Amsterdam News plans $44 million makeover of its Harlem headquarters into a center for Black press history

The New York Amsterdam News, the city's oldest Black newspaper, wants to turn its aging Harlem headquarters into a public center for the history of Black journalism. Its nonprofit arm, the Amsterdam News Educational Foundation, has launched a $44 million fundraising campaign to restore and redesign the building at 2340 Frederick Douglass Blvd., near West 125th Street, according to 6sqft, which published renderings Tuesday. The New York Times first reported the plan last week, Quartz noted.

If the money comes in, construction could start in 2029, 6sqft reported.

What would change

• Kept and restored: the facade, the neon sign, murals, the marble staircase and mosaic floors, plus the 1940s-era publisher's office and the former newsroom.
• Ground floor: a double-height digital gallery lined with LED panels, called "The Citadel of Black Truth," that could show photographs and headlines from the paper's past and present. Entry would be free.
• Archives: the paper's records would open to the public for research in person and online.
• Cafe: modeled on the lunch counters where civil rights-era protesters staged sit-ins and gathered to share news.
• Upgrades: an elevator, new electrical and plumbing systems, and a fifth-floor event and exhibition space with an outdoor terrace.

Most of the newspaper's staff would work on the third floor, leased from the foundation, which plans to acquire the building, 6sqft said. The design is by two Black-owned firms, AYON Studio and Jerome Haferd Studio. "What is special about this building is what happened here," Angel Ayón told the Times, as quoted by 6sqft.

Who is paying

A $500,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation paid for the plans and renderings, and a separate $520,000 Mellon grant will fund an archivist to sort and preserve the records, according to 6sqft. The foundation says more than 300 individual donors have given so far. Most of the $44 million still has to be raised.

Why the building matters

The paper was founded in 1909 in an apartment in San Juan Hill, the Black neighborhood razed for Lincoln Center, and moved to Harlem as the Great Migration brought Black Southerners north. It bought the four-story building in 1939, and about 10,000 people came to its grand opening in 1941, 6sqft reported. Today the building has broken windows and pigeon droppings on the floors, according to the Times.

The foundation says the Amsterdam News was the first publication to print Malcolm X and one of the few outlets that defended the Central Park Five, now known as the Exonerated Five. Publisher and editor-in-chief Elinor Tatum, who took over from her father, Wilbert, in 1997, chairs the foundation's board. "Our idea is to tell those stories in our own space," she told the Times.