Harlem Walking Tour with John T. Reddick

In honor of the exhibition Act Black: Posters from Black American Stage & Screen, join Poster House for a walking tour in Harlem with historian and architectural preservationist John T. Reddick. Explore the historic institutions, cultural landmarks, and architectural icons that shaped Black performance and public life in the neighborhood under the guidance of a true expert!

Participants will stop at key sites like Strivers’ Row, the Schomburg Center, and Harlem Hospital’s WPA murals, investigating the ways in which Harlem’s built environment served as both backdrop and catalyst for the Harlem Renaissance and the cultural flourishing of the area. Along the way, Reddick will connect the imagery in Act Black to the streets where Black actors, musicians, and cultural leaders transformed American stage and screen, highlighting the powerful intersection of place, performance, and poster art. 

John T. Reddick is an architectural preservationist, historian, and collector of Harlem- related documents and ephemera, several pieces of which are on view in Act Black. He has contributed his knowledge of Harlem’s culture and architecture to a number of public art and open space projects in that community, among them the Ralph Ellison Memorial, Harriet Tubman Square, and the Frederick Douglass Memorial and Circle. Supported by a grant from the Mellon Foundation, Reddick is currently working with the Central Park Conservancy to encourage public discussion around the history of Seneca Village as the basis for a formal commemoration of that predominantly African American community, established before the founding of Central Park itself. 

Reddick received his BS in Architecture from Ohio State University and his MA in Architecture from Yale University.

Accessibility Note: Assistive listening devices will be used on this tour. ASL (American Sign Language) interpretation or a CART (Communication Access Realtime Translation) is also available upon request. Please contact access@posterhouse.org or (914) 295-2387 to request interpretation services and to address any other accessibility needs. For other event-related questions, please contact info@posterhouse.org.