A'Lelia Walker - Arts Patron

Arts Patron

During the 1920s she had many painters, sculptors, writers, musicians, and actors of the Harlem Renaissance at "The Dark Tower," which was part literary gathering place, part nightclub. It was a converted floor of her 136th Street townhouse near Lenox Avenue that was designed by Paul Frankl (Langston Hughes, "The Big Sea" ). She also entertained at Villa Lewaro, her country house in Westchester County and at her pied-a-terre at 80 Edgecomb Avenue in Harlem.

Villa Lewaro was named for Walker (LElia WAlker RObinson) after Italian tenor Enrico Caruso said to her mother that the newly-built Irvington-on-Hudson mansion reminded him of the houses of his native country.

Walker was a patron of the arts who, despite her impoverished childhood, was surrounded by accomplished African American musicians and developed an early love of classical music and opera. She grew up in the neighborhood where Scott Joplin and other ragtime musicians gathered at Tom Turpin's Rosebud Cafe on St. Louis's Market Street.