The Rent Was Too High So They Threw a Party

"Minnie Pindar was at home  in Harlem on a Saturday in 1929, and she had a party to throw. She and her sister, Lucibelle Pindar, had passed out invitations, printed on cheap, white card stock, promising a good time in their ground floor apartment at 149 West 117th Street. 'Refreshments Just It' and 'Music Won’t Quit,' the invitation read. Their invitation, one of dozens of similar party invitations tucked into the Langston Hughes papers at Yale’s Beinecke Library, hints at the rich but difficult lives of Black people living in New York at the dawn of the Harlem Renaissance. On that Saturday, Nov. 2, the Pindar sisters likely readied their home to welcome guests. Maybe they moved the furniture to make room for dancing. Maybe Ms. Pindar wore her best dress. There would likely be revelry and laughter that night, but throwing the party was a necessity. Every guest was expected to give them a quarter. The rent was due. ..."

NY Times

 

 A black and white video shows a bustling street scene in New York in 1939.

 

2009 February: Harlem Renaissance, 2010 August: A Nightclub Map of Harlem, 2010 October: Apollo Theater, 2014 May: History of Harlem, 2014 November: A Harlem Throwback to the Era of Billie Holiday, 2015 February: A Nightclub Map of Harlem, 2017 June: During Prohibition, Harlem Night Clubs Kept the Party Going, 2018 March: How a Group of Journalists Turned Hip-Hop Into a Literary Movement, 2018 March: Rent party, 2018 December: The Sheck Wes story, 2019 January: Apollo Theater Is Celebrated in a New Graphic Novel, 2019 April: Minton's Playhouse, 2019 June: Loïs Mailou Jones, 2019 June: An Artist on Paying Homage to Harlem, and Using Found Fabrics in Paintings, 2019 October: Lenox Lounge, 2020 March: Bebopped and Rebopped: The Births of Bebop and Invisible Man, 2020 July: The Theater Where Ella Fitzgerald Got Her Start, 2020 August: A Walk Through Harlem, New York’s Most Storied Neighborhood