Lenox Lounge

Dizzy Gillespie, Lady Day, John Coltrane and Miles Davis all played the Lenox Lounge, and James Baldwin, Langston Hughes and Malcolm X were patrons^{1, 2}. Ralph Greco opened it in 1939 as a speakeasy among the 1880s brownstone tenements of Lenox Avenue, and it rose to fame as a dinner club catering to white patrons, with a chorus line of Black women, the Haba Haba Girls, as its main act^{1, 3}. It was listed in the Green Book until 1955¹.

Alvin and Ethel Reed, both raised in Harlem, bought the club in 1988 for $85,000¹. In 1992 it signed a union contract with Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, and from September 1999 to March 2000 its original Art Deco interior was restored, during the only closure in the bar's history^{1, 2}. New York Magazine voted it Best of the Best in 2001 and Zagat's nightlife guide did the same in 2002, and its Zebra Room set a key scene in the pilot of Mad Men². When we listed it, we gave the ribs equal billing with the jazz, which tells you something about the ribs.

Then the rent doubled, from $10,000 to $20,000 a month, more than the Reeds could afford, and after a prolonged lease dispute with the property's owner, Ricky Edmonds, the Lenox Lounge closed on December 31, 2012¹. Reed took the doors, the light fixtures and the Art Deco facade and sign two blocks away to a new Lenox Lounge at 333 Lenox Avenue, but couldn't keep it alive there, and it closed shortly after¹.

The old property was taken over by Richard Notar, who managed the Nobu restaurant chain, to open a jazz venue¹. In 2017 demolition permits were issued to make room for a four-story commercial building, and that May the building came down^{1, 4}. The old Lenox Lounge has since been replaced by a branch of Wells Fargo^{5, 6}. The sign, at least, got out first¹.