ABSTRACT
On New Year’s Eve 1964, Kenneth and Mamie Clark lunched with a small group of architects, realtors, and friends to discuss a project important both to the stability and progress of Northside and Harlem as a whole. The proposal was to rebuild the area from East 107th and 112th Streets between Fifth and Lexington Avenues. The Clarks believed the southeast corner of Harlem at Central Park, known as Frawley Circle, could become the foundation for the transformation of the entire community. Frawley Circle was less than a block away from Northside’s home in the New Lincoln School and at the nexus of African-American Harlem to the west and north, Spanish Harlem to the east, and white upper Fifth Avenue to the south. It could become a symbol of the integrated, multiethnic, multi-class community the Clarks had envisioned for many years. “The scheme would turn the area, now a pocket of decay, into a development for whites and Negroes in a kind of middle ground blending Harlem with downtown Manhattan,” announced a feature story in the World-Telegram and Sun. 1
