Walking Harlem: The Ultimate Guide to the Cultural Capital of Black America

With its rich cultural history and many landmark buildings, Harlem is not just one of New York's most distinctive neighborhoods; it's also one of the most walkable.

This illustrated guide takes readers on five separate walking tours of Harlem, covering ninety-one different historical sites. Alongside major tourist destinations like the Apollo Theater and the Abyssinian Baptist Church, longtime Harlem resident Karen Taborn includes little-known local secrets like Jazz Age speakeasies, literati, political and arts community locales. Drawing from rare historical archives, she also provides plenty of interesting background information on each location.

This guide was designed with the needs of walkers in mind. Each tour consists of eight to twenty-nine nearby sites, and at the start of each section, readers will find detailed maps of the tour sites, as well as an estimated time for each walk. In case individuals would like to take a more leisurely tour, it provides recommendations for restaurants and cafes where they can stop along the way.

Walking Harlem gives readers all the tools they need to thoroughly explore over a century's worth of this vital neighborhood's cultural, political, religious, and artistic heritage. With its informative text and nearly seventy stunning photographs, this is the most comprehensive, engaging, and educational walking tour guidebook on one of New York's historic neighborhoods.


Author: Karen Taborn
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Published: 05/21/2018
Pages: 220
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.45lbs
Size: 6.90h x 4.90w x 0.60d
ISBN13: 9780813594576
ISBN10: 081359457X
BISAC Categories:
- Travel | United States | Northeast | Middle Atlantic (NJ, NY, PA)
- History | United States | State & Local | Middle Atlantic (DC, DE, MD,
- Social Science | Ethnic Studies | American | African American & Black Studies

About the Author
KAREN TABORN has been a Harlem resident for over thirty years; she has taught Harlem history at the New School and has served as a historical consultant for the 135th Street Harlem Walk of Fame. With graduate degrees in jazz and ethnomusicology, she has published articles in The Grove Dictionary of American Music and the journal Black Grooves.