Entry · catalog no. 1075

Sugar Hill

/ /

noun · Harlem, New York ·

✓ Verified

The northwest corner of Harlem, above 145th Street — where Black wealth, professionals, and artists lived. By extension, any well-off Black neighborhood.

“They moved up to Sugar Hill soon as the practice took off.”

Origin & Attribution

Named by Harlem residents in the 1920s and 1930s for the sweet life the hilltop blocks represented. Home to Duke Ellington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Thurgood Marshall. Billy Strayhorn's "Take the A Train" (1941) sends the listener straight there. Hurston's 1942 glossary defines it and notes the term was already being twisted in the South to mean a red-light district — an early case of a Black term of pride getting flipped.

Region of origin

West

Midwest

N.East

South

Nationwide / diaspora

Harlem, New York ·

Spoken by

$SUGARHThe Record · cultural traction

▲

26 yrs

ahead of the mainstream

60/100

peak cultural energy

Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.

Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest

Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.

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Atlanta, GA

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Memphis, TN

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Citations & Sources

■

Billy Strayhorn / Duke Ellington Orchestra, "Take the 'A' Train" — recording · 1941

submitted

■

Zora Neale Hurston, "Story in Harlem Slang," The American Mercury — short story with glossary · 1942

submitted

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