Harlem Hospital Mural Pavilion
512 Lenox Avenue | also 530 Lenox Avenue, 70 West 137th Street, 506 Lenox Avenue | Harlem | built 2009
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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.
- 1936
The WPA commissions Black artists to paint murals for Harlem Hospital
In 1936 the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration commissioned murals for Harlem Hospital, perhaps the first major federal commissions given to African American artists. Charles Alston painted a pair, "Magic in Medicine" and "Modern Medicine," contrasting African healing traditions with Western medicine; the work was finished in 1940. For decades the murals hung in older hospital buildings where mostly staff could see them.
Source: livingnewdeal.org
- 2012
The $325 million Mural Pavilion opens with the restored WPA murals
Harlem Hospital opened its six-story Mural Pavilion on Lenox Avenue between 135th and 136th Streets on September 27, 2012. The City Council's Manhattan delegation put $4.2 million toward restoring the hospital's Depression-era murals, which had been plastered over or damaged by fire and water, and several now hang in a public gallery inside. A block-long glass reproduction of the murals wraps the facade and is lit at night.
Source: dnainfo.com
- 2012
HOK wraps the new pavilion in a glass facade printed with the WPA mural
Architects HOK, working with Harlem-based architect Jack Travis, design a curtain wall for the 192,000-square-foot pavilion that reproduces imagery from the hospital's WPA murals so it reads from the street. Inside, a new public gallery lets passersby see the restored originals. In 2017 the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum features the design in its exhibition on American projects that engage local communities.
Source: hok.com
Further reading
- Harlem Hospital CenterWikipedia
Nearby
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- Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture515 Lenox Avenue | 12 entries
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