Countee Cullen Library

104 West 136th Street | also 103 West 135th Street | Harlem | built 1905

The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.

Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

1927
October
A'Lelia Walker opens the Dark Tower salon in her townhouse on this site
An earlier building here was the townhouse of beauty entrepreneur Madam C.J. Walker. Her daughter A'Lelia Walker threw lavish Harlem Renaissance parties there, and in October 1927 she opened the Dark Tower salon in one of its rooms. Guests included Countee Cullen, Alberta Hunter and Florence Mills, and the salon offered a welcoming place for queer Harlemites. The townhouse was torn down in 1941 to make way for this library.
Source: NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project
1942
Louis Allen Abramson's new library building opens on West 136th Street
Architect Louis Allen Abramson designs the new library on the site of Madam C. J. Walker's former townhouse, replacing the smaller branch that had stood just to the south on 135th Street. The building opens under the old 135th Street name even though its address is now one block north. Harlem Renaissance philosopher Alain Locke speaks at the dedication ceremony.
Source: NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project
1951
September
The library branch is renamed for poet Countee Cullen
The branch, built in 1941 to designs by Louis Allen Abramson, was renamed in September 1951 for Countee Cullen, the Harlem Renaissance poet who grew up in the neighborhood and taught at Frederick Douglass Junior High School from 1934 until his death in 1946. It became the first New York Public Library branch named for an African American.
Source: NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project

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