Victorio’s Pizza and get it to go and eat it in Jackie Robinson Park. The middle of the park has benches to sit on and the park is really pretty with its slopping walkways and rock work and it’s large trees to sit under.
The entire walk between 155th Street and 145th Street with an extra afternoon walking down Convent Avenue took almost five hours. Again, don’t let these blocks fool you as they are long and you will want to stop in the parks and gardens and walk around.
Places to Visit:
Jackie Robinson Park
85 Bradhurst to Edgecombe Avenues at 145th Street to Manhattan Avenue
New York, NY 10039
(212) 234-9607
Open: Sunday-Saturday 6:00am-10:00pm
https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/jackie-robinson-park_manhattan
https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/jackie-robinson-park_brooklyn
Convent Garden
Convent Avenue & St. Nicholas Avenue
New York, NYÂ 10031
(212) 639-9675
Open: Check website for hours
https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/convent-garden/highlights/7737
Maggie’s Garden
564 West 169th Street
New York, NYÂ 10031
Open: Check website for hours
https://www.nyrp.org/green-spaces/garden-details/maggies-garden
Hope Steven Garden
505 West 142nd Street
New York, NYÂ 10031
Open: Check website for hours
https://www.manhattanlandtrust.org/contact-us/hope-steven-garden/
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Hope-Steven-Garden/222694217809657
Sugar Hill Neighborhood
Between 135th Street to 162nd Street and Edgecombe Avenue and Amsterdam Avenue
http://www.sugarhillmap.com/about.asp
Hispanic Society of America
163 West 155th Street
New York, NY 10032
(212) 926-2234
https://hispanicsociety.org/museum/
Open: The museum is currently closed for renovations. Please check the website for the opening.
My review on TripAdvisor:
My review on VisitingaMuseum.com:
https://wordpress.com/post/visitingamuseum.com/160
Places to Eat:
Victorio’s Pizza
346 West 145th Street
New York, NY 10039
(212) 283-2100
Open: Sunday 11:00am-9:00pm/Monday-Saturday 11:00am-8:45pm
https://www.victoriospizzaplusmenu.com/
My review on TripAdvisor:
5 Star Estrella Bakery
3861 Broadway
New York, NY 10032
(212) 795-5000
Open: Sunday-Saturday 5:00am-9:00pm
My review on TripAdvisor:
My review on DiningonaShoeStringinNYC@Wordpress.com:
https://wordpress.com/post/diningonashoestringinnyc.wordpress.com/407
Harlem Brothers Pizza & Wings (Closed in 2021)
346 West 145th Street
New York, NYÂ 10039
(646) 455-0942
My review on TripAdvisor:
mywalkinmanhattan 
Take time to walk around the Community Gardens in the neighborhood and talk to the residents. It takes a lot of hard work and pride to make these gardens what they are and they are really pretty oasis in the middle of the big city.
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