Some Sad Pictures of the Harlem Renaissance Ballroom

Nathan Kensinger has taken some lovely and tragic pictures of the Renaissance Ballroom and Casino in Harlem, which was never landmarked and is now all but gone. "Built between 1920 and 1923 and was a black owned and operated center of culture - a movie theater, a ballroom, a space for basketball games, dances and meetings. It was the "setting for all of Harlem’s most important parties," according to author Michael Henry Adams, but by 1979 the complex had closed down and "by the 1990s it had so deteriorated that it was used as a setting for Spike Lee’s crack den from hell in the movie Jungle Fever.""

Go check out the rest of the photos.