Tourism Jitters
As Revival Spreads, Is Harlem Becoming a Theme Park?

By Susana Seijas

Sunday in Harlem is not what it used to be. While tourists venture into America's most famous black neighborhood every day, Sunday is when the tourist crush peaks. Busloads of camera-clutching visitors flock to Harlem's churches to absorb the soulful sounds of gospel music. Tourists from as far as Osaka in Japan take in the sights along 125th Street and other well-known spots.

"Harlem used to be no man's land - and now, we have tourists from Japan, Britain, France, Italy and Germany," said Ulrick Chatelain, 54, a Haitian-born licensed tour guide who specializes in Harlem.

The backdrop for the thousands of tourists arriving each year is Harlem's economic revival, or "Second Renaissance" as it is now called. The scene is a far cry from earlier years when Harlem was synonymous with crime and crack houses. Downtown Manhattanites -- let alone tourists -- rarely traveled north of 110th Street. Now, the reverse is true, with both New Yorkers and tourists exploring a once off-limits area. Several factors explain the change.

Most important of all in luring visitors uptown, observers say, is the plummeting crime rate. Since 1993, murders in central Harlem have dropped 83 percent, and overall crime has decreased 60 percent. And millions of dollars have poured in over the last 10 years to improve housing across Harlem. Retailers such as Starbucks, Blockbuster Video and the Body Shop have moved in adding verve and variety to the area.

But the changes have stirred concerns among Harlem residents. While many welcome the economic boost, others complain about the boorish behavior of tourists and say that residents have become props in a theme park. Still others worry about diverse side-effects as tourism not only contributes to economic growth but also adds pressure to hike rents.

"Tourism is good for businessmen like myself, and not so good for others," said Raymond Ingram, 40, an African American who set up his own tour company four years ago. "I saw business picking up and more tourists coming to the neighborhood. I saw my niche, and went for it." A former army officer and a self-described "good talker," he cannot imagine doing anything else for a living. He was born and brought up in Harlem and is proud to show off his neighborhood to others. He runs his one-man show out of his apartment on 126th Street. He foresees a busy summer and may even need to hire some staff soon. "I'm not afraid of a recession, just a slow-down in the economy," he said. "Harlem is the last frontier, and Manhattan's best kept secret."

As for the tourists, they seem to view Harlem with a mix of awe and lingering apprehension.

"I felt somewhat brave venturing into Harlem," said Victoria Knight, 27, a white British tourist. "In England Harlem has a bad name. Sort of like Britain's black capital, Brixton, London's Harlem equivalent. White people live there too, but you don't go there sightseeing. I was very impressed by the variety in Harlem - to see the Apollo Theatre, the Lenox Lounge, the revamped Cotton Club. But I liked the soul food best." Her judgment after a full Sunday brunch at Amy Ruth's on 116th Street and Lenox Avenue: "The smothered chicken and waffles were absolutely delicious."

Knight took a Harlem Spirituals tour early on Sunday morning and was done by midday. Once the tour was over, she was eager to get off the bus and explore a few Harlem streets on her own. "But you could tell some of the people on the bus thought I was crazy when I asked the guide to let me off the bus," she said. "I felt quite safe walking from 125th Street to Amy Ruth's."

The jitters Knight sensed in the facial expressions of fellow tourists have also been observed by Chatelain when guiding groups. "Harlem is much safer, but I still see some of my tourists get off the bus with some trepidation, as if they were stepping into an imaginary war zone," said Chatelain, who came to Harlem from Haiti 20 years ago.

"I never thought I would be using my French and be taking busloads of French tourists on a tour of Harlem," said Chatelain, who has worked for Harlem Spiritual Tours every Sunday for the past four years. According to a study carried out last year by the Upper Manhattan Tourism Market, 80 percent of tourists are foreigners and the largest group of foreigners are French. Only 12 percent of tourists are African American.

One of the top attractions in Harlem, Chatelain said, is the Abyssinian Baptist Church on 138 Street, founded in1808 by a group of African American and Ethiopian merchants who refused to accept segregation in church. Lines to get in are always long. "I take them there sometimes, because they've heard so much about Abyssinian, but I prefer the smaller churches, where the wait is not as long," he said. "Harlem has 300 churches, but Abyssinian is always the favorite."

Another top attraction is Alexander Hamilton's home. "There is so much history in Harlem, we never thought it would be so full of interesting colonial landmarks," said Laura Cherdel, 35, a white tourist visiting New York from Paris for 10 days. Cherdel had expected Harlem to look like a burned out shell -- with empty lots and ramshackle buildings. "We saw some of those, like the dilapidated Renaissance ballroom, but nothing had prepared me for the elegance of Striver's Row," said Cherdel, referring to a stately string of homes on 138th Street. "There was and is a lot of money around here."

Cherdel paid $35 for a bus tour of Harlem that included a quick 30-minute stop at Hamilton's home followed by an even faster 20-minute visit to Union Baptist Church. Lunch at Copeland's, a renowned soul food restaurant, was $50 extra, which Cherdel turned down. Cherdel was not so comfortable with the church visit. "There we were," she said, "a busload of European tourists, mostly French, with our walking shoes, jeans and cameras strapped around our necks - and the African American congregation was so elegant, so well put together in comparison."

And having tourists around is often uncomfortable for African-American residents. "I just feel like I'm in a zoo sometimes with so many tourists," said Barbara Smith Graves, 50, a long-time Harlem resident. "It's as if they're saying, look, look, they're black and they go to church like this, and eat like this,"

A younger resident, Eric Henderson, 18, has a bleaker view of tourism in Harlem: "Why is it you white people can come and walk around in black areas and we black people can't move around white areas?"

But white Europeans are not the only foreigners exploring Harlem. Tommy Tomita, 62, president of Harlem Soul Tours Inc., provides tours of Harlem only to Japanese tourists. To go on one of Tomita's tours, the customer must be Japanese, or speak fluent Japanese to understand the tour. "My clients come to Harlem thinking they'll see lots of black people, which they do, but they don't expect to see so many white tourists," Tomita said. He specializes in jazz tours and takes his fellow countrymen to the various jazz clubs dotted across Harlem, such as the Lenox Lounge on 125 Street and St. Nick's Pub on 149th Street.

"Most of us come here for music and not only jazz. I came for gospel," said Akiko Sato, 42, a schoolteacher from Tokyo. "Gospel is big in Japan and I wanted to hear it here, and see Harlem for myself." Sato had just heard the Sunday gospel choir at Memorial Baptist Church on 115th Street and Lenox Avenue. "It was very uplifting," she said. "Yes, it was worth the trip to New York."

China Cooper, an energetic African-American tour guide at Harlem Spirituals, is not sure that the rise in tourism is doing the Harlem community much good. "All this tourism is hacking us out with higher rents, because now that Harlem is safer, and all these fancy businesses like Disney are establishing themselves here, more white people want to move in," she said. And although Cooper makes a living out of showing tourists Harlem, she is scared that increased housing costs might be her undoing. "I don't want to move out to the Bronx or Queens," she said. " I can't live anywhere else but Harlem."

Meanwhile, other residents are delighted with the tourists. "We live in a multicultural world, why should Harlem be any different?" said Kim Parker, an African American who lives in Harlem and works at a German bank in Wall Street. Parker likes the changes she sees in her old neighborhood. "Before the changes there was nothing pleasant to look at. People suffered from a lowered morale," she said. "Now it's becoming a place to live in, to be proud of." She refers to Harlem as a "gem that was always there," and attributes the rise in tourism to the large-scale redevelopment and drop in crime. "Some residents worry that this boom will push the rents up and drive them out, but that's simply not true for a lot of people and many of us will continue to live here," she said.

Surely, the money flowing in and out of the community is doing everybody good, she said. And although some people may worry about damage to Harlem's character, Parker sees it differently. As more money comes into the community, she notes, small businessmen have been able to open small shops and employ hundreds of people. "It's not all about commercialization, chain stores and globalization; it's about making a place more livable, more human," she said.

And this is exactly that what the Abyssinian Development Corporation, a non-profit organization affiliated with Harlem's renowned Abyssinian Baptist Church, has been doing throughout Harlem. "We are only minutes away from some of the most expensive real estate in the world, yet there are still buildings in Harlem that remain vacant," said Darren Walker, a corporation official. "Rebuilding and refilling them and attracting new businesses makes us a more attractive neighborhood."

At the same time, some of the people who delight in Harlem's economic revival also worry about the erosion of Harlem's authenticity. "I'm a little sad that the Harlem I knew as a boy is gone," said Ingram, the tour operator. "Although we were much poorer then, I still look back with nostalgia. Everyone knew each other then. People had arrived from the South not too long before, in the '20s and '30s. And if you were from Georgia you went to Lenox Avenue, and if you were from South Carolina you went to St. Nicholas. All that is nearly gone now."

But nostalgia is also one of the reasons Ingram enjoys his work. He always points out where Blumstein's department store once stood on 125th Street. "That is a testament to how far we have come," he said, referring to the store that at one time refused to hire African Americans.

Whether or not Harlem is becoming a "theme park" is debatable, but according to Ingram, the verdict is mixed. "Yes, 125th Street is becoming a theme park, there is so much going on there," he said. "But go to the projects on 7th Avenue and 127th, just a few blocks from all the action and so-called renaissance. There is nothing about a theme park about that."

A visitor following his suggestion will find row upon row of public housing units stretching from 127th street to 136th street. That cityscape, Ingram says, will not be part of his walking tour.