1520 Sedgwick Avenue

1520 Sedgwick Avenue is a 102-unitapartment building in the Morris Heights neighborhood in the Bronx, New York City. Recognized as a long-time "haven for working class families," in 2010 The New York Times reported that it is the accepted birthplace of hip hop. After a long period of neglect and shady dealings in the 1990s and 2000s the building has been "highlighted by elected officials and tenant advocates as an emblem of New York’s affordable housing crisis." Senator Charles E. Schumer called the building "the birthplace of predatory equity", and Representative José E. Serrano, speaking of the building's recent purchase, called it, "such a visible building."

On July 5, 2007, 1520 Sedgwick Avenue was recognized by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation as the birthplace of hip hop.

History

The creation of the Cross Bronx Expressway uprooted thousands in the Bronx during the early 1970s, displacing communities, and fostering to white flight. 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, which received its first mortgage in 1967, is located on the Expressway.

Sedgwick Avenue

Sedgwick Avenue is a major street in the Bronx, New York City. It runs roughly parallel to Jerome Avenue, the Major Deegan Expressway, and University Avenue. Sedgwick Avenue is one of the longest streets in the western part of the Bronx, running from Mosholu Parkway at the north to Macombs Dam Bridge at its southern end, about 800 feet (250 m) west of Yankee Stadium.

A smaller Sedgwick Avenue continues into Yonkers, north of Van Cortlandt Park and east of the Saw Mill River Parkway.

History

From the early 20th century until the 1970s, Sedgwick Avenue is one of the busiest thoroughfares in the Bronx, having streetcars, buses, and train stations. In around 1900, it was a popular road for weekend bicycle tours and military marches to Van Cortlandt Park.

From 1918 to 1958, the Sedgwick Avenue elevated station operated at Webster Avenue.

Route description

Sedgwick

Sedgwick may refer to:

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DJ Kool Herc

Clive Campbell (born 16 April 1955), better known by his stage name DJ Kool Herc, is a Jamaican American DJ who is credited for originating hip hop music in the early 1970s in The Bronx, New York City. His playing of hard funk records of the sort typified by James Brown was an alternative both to the violent gang culture of the Bronx and to the nascent popularity of disco in the 1970s. Campbell began to isolate the instrumental portion of the record, which emphasized the drum beat—the "break"—and switch from one break to another.

Using the same two turntable set-up of disco DJs, Campbell used two copies of the same record to elongate the break. This breakbeat DJing, using hard funk and records with Latin percussion, formed the basis of hip hop music. Campbell's announcements and exhortations to dancers helped lead to the syncopated, rhymed spoken accompaniment now known as rapping. He called his dancers "break-boys" and "break-girls", or simply b-boys and b-girls. Campbell's DJ style was quickly taken up by figures such as Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash. Unlike them, he never made the move into commercially recorded hip hop in its earliest years.

Hip hop

Hip hop or hip-hop is a sub-cultural movement that formed during the early 1970s by African-American and Puerto Rican youths residing in the South Bronx in New York City. It became popular outside of the African-American community in the late 1980s and by the 2000s became the most listened-to musical genre in the world. It is characterized by four distinct elements, all of which represent the different manifestations of the culture: rap music (oral), turntablism or DJing (aural), b-boying (physical) and graffiti art (visual). Even while it continues to develop globally in myriad styles, these four foundational elements provide coherence to hip hop culture. The term is often used in a restrictive fashion as synonymous only with the oral practice of rap music.

The origin of the hip hop culture stems from the block parties of the Ghetto Brothers, when they plugged in the amplifiers for their instruments and speakers into the lampposts on 163rd Street and Prospect Avenue and used music to break down racial barriers, and from DJ Kool Herc at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, where Herc mixed samples of existing records with his own shouts to the crowd and dancers. Kool Herc is credited as the "father" of hip hop. DJ Afrika Bambaataa of the hip hop collective Zulu Nation outlined the pillars of hip hop culture, to which he coined the terms: MCing or "Emceein", DJing or "Deejayin", B-boying and graffiti writing or "Aerosol Writin".