San Juan Hill: Manhattan’s Lost Neighborhood is an hour-long documentary directed by Emmy Award winner Stanley Nelson, preeminent documentarian of the African American experience. In the first half of the twentieth century, the area where Lincoln Center now stands was known as San Juan Hill. Predating the golden age of the Harlem Renaissance, musical phenomena like Bebop and the Charleston bloomed in this cultural mecca. Home to a largely working-class community, San Juan Hill was redlined in the 1930s and targeted by “urban renewal” in the 1940s and 1950s, displacing thousands of residents. Their stories of home, belonging, and resilience have gone untold until now. Through never-before-accessed historical footage, expert commentary, first-person storytelling with former residents, and narration by Academy Award-winning actress Ariana DeBose (West Side Story), San Juan Hill: Manhattan’s Lost Neighborhood celebrates the people, arts, and culture whose enduring legacy resonates today.

This film was commissioned by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and presented in association with Film at Lincoln Center. This film is made possible by support from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.

Panel Participants

Moderator
Loren Schoenberg, Founding Director and Senior Scholar, National Jazz Museum in Harlem

Panelists
Aaron Flagg, Chair and Associate Director of Juilliard Jazz Studies, The Juilliard School
Fredara Hadley, Professor of Ethnomusicology, The Juilliard School
Dr. Vanessa K. Valdés, Writer and Independent Scholar, African Diasporic Studies