I'd been living in New York for four or five years when I realized I hadn't done much of the touristy stuff and maybe it was time.

First, I figured I'd start with a tour of what was once the capital of Black America, Harlem, USA. So I go online and I look

around for tours and I find this walking tour with this guy. My name is Neil Shoemaker, and I am the owner and founder of the Harlem Heritage Tourism and Cultural

Center.

Neil is Harlem to his core, and he is so Harlem that he actually did our interview

while taking a stroll around his neighborhood. You can see why he loves doing

walking tours so much. But the tour we did was dope and we saw a ton of well-known and

little-known historical places around Harlem. The place we ended the tour, though, is one of Harlem's

major cultural sites, the Teresa Hotel.

Standing in the middle of Harlem, right on 125th Street,

this white brick 13-story 300-room hotel

wasn't your average hotel. I mean this hotel's guest list is

pretty major. I'm talking people who help define American culture.

Ella Fitzgerald, I'm talking about Nackin Cole, Joe Lewis, the Ground Farmer.

Lena Horn, Billy Hollad Eagle, Louis Armstrong, Jack Johnson.

And last but not least,

Malcolm X, and for Bill Castro. My name is Baudelaire and this is Alice Obscera. A celebration of the world strange, incredible and

wondrous places.

Today we're talking to a Harlem historian about what makes the Teresa Hotel

such a vital part of Harlem's cultural identity.

After this. Everybody stayed at the Tries Hotel. When was the Teresa founded? 1912, the developer of the part of the building, a gentleman named George Gustavus, and he loved his wife so much he named the Teresa until after his wife

Teresa at this time 1912 we have to imagine the kind of community that Harlem

...