Northattan

Dear Northattan readers, viewers and listeners:

Thank you for checking out our website and engaging with us. For the next couple of months, the Northattan team will be posting only occasional multimedia updates and stories. We will then return in earnest this fall. We hope you will continue to check back with us to “see what’s up” in Northattan for our periodic coverage and for full coverage in fall.

Thank you, Northattan

Sugar Hill Mennonite Mission church on St. Nicholas Avenue. Photo by Allison Gaito/Northattan.

“They must think something of this space because it’s on the subway map at the 145th Street station,” said Dalen Ratzlaff as he stood in the fellowship hall on the basement level of a renovated Harlem row house. Women in long, simple dresses and devotional caps served up casseroles and mashed potatoes as a line of Mennonites made their way down the buffet table.

On Sundays, the Mennonites of the Sugar Hill Mission worship for an hour and a half. After that, they serve lunch to the 20 or so men and women who come to pray with them in a small, dimly lit hall – their church of sorts. Then, the day of rest is spent doing the Lord’s work.

“We tell the gospel story and we help our neighbors,” said Ed Warkentin, the leader of the mission. “We just kind of spread the love.”

As Mennonites, the descendants of Anabaptists, they hold that baptism can be given only to adult believers. The Warkentins follow a particularly conservative branch of Mennonite known as the Church of God in Christ. They shun war, technology like radio and television and end formal schooling once children reach their teenage years.

Warkentin and his wife, Yvette, left Alabama and arrived at the Sugar Hill Mission in the spring, taking over for a couple that had led the mission for three years. Easily mistaken as Amish, with her plain dress and his fluffy beard, their simple lifestyle seems out of place in the hustle and bustle of a traditionally African American neighborhood in Harlem.

Though their tradition is an outlier in a group of about a half-dozen other far more liberal sects of Mennonite in New York City, the Warkentins have had to adapt to the modern metropolis they live in. They use subways and buses to get around. Equipped with walkie-talkies in case of trouble, a few of the mission’s visiting Mennonites even drive a van to pick up a blind man who joins them for Sunday worship. They have a telephone, a computer and use the Internet for business purposes. Warkentin said the good that comes from the exceptions they make outweigh following the faith to the letter. “We don’t live by laws. We live in the liberty of the spirit,” said Warkentin. “We can do anything we want to, but what we want to do is controlled because we want to live in Christ.

In Sugar Hill, churches take up a lot of real estate, with a house of worship on nearly every block. Warkentin said he knew a traditional Mennonite church was a tough sell. “A lot of them don’t know what’s here. A lot of them walk straight on by and never look.” No matter, Warkentin said there are still people out there looking for their brand of faith. Faith isn’t geographically sensitive for Warkentin and he said that’s reason enough for the Mennonites to continue spreading their message in Sugar Hill. “The thing is is that there are things in the Scripture that probably were for a time relevant, but we can still make applications for our times because we’re still made out of the same cursed dirt. It all comes from the earth,” said Warkentin.

No matter how unlikely the mission’s presence in the neighborhood, the leaders of local churches think that after 23 years in Sugar Hill, the Mennonites have found a fit among all the others. “This is a city, everybody jams in,” said pastor George Ramsudh of the Mount Zion Lutheran church, just a few blocks away on the corner of 145^th Street and Convent Avenue. “Each one of these entities has its own objective, its own uniqueness. Yeah, we’re clustered together. We’re competing, it appears. But at the back of all that we have our own goals.”

A fellow Mennonite, Don Toews said the goal is not to establish a huge Mennonite congregation in a place like New York City, but to illuminate the faith for someone looking for it. “Our goal is to hold up a light and so if somebody responds, fine. If not, we still did our part, we held up the light. It’s God’s light,” he said.

A Colorado businessman who sells oil field equipment, Toews was in the city visiting his 20-year-old son Carson. Along with two other young men, Carson Toews volunteers with the Warkentins at soup kitchens in the Bowery, in the children’s oncology unit of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and with humanitarian groups like Habitat for Humanity. Other days are spent helping the random stranger who shows up on the doorstep of the mission, like one man who needed help tracking down the name of his birth mother and with the assistance of a church-filtered Internet search engine, a name and address were found.

But most of the energy of the mission goes into small pamphlets containing Bible verses and inspirational messages, passed out at subway stations or in front of the mission on St. Nicholas Avenue.

“We sit down on the steps a lot and just smile,” said Warkentin. “Someone said if you sit and look at the New York City people’s faces, they all look like they had a fight and lost. That’s kind of the way they go around, kind of glum, and so we spread smiles.”

Since their arrival seven months ago, the Warkentins say they’ve seen the congregation grow to about 20 regular worshippers and diversify, counting Indians, African-Americans and even a Jewish man as congregants. Even with that, the church’s size hasn’t made it any easier in spreading the faith. “It takes a while to get through that New York crust, that protection shell we tend to have,” said Warkentin.

But with patience, it’s a challenge Warkentin’s wife, Yvette, said they are willing to take on. “Jesus said go out into all the world. He didn’t say bypass Harlem.”

Projected image for the 2013 Sugar Hill housing development. Photo by Broadway Housing Communities.

On the northern boundary of West Harlem’s Sugar Hill neighborhood, scaffolding envelops a old garage building covering the block between Edgecombe and St. Nicholas Avenue. The garage is set to give way by 2013 to a spanking new apartment house, providing homes for 124 families, many of them among New York City’s poorest.

As city developments go, this one sounds like a win-win project: An urban eyesore will be removed, a new structure will replace it, and homes will go to those most in need.

But where some see progress, others see a charcoal zigzag structure with asymmetrical windows, cutting a modernist, high-rise gash in a neighborhood of elegant and historic low-rise brownstones.

“The building design has absolutely nothing in line with the historic nature of most every building in the vicinity,” griped a letter addressed a year ago by the Sugar Hill Block Association, a coalition of the neighborhood’s homeowners and residents, to the City of New York Department of Housing Preservation & Development.

For more than a year, the association has complained about the design, to no avail. In fact, the first complaints came only after Community Board 9 unanimously approved the project -– avant-garde exterior and all –- in early 2010.

Walter South, head of the Community Board 9 landmark and preservation committee, said the board saw the high-rise primarily as a means to provide better living conditions to many people in West Harlem. And the modern design was accepted as a compromise because “preservationists should not be locked into having to reproduce everything, and should be open to new ideas,” he said.

But the Sugar Hill high-rise is still a topic of protest, often raised at community board meetings.

“When you walk out of the subway, you don’t see gigantic 13-story buildings,” said Patricia Ju, resident of the area and chair of the Sugar Hill Block Association, in an interview with Northattan. “ The buildings are usually three-four story row houses or one-story commercial.”

Brownstones facing the upcoming project. Photo by Dalal Mawad/Northattan.

The architecture complaints are an unusual setback for Broadway Housing Communities, the nonprofit organization behind the new building. Over 25 years, Broadway Housing has built a reputation for providing innovative shelter for some of the neediest families in West Harlem and Washington Heights. In addition to low-income rentals, the projects house services such as medical and vocational training facilities.

Broadway Housing’s projects are usually restorations of older buildings. But at Sugar Hill,  “this is not what we had here. We had a garage; there was nothing to restore,” said Broadway Housing Communities’ executive director Ellen Baxter. Trying to build a new structure that replicates the century-old surroundings wouldn’t work, she said, because “it will look like a fake reproduction.” The modern high-rise design was pursued, she said,  “to reflect the history and show it in 21st century form.”

The Sugar Hill Project will be Broadway Housing Communities’ seventh project to offer even more innovations, including having tenants participate in the management of their own building.

Like its much-praised Dorothy Day Project in Hamilton Heights, the Sugar Hill building would provide rent-stabilized apartments, reserved for families and individuals currently living in “seriously substandard conditions” as well as homeless families from the city’s emergency shelters, according to Baxter. Families would also have access to educational programs a child-care center and a children’s museum for art and storytelling.

the scaffolded garage to be replaced by the housing project. Photo by Dalal Mawad/Northattan.

The neo-classical brownstones of Sugar Hill were built between 1905 and 1916.  With their detailed facades and ornate windows, most of the buildings provided wealthy African-American families with getaways from bustling Lower Manhattan. In addition to its architectural grandeur, the area was the epicenter of Harlem’s renaissance, roaring with music and art.

The Sugar Hill Block Association acknowledges that, despite its protests, the 13-story building will definitely be built. It’s still lobbying community leaders for one change, though: It wants to change the structure’s exterior color, from charcoal to terracotta, in keeping with the nearby brownstones.

This article was modified on 12/04/2011 to correct that the garage structure was not abandoned or empty; it was in use for parking until Broadway Housing Communities bought it.

Working in the garden has helped Jennifer Benitez come to terms with the death of her son. Photo by Dalal Mawad/Northattan.

If you happen to walk by the community garden on 138^th Street and Riverside Park, you might hear a woman’s voice call out to you, “Do you want some tomatoes, peppers, basil?” That’s Jenny Benitez, who has transformed a former garbage dump and drug haven into an urban oasis of flowers, vegetables and fruit.

At 78, Benitez, who was born in Puerto Rico, has the feisty spirit and physical vigor of a young soul. “Nature gives me energy,” she says while getting her hands dirty in the garden. “I watch life grow in here and it gives me years of life in return.” For 30 years now, April through November, Benitez has planted and harvested vegetables, trimmed plants and raked the two blocks of the Riverside Valley community garden.

“It all started with my children wanting to come down here to play,” she says, looking through her circular spectacles, “but it was dirty, full of homeless people and drugs.”

Benitez’s friend Steve Gallagher started cleaning the area and planting shrubs in the once-abandoned soil. Riverside Park did not allow plants around the park, “so they gave us this spot as a parcel of land for a garden,” she says. Benitez and Gallagher cleaned, planted and harvested through the years what has become a thriving community garden.

“I saved the garden,” she says proudly. “I talked the homeless people out,” pointing to a spot where shacks once rested. “Drug users like their privacy, they bring garbage with them, they like to keep it here,” she adds. “So when they see that you clean it up, you are displacing them and they never come back.”

Benitez says the community garden has also helped changed the neighborhood. “There are people that were in jail for drugs and remember this area and come back after all these years, and they don’t stay, because it has changed so much.”

Benitez has transformed the rundown public space into a fertile plot for growing fresh produce. Photo by Dalal Mawad/Northattan.

Today, Benitez’s flowers, tomatoes, strawberries, broccoli and potatoes have replaced the drugs and trash. “I love planting vegetables because I know I’m going to be harvesting them, giving them away for people to eat them.”

Vincent Stanley, a resident of the area, is among the passers-by that have benefited from Benitez’s gardening, even after he has visited a local produce market. “On our way back from Fairway she often calls to ask us if we’d like some vegetables,” he says. “She’s a wealth of gardening knowledge and is always eager to give advice or share some seedlings.”

But the garden is also Benitez’s daily sanctuary from pain and grief. “Gardening for Jenny is a blessing,” says her husband, Victor. “She doesn’t have the time to think about her son.”

Benitez lost her son, Victor Alvarez, 57, to a sudden heart attack a month ago. “I forget, I leave all my troubles away and I am not thinking, I’m raking, then I’m planting, I just don’t think…” Last week, she planted a magnolia tree in memory of her son. “A tree is life, so when I look at that tree I see him alive.”

Every year, Benitez trains groups of young people to take care of the garden. “They are the new generation, and you have to let them come up with their own ideas,” she says. Groups from around the city volunteer on a weekly basis. “I feel the years already beating me, and though I am confident many volunteers will take care of the garden, no one will love it like I do. It is my life.”

In November, Benitez, with the help of her husband and volunteers, starts preparing the garden for the winter. She adds soil and covers it with seeds in anticipation of the next harvest. While the garden is at rest, Benitez and her husband go back to Puerto Rico: “I leave it behind,” she says. “I don’t have to worry. It goes to sleep really nice and when I’m back, it’s back to life and I feel like I’m back to life as well.”

Altagracia Guzman Vargas is 81 years old, and on Monday she took part in an 11-mile march in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement. “ I am going to walk,” said Vargas, her small eyes sparkling behind circular glasses. “I am going to try my best for the future of the United States.” She brandished a pink and green “Health not Profit$ — Salud no Riqueza$” sign that she drew herself.

Vargas was one of the many Washington Heights residents who gathered this morning on 181^st Street and St. Nicholas Avenue, the start of the march, billed as “End to End for 99%,” and ending at Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan, the base of the Occupy Wall Street protests. If enthusiasm was present from the very start — with people playing drums and blowing whistles — it made up for the size of the crowd,  at most 60 people. Indeed, before the march began, journalists probably outnumbered protesters, a reminder that the Occupy Wall Street movement has also become a huge media attraction.

But Dimitri Bakhroushin, one Washington Heights resident, was confident that the protest was “going to be like a snowball. We are going downhill and we are gonna grow and grow.”

The front line of the march with State Sen. Adriano Espaillat (far right holding banner), Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez (left of Espaillat) and 81-year old Altagracia Guzman Vargas. Photo by Céleste Owen-Jones/Northattan.

By the time the march reached 125^th and Broadway, around 300 people were chanting “We are the 99 percent” in a joyful party-like atmosphere.

Monday’s protest was the first organized demonstration from Northattan since the Occupy Wall Street movement started two months ago. State Sen. Adriano Espaillat, who walked the whole 11 miles with the crowd, said the mission was “to give this movement a new face.” Later, he said that “this is not just a Wall Street thing, this is a Washington Heights thing, this is a Harlem thing, this is an East Harlem thing. This is about communities that have been left behind for decades.”

Occupy Wall Street protesters have often been criticized for a lack of diversity, a perception that northern Manhattan residents were trying to change.  The crowd, in sex, in skin color and in age, was very different than the occupiers of Zuccotti Park, who tend to be white and under 30 years old.

“There is not enough representation of blacks, Latinos and Asians in this movement and we need to show our support,” said Councilman Robert Jackson, who joined the march in Times Square. Marisol Alcantara, the West Harlem Democratic leader, said: “We are all part of the 99 percent, especially communities of color, immigrants, and what is happening in West Harlem is happening to the rest of the city.”

Other politicians, from Northattan and beyond, joined the march, too, including State Sen. Gustavo Rivera of the Bronx, Councilmen Ydanis Rodriguez and Robert Jackson from Northattan. They repeatedly asked for the restoration of “the millionaires’ tax” and for social and economical justice: “We bailed out Wall Street, we bailed out the banks,” declared Espaillat when still on 181^st Street, “but these stores right here, they are shut down, haven’t been bailed out.”

With the sun shining and the temperatures unseasonably high, the march quickly turned into what looked like a celebration: As the crowd passed Columbia University and later Times Square, people danced in circles, played musical instruments and chanted slogans, to the delight of tourists and passers-by who took pictures from their phones and cameras.

Washington Heights resident at the meeting point on 181st and St Nicholas Avenue. Photo by Céleste Owen-Jones/Northattan.

While police were ever-present, they seemed relaxed and confident that the protest would remain under control. “We are working closely with the police to make sure that traffic doesn’t disrupt the march,” explained David Segal, one of the march’s organizers. For most of the time, protesters remained on the sidewalk and even respectfully stopped and got silent when an elderly woman was taken away in an ambulance, blocking the street they were about to cross.

Many protesters had taken a day off work in order to take part in the march. Lourdes Ernandez Coltera, a teacher in Washington Heights, was one of them: “Today I’m taking a day off, or I should say a community day off to be with my neighbors.” Coltera said she was particularly worried by the price of health care, which many couldn’t afford. “Inequality makes us sick,” read the colorful sign she was holding proudly. Three hours later, Coltera was still marching with energy and a smile, showing no sign of giving up.

As the protesters approached Zuccotti Park, their enthusiasm grew as drums rolled a welcome. It was 4:30 p.m. and getting dark when the protesters finally reached their destination, six hours after they left Washington Heights.

“We walked 11 miles,” Guillermo Linares, a New York State Assemblyman, told the crowd. “We walked as immigrants, as working class, as New Yorkers, and we are going to keep supporting the takeover of Wall Street,” he added.

If the crowd had decreased somewhat, with no more than 200 people entering the geographical heart of the movement, they still believed they had opened a new chapter of Occupy Wall Street, in which people from Northern Manhattan are to play a bigger role.

Additional reporting was provided by Frederick Bernas, Tomos Lewis, Dalal Mawad, Isha Soni and Benjamin Teitlebaum.

At the corner of a bustling hub of Hamilton Heights, one square block beckons schoolchildren and passersby with green lawns and shady trees. The problem is you can’t get in. Two advocates want to make it a place where people can stay instead of just walk through.

A coalition of community organizations, elected officials and labor unions plans to lead hundreds of Uptown residents from Washington Heights to Zuccotti Park on Monday.

This is the first time communities of color from Northern Manhattan have organized to join the Occupy Wall Street movement. The march is expected to include elected officials, community activists and members from the black and Hispanic community, and is intended to show solidarity from diverse communities around New York with the Occupy Wall Street protesters in Zuccotti Park.

David Segal, press secretary for City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez, who is backing the march, said it’s inaccurate to portray the Occupy Wall Street movement to be predominantly white. “It’s important to let the rest of the city to know that people of color are in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement,” he said.

Organizers from the Occupy Wall Street protest attended a press conference announcing the march on Thursday morning in front of an abandoned building on 182nd Street and St. Nicholas. Tyler Combelic, a spokesman for Occupy Wall Street, said it was important to recognize the needs and concerns of the New York City neighborhoods that have been hardest hit by the recession. “I’m marching all 11 miles,” he said.

United New York, a nonprofit that helps the working class find jobs, is one sponsor of the demonstration. “The march is a way for people of color to lend their voices to the movement and express their dissatisfaction with the lack of jobs,” said Cara Noel, who works with United New York. “It’s an opportunity for them to take care of their families.” Noel said her team has been tweeting, passing out fliers and working with partner organizations to spread the word on the walk. “I’m expecting it to be very organized and to make a statement,” she said.

Among the groups participating and expecting to march are the Transport Workers Union, Alianza Dominicana, the Service Employees International Union, and The Northern Manhattan Improvement Coalition. New York State Senator Adriano Espaillat and Councilman Member Rodriguez plan to lead the walk.

The march, called “End to End for 99%,” is scheduled to start at 10:30 a.m. Monday at 181^st Street and St. Nicholas, work its way South through Harlem, and end at Zuccotti Park about 3 hours later. Segal said it is one of the few times that Harlem and Washington Heights has united in a movement.

Because there is no permit for the march, staff from different community organizations will work as marshals to help guide demonstrators.

Emmanuel Abreu, a resident of Inwood who expects to participate, said he thought the march would start small. “Two people will know, more and more people will join in and by the time we reach Harlem there should be more people.”

The march will end with a final rally in solidarity with Uptown residents and members of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

This article was updated on 11/04/2010  to correct that David Segal said that it was an inaccurate portrayal of the Occupy Wall Street movement as mostly white, not that it was a betrayal.

Miss Carol's fried chicken is legendary in Hamilton Heights. Photo by Larry Crowe/AP.

People in search of Harlem’s best soul food often look no further than the well-established names — Jacob’s, Amy Ruth’s or the neighborhood’s most famous soul food institution, Sylvia’s. But those in the know bypass the obvious joints, heading instead for an unlisted West Harlem brownstone where they fill their bellies and feed their souls. That’s where you’ll find Miss Carol.

Report by Allison Gaito.