Getting its name from the ambitious people that have lived on these streets, Strivers Row contains a wealth of African American history. The two rows of 1890's brownstones on 138th street and 139th street in
Harlem were originally built for middle class black families, but in the 1920s and 1930s, they started attracting wealthy and influential African Americans. Strivers row is also very important street because the first African American, architect David H. King who built
Madison Square Garden, and the base of the
Statue of Liberty, also built them.
The Row houses on these two blocks reflect the architecture of the period. The northern part of 139th street group expresses the neo-Italian style of McKim, Mead and White an architecture firm that dominated New York at the turn of the 19th century. Other designers that contributed to the building of Strivers Row are James Brown, Bruce Price, and Clarence S. Luce.
