Renaissance Casino

From Hoopedia

The Renaissance Casino was the home of the New York Renaissance basketball team, one of the greatest teams from 1923-1949.

One of Harlem’s most famous entertainment venues, the Renaissance Casino provided the backdrop for the area’s most elegant dances and exciting sporting and political events. By the 1990s it had so deteriorated that it was used as a setting for Spike Lee’s crack den from hell in the movie Jungle Fever. But just before this occurred, it had been identified as one of a ‘list of 25’ buildings which the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission determined should represent their “opening salvo” in providing Harlem with landmarks protection equal to that of the rest of Manhattan.

Extending along Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Blvd. from W. 137th Street to the southeast corner of West 138th Street, the Renaissance was built in two stages. The theater of the two-story structure to the south was completed in 1922 while the ballroom built atop a billiard parlor, shops and a Chinese restaurant was completed two years later. Designed by notable theater architect, Harry Creighton Ingalls, the Renaissance Casino and ballroom is a subtly distinguished work most notable for its frieze of polychrome Hispano Moresque style glazed tiles. Quite apart from the architectural niceties, however, the true significance of the complex lies in its remarkable history.