During the 1920s and 30s, Sugar Hill was the cultural capital of Black America. Sugar Hill, the high ground in Hamilton Heights above 145th Street, got its name from the sweet life its residents lived, elevated above the rest of Harlem both physically and socially. Thurgood Marshall, W. E. B. Du Bois, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Cab Calloway all lived in these blocks.
Strivers' Row, which is the pair of townhouse blocks on West 138th and 139th Streets, was designed by Stanford White in 1891 for wealthy white residents, then opened to Black buyers in the 1910s, and the name Strivers' Row came from the aspiration of those who moved in. From these brownstones, Black intellectuals, artists, musicians, and lawyers helped build the Harlem Renaissance, the explosion of African American literature, art, and music that remade American culture in the years between the wars. Walk down these blocks and look at the townhouses; the back-alley signs from the original Stanford White project, reading Private Road, Walk Your Horses, are still set into the driveways.