Harlem Bespoke:  The spring season will have more on the calendar for everyone and local live events are some of the things to watch our for in the coming month.  Keep it all in the neighborhood and help support uptown’s small businesses!

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Joyce Pulphus, principal of Bronx Design & Construction Academy (BDCA) welcomed parents, alumni, and prospective students to the school’s second annual Career and Technical Education (CTE) fair on Friday, March 31.

“This is an opportunity, the CTE Fair is our opportunity to show you our greatness,” Pulphus boasted. The fair was a chance to show that BDCA is more than just a regular high school; Pulphus said it was an opportunity to prove that her high school “is a gem within the Bronx community.”

Outsiders were welcomed into the school and got to see the classrooms, or CTE shops, where students work every day. These CTE shops are where ninth through 12th graders learn trade skills like architectural engineering, HVAC engineering, carpentry technology, electrical engineering, and plumbing technology.

The school’s carpentry class is a huge room which holds two large houses. And every year, Kenneth Milani, BDCA’s physical education teacher explained, students use one of the houses as a model while they coordinate with the architecture class to design and construct a replica house––from the ground up. Once the house is finished, students in the electrical and plumbing classes come in and add their expertise to the job. 

All of the work is done to city code, noted Jeffrey Smalls, the CEO of Smalls Electrical Construction, Inc. “We had a city inspector come three years ago to make sure that everything within the building would be fine, and they passed,” Smalls, who was one of the co-founders of the BDCA in 2009, told the AmNews.

At one point, BDCA had been threatened with closure. But community members held rallies and gathered more than 6,000 signatures to fight to keep it open. Thalia Panton, the vice president of workforce development with the Transportation Diversity Council (TDC) also came to tour the CTE fair. The TDC was another founding partner of BDCA: Panton said her organization helps bring resources to the schools’ students. 

“It’s always been a trade school, for 70 years. But when they were shutting it down, under Bloomberg, that’s when they jumped in, and they said they needed to keep a trade school in the Bronx,” Milani said.

According to plumbing teacher Denise Montes, “One of the benefits the students get from coming to this school, and the different skills that they learn in the 10th and 11th and 12th grades, is that by the time they graduate, if they successfully complete all their credits and pass their final exams, they graduate with something called a CTE endorsement. That gives them two years of work experience that they could apply to city exams.” 

Being able to qualify for the plumber’s helper exam, Montes said, means that 18-year-old students graduating from BDCA could potentially find employment where they could earn more than $50 an hour.

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Harlem Bespoke:   After selling for $1.9 million back in 2020 during the start of the pandemic, Number 465 West 144th Street in Hamilton Heights is now back on the market for a cool $2.5 million.  So what is different this time around? The listing mentions that everything is in a multi-family layout and a Certificate of No Harrassment in place so an SRO situation might have been the case in the past.  With that said, that would mean the next owner can start with changing the layout right away and there lies the new value of the apparent fixer-upper.  As previously mentioned, this is one of the rarely available landmark townhouses on the block of West 144th Street between Convent and Amsterdam Avenue which is one of our favorite blocks in all of the city.  More details and photos can be found on Streeteasy: LINK

HarlemBespoke.com 2023

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Harlem Bespoke:  Live music lovers can check out the jazz vibes at Lucille’s on Macomb Place by 150th Street every Thursday evening starting at 8:00PM with dinner or drink service.  The charming corner space in Central Harlem has a very current 70’s mood to it which doubles as a cozy coffee spot during the day but also makes for a lovely evening out when cocktails are served up at the bar. With things starting to open up back in the city, Lucille’s is definitely one of the places to check out for a chill night out.  More details on Lucille’s can be found in our past post: LINK

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The People’s Organization for Progress was set to host their annual protest to observe the anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Tuesday, April 4. Organizers named their event the “March For Justice, Equality, and Peace.” Participants met at the new Martin Luther King Memorial Monument at 495 Martin Luther King Blvd. by the new Essex County Building.

The protest centered on police brutality, voting rights, world peace, housing justice, worker rights and living wage jobs, environmental justice, and more. Police brutality, especially in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd, was especially spotlighted with the family survivors of a number of recent cases in the area participating prominently.

“We are marching on April 4 to draw attention to police brutality in New Jersey, as well as the rest of the nation,” said chairperson Lawrence Hamm. “We [marched] to demand justice for Najee Seabrooks, Bernard Placide Jr., Carl Dorsey, Major Gulia Dale III, the Rodwell/Spivey Brothers, and many other victims in this state and across the country.” 

The King statue in front of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Justice Building, near the corner of Springfield Avenue and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, was surrounded by participants with hopes of drawing attention to the fact that the social, economic, and political issues that King confronted during his lifetime are still present today, and it is our duty to continue his fight.

Marchers demanded full implementation of the state’s Amistad Law, which requires teaching African American history in all public schools. 

For more information about the People’s Organization for Progress, call 973-801-0001. 

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