The Art in Commerce: Harlem's Lenox Lounge

Lenox Lounge
Built 1939

There are few establishments in Harlem that rival the distinctive facade and graphic signage of the Lenox Lounge located at 288 Lenox Avenue just south of 125th Street. Constructed in 1939, its exterior and interior design are hallmark examples of the Moderne style, owing much to the streamlining theories of designer Raymond Loewy and the design currents of 1939, which ranged from the architecture of the New York Worlds Fair to Cedric Gibbons’ sets for the “Emerald City” in the film the Wizard of Oz.

The lounge’s white neon letters with their chrome surrounds are set against “Maroon” wall panels, a fashionable color for Cadillacs, Studebakers, and other trend setting items of the period. The panel’s sturdy construction and glossy baked enamel finish are borrowed from the era’s automobile and diner construction technologies. The interior light columns framing the lounge's bar and banquettes are composed of frosted glass fins which conduct light (similar to fiber optics) from a hidden light source, through the glass, brightly revealing itself along the profiled edges.

















Interior Glass Light Fixtures

The venue’s music and dinning area, dubbed the Zebra Room was a favored spot of Billie Holiday and offered a certain brazen chic when it “appropriated” a distinctive zebra pattern wall paper reminiscent of that in the famed mid-town club, El Morocco. The signature pattern was such a recognizable backdrop from countless newspaper photos of socialites and celebrities that El Morocco sued in an effort to prevent its use.






















Lenox Lounge's "Zebra Room"
Mr. & Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt at El Morocco

Live at LENOX LOUNGE
The John Hicks Elise Wood Quintet





The Harlem Eye / Harlem One Stop
Article First Published in The Studio Museum in Harlem Magazine
Spring 2005
Text and Lenox Lounge Photographs by John T. Reddick

HARLEM: Noted Residents & Addresses

James Latimer Allen
Artist/Photographer
1907-1977
213 West 121st Street

Not Landmarked

Marian Anderson
1897-1993
Opera Singer
Contralto
720 Riverside Drive
Not Landmarked
1200 Fifth Avenue
Not Landmarked



John James Audubon
1785-1851
Painter, Naturalist
Trinity Cemetery
155th Street and
Amsterdam Avenue
Not Landmarked

James A. Bailey
1847-1906
Circus Owner
10 St. Nicholas Place
Landmark



James Baldwin
1924-1987
Novelist
Playwright

New York Public Library
135th St. Branch
Schomburg Center
103 West 135th Street
Landmarked


Count Basie
1904-1984
Pianist, Jazz Composer

555 Edgecombe Avenue
Landmarked

Romare Bearden
1911-1988
Artist
Painting, Collage

Studios
33 West 125th Street
Not Landmarked
Apollo Theater Bldg.
243 West 125th Street
Landmarked

Saul Bellow
1915-2005
Author, Noble Laureate

333 Riverside Drive
Not Landmarked







Fidel Castro
1926-
Cuban President

Hotel Theresa
2086-96 Adam C. Powell, Jr Blvd.
at 125th Street
Landmarked

Dr. Kenneth B. Clark
1914-2005
Dr. Mamie Phipps Clark
1917-1983
Psychologists

Northside Testing and Consultation Center
Dunbar Housing Project (1946 - 48)
West 135th Street
Not Landmarked
Northside Center for Child Development
at the New Lincoln School (1948 - 74)
31-33 West 110th Street
Not Landmarked

James Dwight
1844-?
Baking Soda Magnate

Dwight Mansion
31 Mt. Morris Park West
at 123rd Street
Landmarked



Ralph Ellison
1914-1994
Author
749 St. Nicholas Avenue
Landmarked
720 Riverside Drive
Not Landmarked

Ella Fitzgerald
1917-1996
Singer

Apollo Theatre
253 West 125th Street
Landmarked

F. Scott Fitzgerald
1896-1940
Author

200 Claremont Avenue
Not Landmarked





George Gershwin
1898-1937
Composer

520 West 144th Street
Landmarked
501 Cathederal Parkway
(West 110th Street)
Not Landmarked


Allen Ginsberg
1926-1997
Beat Poet

536 West 114th Street
Not Landmarked

Alexander Hamilton
1757-1804
Politician, Statesman
Financier

Hamilton Grange
287 Convent Avenue
Landmarked
Lorenz Hart
1895-1943
Lyricist
59 West 119th Street
Landmarked




Moss Hart
1904-1961
Playwright, Director

74 East 105th Street
Demolished
Matthew Henson
1866-1955
Explorer
Dunbar Apartments
2588 Adam C. Powell, Jr. Blvd.
Landmarked

Billie Holiday
1915-1959
Jazz Singer

LenoxLounge
288 Lenox Avenue
Not Landmarked

Harry Houndini
1874-1926
Magician
Escapologist
Stunt Performer

278 West 113th Street
Not Landmarked

Langston Hughes
1902-1967
Poet, Novelist,
Playwright

Colored Y.M.C.A.
181 West 135th Street
Landmarked
20 East 127th Street
Landmarked

Alberta Hunter
1895-1984
Jazz Singer, Composer

133 West 138th Street
Not Landmarked

Scott Joplin
1867-1917
Composer
Ragtime Music

133 West 138th Street
Landmarked
163 West 131 Street
Not Landmarked
Studio
160 West 133rd Street
Not Landmarked

Eliza Jumel
1785-1865
Heiress

Morris-Jumel Mansion
65 Jumel Terrace
Landmarked

Jack Kerouac
1922-1969
Beat Author

421 West 118th Street
Not Landmarked

Martin Luther King, Jr.
1929-1968
Minister
Civil Rights Activist

Beyond Vietnam Speech (1967)

Riverside Church
490 Riverside Dr.
Not Landmarked
Eartha Kitt
1927-
Singer, Actress

Little Theater
HarlemY.M.C.A.
180 West 135th Street
Landmarked






March on Washington
National Office
1962-1963

Bayard Rustin
1912-1987
Deputy Director

170West 130th Street
Not Landmarked

Mabel Mercer
1900-1984
Jazz Cabaret Singer
45 West 110th Street
Not Landmarked

Thelonious Monk
1917-1982
Jazz Pianist,
Composer
Howard McGhee
1918-1987
Bebop/Jazz Trumpeter

Minton's Playhouse
210 West 118th Street
Landmarked
Henry "Juggy" Murray
1923-2005
Rythm & Blues
Music Producer
Sue Records
725 Riverside Drive
Not Landmarked

Paul Robeson
1901-1976
Actor, Performer,
Human Rights Activist

16 Jumel Terrace
Landmarked


Norman Rockwell
1894-1978
Painter,
Illustrator

789 St Nicholas Avenue
Landmarked






Arturo A. Schomburg
1874-1938
Historian, Writer
Activist

Schomburg Collection
135th Street Branch
New York Public Library
103 West 135th Street
Landmarked

Billy Strayhorn
1921-1967
Composer,
Pianist

Edgecombe Avenue
Landmarked
Convent Avenue
Landmarked
Flash Inn
107 Macombs Place
Not Landmarked

Vertner W. Tandy
1885-1949
Architect,
Founding Member:
Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity

St Philips Episcopal Church
204 West 134th Street
Landmark
Ivey Delph Apartments
19 Hamilton Terrace
Landmarked


James
Van Der Zee

1886-1983
Photographer

G.G.G. Photo Studio
272 Lenox Avenue
Landmarked



Andy Warhol
1928-1987
Illustrator
Pop Artist

24 W. 103rd St.

Orson Welles
1915-1985
Actor, Director
Theater/Film/Radio

Lafayette Theater
2225 Adam C. Powell Blvd.
Not Landmarked
Thomas "Fats" Waller
Organist, Composer
Jazz Pianist
1904-1943

107 West 134th Street
Not Landmarked
Abyssinian Baptist Church
135 West 138th Street
Landmarked

Mary Lou Williams
1910-1981
Jazz Pianist, Composer

David Stone Martin
1913-1992
Jazz Illustrator

63 Hamilton Terrace
Landmarked

Harlem One Stop will be updating this listing every week in an effort to provide you with a glimpse of the noted persons and the sites associated with them that remain throughout Harlem and Upper Manhattan. It's our hope that by the end of the year you will have an index of historic and unique sites in your neighborhood to share with friends and visitors. - The Harlem Eye / Harlem One Stop

Harlem's Social Diary: Paula West On the Eve of Greatness!

Paula West, Jazz Vocalist

Bette Davis as Margo Channing in, "All About Eve"





With the launching of the Columbia/Harlem Jazz Project, Professor Bob O'Meally and the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University are once again to be applauded for depositing unique and talented artists like the jazz vocalist, Paula West so conveniently at our Harlem doorstep... to be enjoyed I might add, for the equivalent price of a cocktail ($10)!

The evening began with a brief and delightful discussion between the artist and Professor Farah Jasmine Griffin. Ms. West discussed her career to date (she has self-produced all her recordings), would love to have an "artist supportive" label pick her up, has worked as a waitress and it was revealed, as an aside, that she can render an impressive impersonation of Bette Davis... more on that later.

Following the discussion, the set began with an instrumental introduction provided by a distinguished group of musicians which included pianist George Mesterhazy, Vicente Archer on bass, Ed Cherry on guitar and Thomas Reedus on drums. From their first notes, the clarity of musicianship and its amplification were masterful! No doubt, there was micing, but the sound was so pure and appropriate to the venue and audience as to appear magically nonexistent. In joining them, Ms. West was no different, her articulation, both in word and emotion were dead on. Wry and witty, she sang songs like, Oscar Brown's, "The Snake," Cole Porter's, "Don't Fence Me In" and Rodger & Hart's, "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" with a woman's personal insight, extracting with cool abomb, the double-entendre nuances of the lyrics.

In those moments, as she tossed her lioness mane and commanded lines like;

Couldn't sleep
And wouldn't sleep
Until I could sleep where I shouldn't sleep
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered am I...

I thought, my god, she's Margo Channing... as performer, "full of fire and music!"

Film buffs will recall Margo Channing as a character played by Bette Davis in the film, "All About Eve. The character is a legendary actress, whose performing talents are constantly referred to in the film, but as an audience we're never really allowed to glimpse them in action. That night, as Paula West masterfully re-envisioned one song standard after another I was reminded of an exchange between Margo Channing and Lloyd Richards, a playwright in the film.

Lloyd Richards: I shall never understand the weird process by which a body with a voice suddenly fancies itself as a mind. Just when exactly does an actress decide they're HER words she's speaking and HER thoughts she's expressing?

Margo Channing: Usually at the point where she has to rewrite and rethink them, to keep the audience from leaving the theatre!

Paula West was doing just that!... with each song, no matter the author, she was rethinking their lyrics and context, making the songs distinctively her own. In so doing, the audience was constantly moved and rewarded by her artistry. With songs like, "Nobody," by Bert Williams and Alex Rogers or "Black and Blue," by Andy Razaff and Fats Waller... she'd set-up the song's historical context and then magically, like an actor, evoke their originator’s inner emotions, as if somehow reincarnated through song. As the evening drew to a close, one felt guilty for having not been aware of such a wonderful talent before, and wondered too, what the commercial market would extract from her art to achieve more mainstream success.

Fortunately, on this night, Paula West was "commercially available" in the lobby and signing CDs to boot! While purchasing her CDs, Temptation and Come What May, I mentioned Bette Davis, and the references to her in the program's earlier discussions. Ms West confessed to feeling a kindred spirit with Ms. Davis, mentioning that they shared the same birthday. She also acknowledged being a fan of Margo Channing and the film, "All about Eve," down to knowing many of the lines by heart.

Quickly, one could sense her Bette Davis grit and humor, her love of her art and the ensemble nature of its creative process. So, Jazz lovers, fasten your seat belts... plug in your iPods. Paula West will soothe any bumpy night! - The Harlem Eye / Harlem One Stop 2.2.2007


Paula West performed at the Miller Theater/Columbia University on January 26, 2007