Langston Hughes House
20 East 127th Street | East Harlem | built 1869
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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.
- 1869
Alexander Wilson designs the Italianate rowhouse for Meagher and Hanson
In 1869 developers James Meagher and Thomas Hanson built the three-story brownstone at 20 East 127th Street to a design by architect Alexander Wilson. The twenty-foot-wide Italianate house featured carved corbels, segmentally arched windows, and a bracketed pressed-metal cornice typical of postwar rowhouses in Harlem.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1947
Langston Hughes takes the top floor of 20 East 127th Street as his workroom
Built in 1869 to designs by Alexander Wilson, this brownstone Italianate rowhouse belonged to Emerson and Ethel Harper, whom Langston Hughes regarded as an adopted uncle and aunt. Hughes used the top floor as his workroom from 1947 until his death in 1967, writing Montage of a Dream Deferred and I Wonder as I Wander there. The city designated the house a landmark on August 11, 1981.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1967
Langston Hughes dies weeks after surgery at Polyclinic Hospital
Twenty years after moving into the top-floor workroom at 20 East 127th Street, Langston Hughes underwent prostate surgery at Polyclinic Hospital in the spring of 1967. He died on May 22 at age sixty-six, having written Montage of a Dream Deferred and his humorous Simple stories there.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1981
The city designates the Langston Hughes House a landmark
New York City designated 20 East 127th Street a landmark on August 11, 1981, citing its association with the poet's two decades there. The federal government followed the next year, adding the rowhouse to the National Register of Historic Places on October 29, 1982.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2016
Nearly 800 donors help the I, Too Arts Collective lease Hughes's house
Writer Renée Watson and the I, Too Arts Collective, named for Hughes's poem "I, Too," set out to rent the house and open it to writers and artists. They needed $40,000 by September 1 to secure a three-year lease with an option to buy. After national news coverage, nearly 800 people gave more than $52,000. The owner had tried to sell the house for $1 million in 2011, and agents by then put its value at over $3 million.
Source: amsterdamnews.com
Further reading
- Langston Hughes HouseWikipedia
- The Langston Hughes House - 20 East 127th StreetDaytonian in Manhattan
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