Feature Profile
By: E.D. Cauchi
The world slows down when you walk inside the Lenox Lounge. Something to do with the wood-framed doorway, smoothed from 70 years worth of hands pushing inward. Or maybe it’s the hexagonal floor tiling of white, light grey, and maroon to match the maroon bar chairs, maroon wall panels, maroon tabletops and maroon pleather half-moon benches that line the venue, though each has a slightly mismatched hue. Through a series of dusty speakers, some toppled over on their sides, music plays at half-tempo, jazz tunes that feel like they’ve grown cobwebs. |
Lenox Lounge is a staple in Harlem, internationally renowned for being one of the last major holdouts in this increasingly gentrifying neighborhood. Where it sits off 125th Street on Malcolm X Boulevard, also known as Lenox Avenue, is where it’s sat since 1939. Before the historic Roosevelt Hotel, one block west, had a White Castle on the main floor and offices in its bedrooms, and before Swedish chef Marcus Samuelsson set up his shi shi monthlong-reservation-waitlist celebrity-swanked Red Rooster across the street, and before Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts started serving the other two corners of the intersection. If you squint through the dimly lit fluorescence of Lenox Lounge, you can almost see the shadow of Langston Hughes scribbling in the corner.
“It’s historic. Everyone from Dizzy Gillespie to Duke Ellington came through here,” said Spurgeon Allmond, a loyal patron who has been coming here since he attended City College up the street, more than 30 years ago. He frequents most Wednesdays and Thursdays for a couple hours each week to catch the live jazz that gets set up at the front of the venue. He knows all the staff. Allmond works at Child Protective Services during the day and lives 10 blocks north of the Lounge. To him, the space is one of Harlem’s last reliable cultural haunts and still has pretty much the same vibe today as it did when he was first a patron. Only, it’s been cleaned up a fair bit.
“It’s historic. Everyone from Dizzy Gillespie to Duke Ellington came through here,” said Spurgeon Allmond, a loyal patron who has been coming here since he attended City College up the street, more than 30 years ago. He frequents most Wednesdays and Thursdays for a couple hours each week to catch the live jazz that gets set up at the front of the venue. He knows all the staff. Allmond works at Child Protective Services during the day and lives 10 blocks north of the Lounge. To him, the space is one of Harlem’s last reliable cultural haunts and still has pretty much the same vibe today as it did when he was first a patron. Only, it’s been cleaned up a fair bit.
Lenox Lounge is a staple in Harlem, internationally renowned for being one of the last major holdouts in this increasingly gentrifying neighborhood. Where it sits off 125th Street on Malcolm X Boulevard, also known as Lenox Avenue, is where it’s sat since 1939. Before the historic Roosevelt Hotel, one block west, had a White Castle on the main floor and offices in its bedrooms, and before Swedish chef Marcus Samuelsson set up his shi shi monthlong-reservation-waitlist celebrity-swanked Red Rooster across the street, and before Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts started serving the other two corners of the intersection. If you squint through the dimly lit fluorescence of Lenox Lounge, you can almost see the shadow of Langston Hughes scribbling in the corner.
“It’s historic. Everyone from Dizzy Gillespie to Duke Ellington came through here,” said Spurgeon Allmond, a loyal patron who has been coming here since he attended City College up the street, more than 30 years ago. He frequents most Wednesdays and Thursdays for a couple hours each week to catch the live jazz that gets set up at the front of the venue. He knows all the staff. Allmond works at Child Protective Services during the day and lives 10 blocks north of the Lounge. To him, the space is one of Harlem’s last reliable cultural haunts and still has pretty much the same vibe today as it did when he was first a patron. Only, it’s been cleaned up a fair bit.
“I remember I used to come here when I was younger. It was so dingy and dark and run down. They’ve done a lot to fix it up,” said Allmond. He’s talking about the major renovation the owners did to restore the venue in 1999 but there’s more to it than that.
Lenox Lounge is conscious of its fame. The front window showcases a mannequin wearing a customized white t-shirt with the venue’s name and logo. Two plasma TV screens hang where the wall meets the sand-colored ceiling in the middle and back of the bar that is more than three times long as it is wide. Running along the wall to the right is a series of faded clippings: rave reviews from New York magazine, Rolling Stone and Time Out New York.
The wall panels are framed with ridged chrome, the way old subway cars used to be. Five or six different shades and styles of faux wood make up everything from the tables to the wall to the trim. The ceiling has no fixtures and a red fluorescent “restaurant” sign in cursive shines through the front window and on to patrons. But inside, the bar has a dank cave-like feel that Allmond fondly refers to as “homey, laid back.”
“You don’t have to wear a tuxedo or anything. As long as you’re respectable,” he says, motioning down his chest in a gesture saying by “respectable” he means no unnecessarily low cut shirts. “Nothing slutty,” he adds aloud, to make sure his point is clear.
Lenox Lounge has many regular longtime patrons like Allmond, but after midnight the crowd gets younger, around grad school age. And then there’s the tourists that come because they read the Zagat profile that hails this as a must-visit venue. Regulars can spot these outsiders at a glance.
“It’s that look. They want to fit in, they want to blend in, they want to be where it’s happening,” he says with a friendly and welcoming voice, motioning to two middle-aged women in the middle booth with frizzy dirty blonde bobs and pastel cardigans.
You can smell the soul food they’re eating from where you stand, at the end of the bar. The lounge is only a few feet wide, after all. It’s the subtle scent of grease, comforting but not offensive, mixed with sweet carbs and mild spices. At the bar, backed with a long mirrored backsplash and three tiers of spirits, four newly emptied 2-litre bottles of Yellow Tail wine sit on the grainy dirt-stained wood.
“D’you have any chilled mugs?” Allmond asks the bartender, Takenya “TK” Holiday, as if he hasn’t been coming here for more years than she’s been alive and doesn’t already know the answer to his own question. She stares at him with rudeness acceptable only between family members and close friends. She’s wearing a leather jacket and has her bleached hair pulled back in a ponytail emphasizing a good three-inches of roots. Large black sunglasses sit on top of her head and her face is clean of makeup. They’re low-key here.
“The beer’s chilled,” Holiday replies matter-of-factly and clunkers a bottle in front of him.
Allmond shrugs and accepts what she gives him, and takes a long swig.
This article originally appeared on October 25, 2011 on NY City Lens.
“It’s historic. Everyone from Dizzy Gillespie to Duke Ellington came through here,” said Spurgeon Allmond, a loyal patron who has been coming here since he attended City College up the street, more than 30 years ago. He frequents most Wednesdays and Thursdays for a couple hours each week to catch the live jazz that gets set up at the front of the venue. He knows all the staff. Allmond works at Child Protective Services during the day and lives 10 blocks north of the Lounge. To him, the space is one of Harlem’s last reliable cultural haunts and still has pretty much the same vibe today as it did when he was first a patron. Only, it’s been cleaned up a fair bit.
“I remember I used to come here when I was younger. It was so dingy and dark and run down. They’ve done a lot to fix it up,” said Allmond. He’s talking about the major renovation the owners did to restore the venue in 1999 but there’s more to it than that.
Lenox Lounge is conscious of its fame. The front window showcases a mannequin wearing a customized white t-shirt with the venue’s name and logo. Two plasma TV screens hang where the wall meets the sand-colored ceiling in the middle and back of the bar that is more than three times long as it is wide. Running along the wall to the right is a series of faded clippings: rave reviews from New York magazine, Rolling Stone and Time Out New York.
The wall panels are framed with ridged chrome, the way old subway cars used to be. Five or six different shades and styles of faux wood make up everything from the tables to the wall to the trim. The ceiling has no fixtures and a red fluorescent “restaurant” sign in cursive shines through the front window and on to patrons. But inside, the bar has a dank cave-like feel that Allmond fondly refers to as “homey, laid back.”
“You don’t have to wear a tuxedo or anything. As long as you’re respectable,” he says, motioning down his chest in a gesture saying by “respectable” he means no unnecessarily low cut shirts. “Nothing slutty,” he adds aloud, to make sure his point is clear.
Lenox Lounge has many regular longtime patrons like Allmond, but after midnight the crowd gets younger, around grad school age. And then there’s the tourists that come because they read the Zagat profile that hails this as a must-visit venue. Regulars can spot these outsiders at a glance.
“It’s that look. They want to fit in, they want to blend in, they want to be where it’s happening,” he says with a friendly and welcoming voice, motioning to two middle-aged women in the middle booth with frizzy dirty blonde bobs and pastel cardigans.
You can smell the soul food they’re eating from where you stand, at the end of the bar. The lounge is only a few feet wide, after all. It’s the subtle scent of grease, comforting but not offensive, mixed with sweet carbs and mild spices. At the bar, backed with a long mirrored backsplash and three tiers of spirits, four newly emptied 2-litre bottles of Yellow Tail wine sit on the grainy dirt-stained wood.
“D’you have any chilled mugs?” Allmond asks the bartender, Takenya “TK” Holiday, as if he hasn’t been coming here for more years than she’s been alive and doesn’t already know the answer to his own question. She stares at him with rudeness acceptable only between family members and close friends. She’s wearing a leather jacket and has her bleached hair pulled back in a ponytail emphasizing a good three-inches of roots. Large black sunglasses sit on top of her head and her face is clean of makeup. They’re low-key here.
“The beer’s chilled,” Holiday replies matter-of-factly and clunkers a bottle in front of him.
Allmond shrugs and accepts what she gives him, and takes a long swig.
This article originally appeared on October 25, 2011 on NY City Lens.