125^th Street

125th Street between Broadway and Fifth Avenue is the working center of Harlem and serves as its main commercial and retail drag. The #2 and #3 trains let you out here at 125th Street and Lenox Avenue, and the Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. State Office Building on the corner of Seventh Avenue provides a looming concrete landmark. Walking west along 125th, you'll encounter the Studio Museum in Harlem, at no. 144 (Wed-Thurs noon-6pm, Fri noon-8pm, Sat-Sun 10am-6pm; $5, students and seniors $3, under 12 $1; phone 212/864-4500, www.studiomuseumin
harlem.org ), an exhibition space dedicated to contemporary African-American painting, photography and sculpture. The permanent collection is displayed on a rotating basis and includes works by Harlem Renaissance-era photographer James an Der Zee, and paintings and sculptures by postwar artists.

Just west is the Apollo Theatre at no. 253, which, though not much to look at from the outside, was, from the 1930s to the 1970s, the center of black entertainment in New York City and northeastern America. Almost all the great figures of jazz and blues played here along with singers, comedians and dancers. Past winners of its renowned Amateur Night have included Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, The Jackson Fie, Sarah Vaughan, Marin Gaye and James Brown.

The Apollo offers daily 45-minute tours (call 212/531-5337) .

Cloisters
Tues-Sun; March-Oct 9.30am-5.15pm; No-Feb 9.30am-4.45pm; suggested donation $10, students $5, including same-day admission to the Metropolitan Museum; phone 212/923-3700. #A to 190th St-Ft Washington Ave.

The Cloisters, the Metropolitan Museum's collection of medieval art, is housed in a beautiful ersatz monastery in Fort Tryon Park. Unequivocally, this is a must, and if you're game for riding up on the subway you'll find an additional reward in the park itself, the stone-walled promenade overlooking the Hudson and English-style garden making for a sweepingly romantic spot.

Starting from the entrance hall and working counterclockwise, the collection is laid out in roughly chronological order. First off is the simplicity of the Romanesque Hall, featuring French remnants such as an arched, limestone doorway dating to 1150 and a thirteenth-century portal from a monastery in Burgundy. The frescoed Spanish Fuentidueña Chapel is dominated by a huge, domed twelfth-century apse from Segovia that immediately induces a reverential hush. Hall and chapel form a corner on one of the prettiest of the fie cloisters here, St Guilhelm, ringed by strong Corinthian-style columns topped by busily cared capitals with floral designs from thirteenth-century Southern France.

The highlight of the collection, however, are the Unicorn Tapestries ( c .1500, Netherlands), which are brilliantly alive with color, observation and Christian symbolism, more so now than ever, as all seven were recently repaired, restored and rehung in a refurbished gallery with new lighting.

Hamilton and Washington Heights
Running down Convent Avenue to City College in the 130s, the Hamilton Heights Historic District was populated during the Depression by black professionals, who looked down on lesser Harlemites. The Heights' greatest historic lure is the 1798 house of Alexander Hamilton, flamboyant first Secretary to the Treasury. Hamilton Grange National Memorial (daily 9am-5pm; free; phone212/666-1640), at 287 Convent Ave, at 142nd St, may soon be moved to a site in nearby St Nicholas Park. For now, the Federal-style mansion sits uncomfortably between the fiercely Romanesque St Luke's Church and an apartment building.

The northernmost part of Manhattan island, Washington Heights, offers only a couple of stop-offs. The Hispanic Society of America, on Audubon Terrace between 155th and 156th streets (Tues-Sat 10am-4.30pm, Sun 1-4pm; free; phone 212/926-2234), contains one of the largest collections of Hispanic art outside Spain, with works by Spanish masters such as Goya, El Greco and Velázquez, and more than 6000 decorative works of art.

The Morris-Jumel Mansion, at 65 Jumel Terrace, between 160th Street and Edgecombe Avenue (Wed-Sun 10am-4pm; $3, $2 students and seniors; phone 212/923-8008), is another uptown surprise. Cornered in its garden, the mansion, with its proud Georgian outlines faced with a later Federal portico, somehow survived the destruction all around.

Powell Boulevard
Above 110th Street, Seventh Avenue becomes Adam Clayton Powell Jr Bouleard, a broad sweep pushing north betweven low-built houses that for once in Manhattan allow the sky to break through. As with the rest of Harlem, Powell Boulevard shows years of decline in its graffiti-splattered walls and storefronts punctuated by demolished lots. The recent injection of funds into this area should change it for the better; in fact if the current investments don't make some difference, it's hard to say what will.

At 132 W 138th St stands the Abyssinian Baptist Church, noted primarily because of its long-time minister, the Reverend Adam Clayton Powell Jr, who was instrumental in the 1930s in forcing the white-owned stores of Harlem to employ the blacks who ensured their economic survival. Later, he became the first black on the city council, then New York's first black representative in Congress, sponsoring the country's first minimum-wage law.

Strivers Row 

#B or #C to 135th St-Frederick Douglass Blvd.

Near the Abyssinian Baptist Church at 138th Street between Powell and Eighth avenues (aka Frederick Douglass Bld) are what many consider the finest blocks of rowhouses in Manhattan - Strivers Row . Commissioned during the 1890s housing boom, Strivers Row constitutes a uniquely harmonious, dignified Renaissance-derived strip, that's an amalgam of simplicity and elegance. At the turn of the nineteenth century, this came to be the desirable place for ambitious professionals to reside - hence its nickname.

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