History and architecture
This modest brownstone rowhouse, built in 1869, was designed in the Italianate style by architect Alexander Wilson. Built by two real estate developers, James Meagher and Thomas Hanson, it is typical of rowhouses built in Harlem during the period after the Civil War. The house achieves its significance, however, as the home for 20 years of Langston Hughes, author and poet and one of the foremost figures of the Harlem Renaissance, a literary movement of the 1920s-30s that focused on the question of Negro Identity.
Sources and further reading
This history comes from the Landmarks app’s historical catalog. Names and building uses may reflect the period described.