It wasn’t long ago that if someone who lived downtown mentioned needing to make a trip to the corner of Frederick Douglass Boulevard and 118th Street, you could assume they were not making the trip to buy groceries.
The article talks about the transformation of a largely drug-run neighborhood to one where young families are moving into. Harlem is getting a makeover.
"Until recently, Frederick Douglass Boulevard, sometimes called Eighth Avenue, had been one of the centers of Harlem's heroin trade since at least the late 1940s.
The thoroughfare is featured prominently in Claude Brown's autobiography about ghetto life in the 1940s and 1950s, "Manchild in the Promised Land." In one passage, Mr. Brown observed: "The junkies were committing almost all the crimes in Harlem. They were snatching pocketbooks. If a cat took out a $20 bill on Eighth Avenue in broad daylight, he could be killed." ...
... "Cut to Harlem 2008 and the corner of Frederick Douglass Boulevard and 118th Street.
A 91-unit condominium complex called SoHa118 - short for "South Harlem" and 118th Street - is nearly completed, but not yet open."
Thanks to DG-rad
