page_title: History of Harlem
section_title: 1637–1866
hierarchical_section_title: History of Harlem / 1637–1866
caption_attribution_description: English: 125th Street Station, with the Manhattan Valley Viaduct, part of the original IRT line.
context_page_description: Founded in the 17th century as a Dutch outpost, Harlem developed into a farming village, a revolutionary battlefield, a resort town, a commuter town, a ghetto, and a center of African-American culture.
context_section_description: Before the arrival of European settlers, the area that would become Harlem (originally Haarlem) was inhabited by the Manhattans, a native tribe, who along with other Native Americans, most likely Lenape occupied the area on a semi-nomadic basis. As many as several hundred farmed the Harlem flatlands. The first European settlement in the area was by siblings Hendrick (Henry), Isaac and Rachel de Forest, Franco-Dutch immigrants in 1637. In 1639 Jochem Pietersen Kuyter established the homestead named Zegendaal, or Blessed Valley, stretched along the Harlem River from about the present 127th Street to 140th Street. Early European settlers were forced to flee to New Amsterdam in lower Manhattan whenever hostilities with the natives heated up, and the native population gradually decreased amidst conflict with the Dutch. The settlement was named Nieuw Haarlem (New Haarlem), after the Dutch city of Haarlem, and was formally incorporated in 1660 under the leadership of Peter Stuyvesant. The Indian trail to Harlem's lush bottomland meadows was rebuilt by black slaves of the Dutch West India Company, and eventually developed into the Boston Post Road.
  In 1664, the English took control of the New Netherland colony, and English colonial Governor Richard Nicolls established the "Harlem Line" as the southern border patent line of the village of Nieuw Haarlem (later, the village of Harlem) running approximately northward between near modern East 74th Street, at the East River, and West 129th Street, on the Hudson River.  The British also tried to change the name of the community to "Lancaster", but the name never stuck, and eventually settled down to the Anglicized Harlem. The Dutch took control of the area again for one year in 1673. The village grew very slowly until the middle 18th century, and it became a resort of sorts for the rich of New York City. Only the Morris-Jumel Mansion survives from this period.
  Harlem played an important role in the American Revolution. The British had established their base of operations in lower Manhattan, and George Washington fortified the area around Harlem to oppose them. From Harlem, he could control the land routes to the north, as well as traffic on the Harlem River. The New York Provincial Congress met in White Plains, as did the convention drafting the constitution for New York State. On September 16, 1776, the Battle of Harlem Heights, sometimes referred to as the Battle of Harlem or Battle of Harlem Plain, was fought in western Harlem around the Hollow Way (now West 125th Street), with conflicts on Morningside Heights to the south and Harlem Heights to the north. The American troops were outnumbered, 5000 to 2000, and were ill-equipped compared to their opponents, but outflanked the British and forced them to retreat to the area around what is now West 106th Street. It was Washington's first American victory. Later that year, the British would avenge this defeat by chasing Washington and his troops north, then turning back and burning Harlem to the ground.
  Rebuilding took decades, and infrastructure was improved much more slowly than was happening in New York City proper. The village remained largely rural through the early 19th century and, though the "grid system" of streets, designed downtown, was formally extended to Harlem in 1811, it does not seem that anybody expected it would mean much. The 1811 report that accompanied the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 noted that it was "improbable that (for centuries to come) the grounds north of the Harlem Flat will be covered with houses."
  Though undeveloped, the area was not poor. Harlem was "a synonym for elegant living through a good part of the nineteenth century." The village remained largely farmland estates, such as [Conrad] Van Keulen's Hook, orig. Otterspoor, bordered north of the Mill Creek (now 108th St., orig. Montagne Creek at 109th St.), which flowed into Harlem Lake, to the farm of Morris Randall, northwest on the Harlem River, and westward to the Peter Benson, or Mill Farm. This former bowery [of land] was subdivided into twenty-two
caption: 125th Street station on the IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line.
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