By Ivana Mowry-Mora
During the Harlem Renaissance, some of the greatest black jazz musicians, poets, artists and writers of all time emerged in New York City between the 1920s and 30s. Thanks to this map, we can get a sense of the vibrant nightlife of Harlem during this time in history. This original pen-and-brush map was drawn by Elmer Simms Campbell, one of the first commercially successful, and syndicated, African American cartoonists in the country. This nightlife map appeared in Manhattan magazine as a centerfold. The map faces southwest, bound by 110th Street, and highlights the main attractions on Lenox and Seventh Avenues.
The map, purchased at auction on March 31, provides a “who’s who” guide of the nightclubs that drove Harlem nightlife during and after Prohibition, including the Savoy Ballroom, the Cotton Club, and Gladys’s Clam Bar. It was published in the inaugural edition of Manhattan Magazine and appeared in Esquire nine months later.
The map offers advice on navigating Harlem’s nightlife. It warns readers that “nothing happens before 2 a.m.” at Club Hot-Cha and advises them to “ask for Clarence.” It is dotted with vignettes of Harlem characters like the “Reefer Man” and “Snake-hips” Earl Tucker, whom the map identifies as the “originator of that weird dance — the ‘Snakehips.’” Musicians like Cab Calloway, Don Redman, Gladys Bentley, and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson are depicted.
“The only important omission is the location of the various speakeasies, but since there are about 500 of them you won’t have much trouble,” the map instructs readers.
When he made this map, cartoonist Elmer Simms Campbell was at the beginning of a decadeslong career in illustration and commercial art. Campbell was “one of first commercially successful African-American cartoonists,” writes Rebecca Rego Barry. Campbell, who died in 1971, contributed cartoons and artwork regularly to Esquire from 1933 to 1958 and created “Esky,” the magazine’s mustached and bug-eyed mascot. His drawings often satirized upper-crust culture. His comic strip, “Cuties,” was syndicated to more than 145 newspapers. He also contributed to The New Yorker, Cosmopolitan, Ebony, Playboy, and other national magazines.
After first acquiring the map last spring, Melissa Barton, curator of Yale’s James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection, said the literary movement is very much connected to Harlem’s nightlife. “It might seem like the literary movement that made Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston household names and Harlem’s night club scene in the 1920s and 1930s are unrelated, but they are in fact both essential features of the tremendous cultural outpouring we call the Harlem Renaissance,” she said.
Sources:
A night-club map of Harlem | Library of Congress
E. Simms Campbell’s 1932 illustrated map of Harlem nightlife.
1932 map illustrates a vibrant nightlife during the Harlem Renaissance | 6sqft