Some Stuff That's About Harlem

The City Fathers pushed through the rezoning of 125th Street yesterday, and, as Curbed points out, the furor began this morning. Did we expect anything else?

The Daily News charted the unpleasant reaction when the Planning Commission revealed their vote, with one resident saying "They want it to look like 86th St.," which has evolved into a serious epithet in recent months. Nobody wants to look like 86th Street.

The conservative New York Post also gave the negative reaction good coverage, helping to make an anti-development celebrity out of Michael Henry Adams, an architectural historian and author of "Harlem Lost & Found." Adam blew a gasket at the meet, screaming at the commission's chairwoman, Amanda "Park Avenue" Burden, "You're a rich, rich, rich horrible person. You're destroying our communities. You're a rich, rich socialite. You're a rich, rich socialite. How dare you! You're destroying Harlem. You're getting rid of all the black people." Let me buy that man a drink. And a sedative.

The New York Sun didn't mention Mssr. Adams and gave the whole vote a fairly positive twist.

I didn't see anything in the Times.