Home of Harlem Renaissance Writer Langston Hughes Opens to the Public as House Museum

Langston Hughes photographed in 1943 by Gordon Parks | Everett Collection Historical / Alamy Stock Photo

Publisher: The Art Newspaper | Author: Mary Elizabeth Andriotis

The long-time home of influential Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes is now open to the public as a historic house museum. The grand re-opening event for the Langston Hughes House, held this past June and hosted by Los Angeles-based poet Felicia Cade, involved live musicians playing soul, blues and jazz, and local poets reciting verses of Hughes’s poetry.

Constructed in 1869, the Italianate-style home at 20 East 127th Street consists of three storeys (not including a basement) and is 20ft wide by 45ft deep. Hughes used the topmost floor as his work room for the last two decades of his life, from 1947 to 1967. It has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1982 and it was declared a city landmark by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1981.