Mar 20 at 10:30 AM - Sale 2697 -

Sale 2697 - Lot 308

Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
(PERIODICALS.) An issue of the scarce weekly magazine "Harlem Life: The Civic-Pictorial Weekly." Volume I, No. 5. 14, [2] pages (12 x 9 inches) including wrappers; minor soiling and offsetting to wrapper, minimal wear, a bit of rust at staples. [New York], 27 October 1934
Request Condition Report Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

A slickly produced document of the Harlem Renaissance which has somehow remained almost unknown to history. Includes news on local politics, the Scottsboro Boys trial, a feature on entertainer Bill Robinson, and extensive columns on theater, night life, and the neighborhood's social and fraternal clubs. Prominent architect Vertner W. Tandy contributed a column titled "Now or Never! Your Housing Situation," in which he pronounced that "our section of the city is overlaid with a film of empty and frustrated pretensions . . . a network of solid blocks of old broken down second hand tenements built on every salable front foot of land into an ugliness and tastelessness never before produced."

We have found only one mention of this magazine in the historical record. A later issue was reviewed by a columnist known as "The Unknown Lady" in the 10 November issue of the New York Age: "Have you seen the latest issue of Harlem Life? Our friend Cyril W. Stephens has published quite a number of periodicals catering to clubs, but this last publication of his goes further than that, and is just about one of the best things I've seen anywhere. . . . The magazine is not confined exclusively to clubs, either." None appear in OCLC, and it is not listed in Danky-Hady.

Also in This Catalogue