Studio Museum
In the early to mid-1900s, 125th Street was the beating heart of Harlem’s Black cultural and political life. Malcolm X delivered sermons on the corner of 125th Street and Seventh Ave, the iconic Lenox Lounge hosted the likes of Miles Davis and John Coltrane while Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston listen and conversed, and Martin Luther King Jr. was stabbed during a book signing at Blumstein’s department store.
Over time, the avenue’s former grandeur faded, giving way to a utilitarian, albeit local, mix of modest hair salons, supermarkets, and storefronts selling bargain clothing and fast food.
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In 2007, New York City Department of City Planning rezoned a portion of 125th Street. The change pushed out many longtime, locally owned businesses and opened the door for national big box retailers, including Gap, Banana Republic, and Old Navy. According to a 2014 Community Service Society report, rents in Central Harlem climbed nearly 90% between 2002 and 2014, more than anywhere else in the city, with many local residents and merchants fearing they would be displaced.
The Studio Museum of Harlem
As the pendulum swings, the tides may be turning back to the historic heart and soul of Harlem. In October 2025, The New York Times said of Harlem's Studio Museum, "After seven years and $160 million, the museum has an uplifting home on a street that has always been a barometer of Harlem’s fortunes and aspirations.”
The opening of the new Adjaye Associates -designed Studio Museum (with Cooper Robertson as executive architect), after 57 years in a converted bank, crystallizes the changing face of the corridor with its seven-story, $160 million building consisting of muscular concrete façade and expansive public interiors. The article states this signals a shift from “make-do” architecture to unapologetic ambition.
Gallery at The Studio Museum of Harlem
Across from the new Studio Museum, in September, the Urban League Empowerment Center introduced a distinctly contemporary mixed-use model to the corridor: offices for the National Urban League, a civil rights museum set to open in 2026, retail space that includes Harlem's first Trader Joe's and Target outposts, and a subsidized housing project comprising more than 100 affordable apartments, including studio units priced under $700 for low-income residents, within a broader mixed-use development.
National Urban League development from West 126th Street
Retail spaces along the National Urban League's 125th Street frontage
Nearby, the iconic Apollo Theater is in the middle of a major renovation and expansion, extending its footprint and updating its facilities. It has also opened Apollo Stages at the Victoria Theater at the adjacent building. The historic Victoria Theater has been redeveloped into a vibrant community hub with performance spaces, a Renaissance Hotel, Cajun restaurant The Victoria, and residential housing.
Exterior photography of Ray is by Melanie Landsman
On Fifth Avenue, the Frida Escobedo-designed Ray Harlem was developed in partnership with the National Black Theatre, the nation's oldest Black theatre owned and operated by a Black woman. The project includes a new state-of-the-art theatre (soft opening estimated for later this year), new retail space, mixed-income housing, and stands representative of Harlem institutions leveraging real estate to secure long-term stability.
Exterior photography is by Melanie Landsman. The interior photography is by William Jess Laird.
600 W. 125th Street (Renzo Piano Building Workshop)
Farther west, Columbia University’s 600 West 125th Street, designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop and CetraRuddy Architecture, added a tall residential presence, housing faculty and graduate students above retail and signaling the university’s growing influence along the corridor. The building is targeting LEED Gold and Fitwel certifications, and claims to set “a benchmark in sustainability and modern design, catering specifically to the needs of faculty, postdocs, and students.”
600 W. 125th Street (Renzo Piano Building Workshop)
A map of a potential westward expansion of the Q train to 125th Street and Broadway, with three new stops. (MTA)
On the eastern end of the street, city-backed plans tied to the 125th Street subway hub at Lexington Avenue point toward future towers combining hundreds of apartments with commercial space, further intensifying the corridor. Most recently, in her State of the State address, Governor Hochul called for the next phase of the Second Avenue Subway to run westward along 125th Street, adding three new stations, ending at Broadway in Morningside Heights, and connecting the 1, 2, 3, A, B, C, D, and Q lines to create the first east-west subway connection in Upper Manhattan.
Retail has followed density. Chain stores, like Sephora, JD Sports, Wells Fargo, and Whole Foods now sit alongside long-standing local businesses, while fast-casual restaurants and entertainment venues cycle rapidly through storefronts once marked by vacancy.
125th Street is neither fully gentrified nor frozen in time, but actively contested terrain, a boulevard where Black cultural institutions, public investment, national capital and community memory are colliding to produce a denser, more complex Harlem than the one that existed even two decades ago.
Contributing Writer
Michelle Sinclair Colman
Michelle writes children's books and also writes articles about architecture, design and real estate. Those two passions came together in Michelle's first children's book, "Urban Babies Wear Black." Michelle has a Master's degree in Sociology from the University of Minnesota and a Master's degree in the Cities Program from the London School of Economics.
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