cotton club

By 1958, the Cotton Club was a boarded up building and Urban Renewal would take precedent for the arrival of the Bethune Tower superblock (Minisink) which would eventually spell the demise of Harlem’s most famous jazz nightclub.The original Cotton Club opened in the 1920′s on 142nd street and Lenox Avenue when central Harlem was the playground of the rich. The club was segregated in the sense that only white patrons could enter the establishment while all the service and entertainment was provided by black entertainers who often worked jungle themes or black face parodies for their guests. If you were a Black woman and wanted to perform there, you had to be “light, bright, and damn near white!”Today, there is a new incarnation of the Cotton Club which sits on the most western end of 125th street under the massive Manhattanville viaduct. The windowless block of a building has a less dramatic display out front but seems to be popular  with tourists for Sunday jazz brunches.