Fairfield native writes definitive history history of Harlem

The cover of "Harlem: The Four Hundred Year History from Dutch Village to Capital of Black America." The 464-page book, published last month, was written by former Fairfield resident Jonathan Gill. The cover of "Harlem: The Four Hundred Year History from Dutch Village to Capital of Black America." The 464-page book, published last month, was written by former Fairfield resident Jonathan Gill. Photo: Wendy;Contributed Photo, Contributed Photo Photo: Wendy;Contributed Photo, Contributed Photo Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Fairfield native writes definitive history history of Harlem 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

Music often can take you to another place. For Jonathan Gill, that place was Harlem.

The Fairfield native's love of jazz led him to the African-American enclave at the northern end of Manhattan Island. He dug deep into its past, so deep, in fact, that he wrote what critics hail as the most comprehensive history of Harlem on record.

"Harlem: The Four Hundred Year History from Dutch Village to Capital of Black America" (Grove Press) was published in February.

Gill, who has a Ph.D in American literature from Columbia University and was a professor there, now lives in the Netherlands. But during a trip to Fairfield to visit family late last month, he talked about the book and the 10 years it took to complete.

"I've been dreaming of writing a book ever since I was a kid," Gill said. "I didn't realize it would take a quarter of my adult life to write this book." Another publisher would have killed the project, he said, but Grove stuck with him.

His million-word manuscript was cut in half three times, yielding a 464-page final version. There was so much good material, Gill said, it was difficult to decide what to keep in and what to sacrifice.

In an electronic age, he wrote chapters not on a laptop but on Post-It Notes.

He found rearranging the sticky slips of paper this a better method than trying to rearrange portions of text on a computer screen.

More Information They called Harlem home A partial list of luminaries who, at least at one point in their lives, made Harlem home: Alexander Hamilton Aaron Burr John James Audobon Thomas Nast Oscar Hammerstein Harry Houdini Duke Ellington Joe Louis Arthur Schomburg Langston Hughes George Gershwin Arthur Miller Norman Rockwell.

Edwin G. Burrows, Pulitzer Prize-winning co-author of "Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898," hailed Gill's work as a "savvy reconstruction of Harlem's long, complicated, and often vexing history."

In a review, Burrow wrote, "A terrific read, with plenty of surprises along the way, it's bound to become a classic or I'll eat my hat."

Another Pulitzer Prize-winning author also gave Gill's book a thumbs-up. John Matteson said Gill's history of Harlem "is so briskly paced and invitingly written that readers may not even notice how deeply and impeccably researched it is."

Chapter 1 begins with the English explorer Henry Hudson's failed voyage to China in 1609. He was far off course, and instead of finding silk and spice merchants, he found Harlem's inhabitants of the time -- Native Americans.

The 12th and final chapter begins in 1989, the year Harlem's David Dinkins was elected New York City's first African-American mayor and former Harlem resident Gen. Colin Powell became the first black chairman of the military's Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Later in the last chapter, Gill chronicles the gentrification of some Harlem neighborhoods around the turn of the century. But a trickle of government and nonprofit initiatives meant to transform neighborhoods like West 129th Street between Fifth and Lenox avenues, Gill writes, "the improvement efforts did as much harm as good, since both the criminals and their victims were being forced out."

"Whites began arriving," he writes, "attracted by housing that remained undervalued even after quintupling in price over the past decade -- even as apartments averaging about $300 per month in notorious public housing projects drew tenants from a long waiting list."

Former President Bill Clinton purchased office space at 55 West 125th Street in 2001. By 2005, Gill says, the area's racial balance had changed so drastically that for the first time in decades a Harlem neighborhood was represented by a white City Council member.

Among the many stories in Gill's "Harlem are: George Washington leading American troops in a significant victory in the Battle of Harlem Heights; the 1929 Stock Market Crash and The Great Depression bringing an end to the Jazz Age uptown; and the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965 at the Audobon Ballroom at Broadway and 165th Street.

Gill set out to write a book not for other professors but for grandmothers in Harlem to give to grandchildren as high school graduation presents. It offers countless pieces of information that few in the 21st century may realize, such as the first and largest "Little Italy" was in East Harlem, and that decades ago, Harlem offered a cleanlier alternative to a downtown Manhattan that was "dirtier, more crowded and more dangerous."

Gill said a number of previous Harlem-focused books have focused on Harlem and jazz or Harlem and The Great Depression, "but you never had a book that covered the entire spectrum of all the history, from beginning to today, all the races, all the religions and so on."

Gill said it was not only his passion for jazz that inspired him to write the book, but also "the fact that no one had written a proper history of Harlem in over 100 years." The last thorough chronicle was John Lafayette Riker's "History of Harlem," published in 1881.

The most challenging aspect of the project, Gill said, was "the sheer volume of material that I had to master -- so many eras, languages, religions, races, styles, etc. -- wherever I dug, the excavation just revealed new depths."

He started out pretty well-informed, Gill quipped, "but then realized I knew almost nothing."

Most people would say Harlem was at its peak in the 1920s, Gill said, "but even then, Harlem was a community in crisis, at least in terms of economics, health care, education, employment, etc. But it was a cultural peak, at least as far as African-American culture goes."

While few Connecticut residents taking the train to Manhattan ever get off at that final stop before Grand Central Terminal -- 125th Street in Harlem -- Gill said it would be well worth it.

"There's so much -- the Apollo, the Studio Museum, the Jazz Museum, the soul food, the shopping, the Schomburg Center, the churches, the historic houses like the Hamilton Grange and the Morris-Jumel Mansion," he said.

"I like the Lenox Lounge and St. Nick's Pub for jazz," Gill said. Gill has been making forays into Harlem since he was a youth, but he also lived there.

While teaching at Columbia and other schools, he and his wife lived at 115th Street and Manhattan Avenue in Harlem and other places in the area.

Though Harlem's neighborhood boundaries are not set in stone, Gill said his book defines the area as "110th up to 155th, more or less." The black novelist and scholar Ralph Ellison, however, said, "Wherever Negroes live uptown is considered Harlem."

Harlem's now notorious housing projects were built in the 1930s, `40s and `50s, and when they were new, they were a "terrific alternative to overcrowded tenements," Gill said.

By the 1970s, it was an entirely different story.

In the `70s, Gill said, Harlem had 90 liquor stores and funeral homes but only one bookstore and not a single museum.

And those `70s will be the subject of his next book -- "Fire and Rain."

"I thought it would be a bit poetic if I top off a book about a place with a book about a time," he said.