Residents of a storied Harlem building got an early Christmas present, when a sidewalk construction shed that had been up for more than two decades was finally taken down Friday.
Residents of 409 Edgecombe Avenue were happy to have their public space reclaimed after 21 years, although they disagreed on who exactly was to blame for the generation-long eyesore when asked on Sunday.
The 106-year-old Sugar Hill building, a city landmark, served as a home to the NAACP and its early leaders Walter White, Roy Wilkins, W.E.B. Du Bois and Thurgood Marshall, who became the first black US Supreme Court Justice.
Poet Langston Hughes in 1946 dubbed it “one of Harlem’s most fashionable addresses,” and it’s been said that Babe Ruth lived there before it became a black enclave, according to Brick Underground.
Famed athletes Althea Gibson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar also frequently visited the building, a longtime tenant told The Post.
The shed was first put up in 2002 because of a law requiring requiring regular façade inspections. An engineer found unsafe conditions, but for nearly two decades no repairs were made until the city filed criminal charges against the management company in 2019, according to City Hall.
Mayor Eric Adams held a press conference at the site Friday, touting the removal of the city’s longest-standing sidewalk shed as part of his ‘Get Sheds Down’ plan.
“For 21 years, residents of Harlem sacrificed public space and the beauty of a historical landmark because property managers repeatedly failed to do their job,” said Adams.
“Today, we deliver 409 Edgecombe Avenue back into the hands of the Sugar Hill community and remain focused on continuing to safely remove the eyesores that are ugly sidewalk sheds and scaffolding across the five boroughs.”
New York City Council Majority Leader Keith Powers, a Manhattan Democrat, went so far as to dub the event “a Christmas miracle” in a press release.
However, a local resident said the building’s management board had been fighting to do the repairs for at least 15 years, but the process was mired in red tape.
“I’m glad it’s down, but I don’t like the way it was communicated by the mayor. The way he characterized it, like the city cracked down, and I don’t feel that’s what happened,” said building resident Renee Greig, who works in higher education.
“We’ve been trying to get work done,” said Grieg, who has called the building home since 2003, a year after the construction equipment was erected.
“I thought, ‘Why is the mayor here? Did he help us? He’s only been here for four years,’” she said of the Democrat who will soon enter the third year of his term.
“If you’re going to talk about it, don’t make it seem like we’ve been sitting here lollygagging. That’s a bunch of BS.”
Odessa Starke, who has lived in the city landmark building since the 80s, said “We feel wonderful. It was a long time coming,” as she explained the backstory.
The building was seized by the city for tax delinquency decades ago, and a housing development fund corporation for medium- and low-income tenants was established requiring residents to do upkeep, according to Starke.
The board would then repeatedly raise money to complete work mandated by the city, only to be plagued by issues with city inspectors or incompetent contractors.
“I’m glad the mayor finally got this thing down, but we had finished all the work that the city required. We were waiting for city inspections. Three times, they’d come, they’d inspect, they’d find more work to be done,” Starke said.
“The work that had to be done was expensive. And we did part of it, and then we had a contractor that took money and didn’t finish the work.”
One resident, who didn’t want their name published, said mismanagement and incompetence on the part of the management board was to blame.
“Mayor Adams did use this as a photo op, but it was totally appropriate for him to be here and he was speaking accurately. It was a blight on the neighborhood,” she said.
“The president [of the board] went on social media and said, ‘it’s a miracle the scaffolding is coming down!’ I said, ‘It’s no miracle. You were sued.’”
Reached by phone Sunday, management board president Nikki Berryman said she was “incensed” at accusations the board hadn’t done its part in bringing the building to an inspection-ready state.
She claimed the board had sunk more than $3 million into renovations, and said that the city had failed to meet it halfway.
“The city would come to inspect, but they would always find something else. Of course they would. It’s a 100-year-old building,” Berryman said.
“We have consistently been working from 2016 to the present. We have consistently been working. We have the permits to prove it, the records.”
She added that the board had reached out to a public advocate and hounded the mayor’s office, to no avail, adding that the mayor’s assertions that the board had been negligent in the building’s upkeep were “unfounded.”
“That’s why I’m so incensed. That’s why I was really upset about the mayor coming up here. We have reached out to our public advocate. We’ve reached out to the mayor’s office. We’ve invited the mayor to come up here so he can get a sense of the problems,” Berryman said.
“Eric Adams always applauds himself as a regular New Yorker. But in his statement he sounded like it was too inconvenient for the landlord to do the work. And that’s unfounded. There’s no ‘landlord.’ There are 122 apartments in this building who own this building equally, and we have been doing the best we can,” she added.
Despite her dispute with Adams’ characterization of the board’s efforts, Berryman was overjoyed at the building’s refreshed appearance, sans scaffolding.
“I have cried. I have hugged my neighbors as they are coming out the door. This is huge. This is a battle won. Because we did the work. It’s a Christmas miracle. It’s a miracle on 155th.”
Harlan Jones, 61, has managed to stay out of the drama, though he agreed that things are really “dicey.”
He said a few weeks ago they filmed in the building for an upcoming TV show rumored to be about the Penguin Batman villain, and the buzz around the building was why the board wasn’t using that “Hollywood money” to fix things up.
But mostly Jones is just happy to have the scaffolding down. “When I walked up to the building yesterday, it was surreal. It looks so different.”
“It’s about time. The building is amazing in its own right. Architecturally, it’s spectacular. The history of people who have been tenants here is legendary — and some of the tenants are literally legend, as in, it’s legend that they lived here.”
Jones is the third generation of his family to live in his apartment, which was originally rented by his grandmother. He has a letter from his grandmother to his mother referring to some legal tangle and wondering “if Mr. [Thurgood] Marshall might be able to help us.”
The proud resident also repeated the rumors about the Great Bambino living in the building and said Gibson would visit as a child to play with his mother, who knew a young Abdul-Jabbar (a Harlem native born Lewis Alcindor), who had a girlfriend in the building.
When asked why the construction took so long, Jones’ history lesson dried up.
“I don’t know. I don’t think there’s a really good answer.”