Hotel Theresa
200 West 125th Street | also 202 West 125th Street, 2092 Adam Clayton Powell Jr Boulevard, 2086 Adam Clayton Powell Jr Boulevard | Harlem | built 1913
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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.
- 1885
Alva Walker builds the Hotel Winthrop on the blockfront where the Theresa would rise
Alva S. Walker acquired the Seventh Avenue blockfront between 124th and 125th Streets in 1885 and began the Hotel Winthrop that year, to designs by Theodore E. Thomson. The building was a stylistically conservative Italian Renaissance hotel with a central entrance and shops at street level.
- 1912
A Blumstein department store planned for the Winthrop site collapses, and Sidenberg turns to a hotel
In 1911 Gustavus Sidenberg leased the old Winthrop to department-store owner L. M. Blumstein, and the Times printed a drawing in February 1912 of a nine-story store designed for Blumstein by Buchman & Fox. The arrangement unraveled, and the Evening Mail soon announced Sidenberg's own plan for a big hotel instead. That hotel became the Theresa, built partly as a memorial to his late wife.
- 1913
Gustavus Sidenberg opens the Hotel Theresa, named for his wife
German-born stockbroker Gustavus Sidenberg builds the 13-story hotel at 125th Street, hiring the firm of George and Edward Blum to design a white terra-cotta facade with custom ornament rather than stock pieces. Sidenberg names the hotel for his wife, Theresa. It becomes Harlem's tallest building, a title it holds until the Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building rises in 1973.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1915
The 1915 census lists 193 people living in the Theresa, all of them white
The New York State census counted 193 residents, among them manager Thomas M. Lenehen and thirty-six employees, mostly women: fifteen chambermaids, nine waitresses and eight laundresses. Every resident and live-in servant was white, although Harlem's black population, around 50,000 in 1914, was growing fast. The hotel kept a strict segregation policy until 1940.
- 1937
Love B. Woods buys the whites-only Hotel Theresa
African American businessman Love B. Woods purchases the hotel, which since its opening has admitted only white guests. Three years later he ends that policy outright, and the Theresa becomes a center of Black social and cultural life in Harlem, later hosting guests including Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Muhammad Ali.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1940
Love B. Woods ends the Hotel Theresa's whites-only policy
Stockbroker Gustavus Sidenberg built the 13-story hotel in 1912 and 1913 to designs by George and Edward Blum and named it for his wife; at first it barred Black guests. African American businessman Love B. Woods ended that policy in 1940. The Theresa became the social center of Black Harlem, hosting Joe Louis, Duke Ellington, Josephine Baker and Muhammad Ali. It closed as a hotel in 1967 and reopened as the Theresa Towers office building in 1970.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1946
Ebony profiles the Theresa as the temporary home of Black America's most famous names
Ebony's April 1946 issue described the hotel's registration desk as the place where the best-known Black Americans arrived in New York. Guests included Joe Louis and other boxers, Rochester and the Hollywood contingent, bandleaders and writers. Permanent residents of the hotel included Florence Murray, editor of the Negro Yearbook, and Grace Johnson, widow of the novelist James Weldon Johnson, and the bar was run by former bandleader Andy Kirk.
“…to the Theresa's "registration desk flock the most famous Negroes in America.”
- 1960
Fidel Castro moves his UN delegation into the Theresa
In New York for the United Nations General Assembly, Fidel Castro walked out of his midtown hotel after a dispute over money on September 19, 1960, and moved his delegation to the Theresa. Malcolm X came to see him soon after he checked in. The next day Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev visited, drawing thousands of onlookers and hundreds of police to 125th Street, and crowds gathered outside the hotel daily during the stay.
Source: smithsonianmag.com
- 1960
Nikita Khrushchev visits Fidel Castro at the Theresa and the two embrace
While Fidel Castro stayed at the Theresa, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev called on him and was photographed giving Castro a bear hug. Other visitors during the stay included Malcolm X, the poets Langston Hughes and Allen Ginsberg, the sociologist C. Wright Mills, Egypt's Nasser and India's Nehru.
“…from Russian premier Nikita Khrushchev (photographed giving Castro a bear hug)…”
- 1960
John F. Kennedy campaigns at the Theresa alongside Eleanor Roosevelt
Presidential candidate John F. Kennedy campaigned at the Theresa in October 1960, joined by Eleanor Roosevelt and other leading Democrats. The hotel, known then as the Waldorf of Harlem, had been a center of Black social life in the neighborhood since the 1940s, and it had hosted Fidel Castro earlier that year.
“In October 1960, John F. Kennedy campaigned for the presidency at the hotel, along with Eleanor Roosevelt and other leading figures…”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1964
Malcolm X announces a plan for a united Afro-American front at a Theresa news conference
On May 21, 1964, Malcolm X, newly back from Africa, spoke to reporters at the Hotel Theresa at 125th Street and Seventh Avenue. He said he wanted a united Afro-American front that could bring the situation of Black Americans before the United Nations. After his April pilgrimage to Mecca he had taken the name El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz.
Source: billmoyers.com
- 1965
Malcolm X's Organization of Afro-American Unity works from a second-floor corner office
In 1965 the headquarters of the Organization of Afro-American Unity was a second-floor corner office overlooking 125th Street and Seventh Avenue. Malcolm X had founded the group after breaking with Elijah Muhammad and returning from his pilgrimage to Mecca. The Theresa had earlier housed A. Philip Randolph's March on Washington Movement.
- 1970
The former Hotel Theresa reopens as the office building Theresa Towers
New owners begin converting the hotel to office space in 1966, and it closes the following year, reopening in 1970 under the name Theresa Towers, which the building still carries. The Landmarks Preservation Commission designates it a city landmark in 1993, and it joins the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1993
The Landmarks Commission designates the Hotel Theresa, with the owner opposed
After a public hearing on July 15, 1991, at which two speakers backed designation, the Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the Hotel Theresa on July 13, 1993. An owner's representative had spoken against it. Eight more speakers supported designating this and other buildings on the hearing calendar and urged the commission to keep working in Harlem. The designation covers the whole Seventh Avenue blockfront, Block 1930, Lot 30.
“A representative of the owner spoke in opposition to designation.”
- 2021
Colson Whitehead's New Yorker story sets a 1959 robbery at the Theresa
The New Yorker published Colson Whitehead's short story "The Theresa Job" on July 26, 2021, about a 1959 robbery at the hotel. The premise was later expanded into his 2021 novel Harlem Shuffle. The hotel also appears in the film Precious and in Hitchcock's Topaz.
“Colson Whitehead's "The Theresa Job" (The New Yorker, July 26, 2021) is about a 1959 robbery at the hotel.”
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- Hotel TheresaWikipedia
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