During my first New York City vacation (1996), I wanted to finish off all of the National Park Service sites in the city, one of which is Hamilton Grange at 141st Street. The B&B I was staying at was on West 14th, so I had a long walk ahead of me. I took in the Today Show window and then got a late breakfast at a diner near Carnegie Hall. Then I worked my way up through Central Park and on into Harlem.

Being from Iowa, pretty much anything I knew about Harlem had been filtered through the eyes of television, which fed all sorts ... (more)