#158 Hotel Theresa: The Waldorf of Harlem

The Bowery Boys: New York City History

Tom Meyers

Places & Travel, History, Documentary, Society & Culture

4.7 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 15 November 2013

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Hotel Theresa is considered a genuine (if under-appreciated) Harlem treasure, both for its unique architecture and its special place in history as the hub for African-American life in the 1940s and 50s. The luxurious apartment hotel was built by a German lace manufacturer to cater to a wealthy white clientele. But almost as soon as the final brick was laid, Harlem itself changed, thanks to the arrival of thousands of new black residents from the South. Harlem, renown the world over for the artists and writers of the Harlem Renaissance and its burgeoning music scene, was soon home mostly those who identified as black. But many of the businesses here refused to serve black patrons, or at least certainly made them unwelcome. The Theresa changed its policy in 1940 and soon its lobby was filled with famous athletes, actresses and politicians, many choosing to live at the Hotel Theresa over other hotels in Manhattan. The hotel's relative small size made it an interesting concentration of America's most renown black celebrities. In this podcast, I give you a tour of this glamorous scene, from the corner bar to the penthouse, from the breakfast table of Joe Louis to the crazy parties of Dinah Washington. www.boweryboyspodcast.com Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/boweryboys

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Bowry Boys Episode 158, the hotel Teresa, the Waldorf of Harlem.
0:05.5	Hey, it's the Bowry Boys!
0:07.0	Hey!
0:09.0	The Bowry Boys is brought to you by eurochipo.com.
0:13.0	Eurochipo's editors expect and recommend the best budget hotels in Europe.
0:19.0	On the web at eurochipo.com
0:22.5	Hi there, welcome to the Bowry Boys.
0:24.0	This is Greg Young.
0:25.0	Tom is not here for this episode, so it'll just be me.
0:28.0	And it's totally his loss because this is the first episode in our brand new recording studio,
0:34.0	which you can probably tell because there is a slight echo, echo, echo behind my voice here.
0:40.0	So I don't have the room all soundproofed yet, but I swear by the next episode, I promise you, it'll be properly set up.
0:46.0	So the honoree of this episode, this is a podcast that's a tribute to a building that turns 100 years old this year.
0:53.0	And a building that I think goes rather unappreciated in the annals of New York City history.
0:58.0	The hotel Teresa, which was constructed in 1913 in the neighborhood of Harlem,
1:03.0	was a very lovely hotel when it was constructed, but then rather unexpectedly became, at least in my opinion,
1:10.0	one of the most glamorous places in New York City in the 1940s and 1950s.
1:15.0	This was one of Harlem's social centers in the decades following the Harlem Renaissance,
1:19.0	a hotel in the midst of one of the most exciting neighborhoods who, for some of its history,
1:24.0	kept out most of its neighbors due to the color of their skin.
1:28.0	When the doors were finally open to African Americans in 1940,
1:31.0	iconic musicians, movie stars, politicians, activists, and athletes flocked here.
	...

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