n.
District occupying part of northern Manhattan Island, New York City , U.S. It lies north of Central Park , with its business district centred on 125th Street.
Founded by Peter Stuyvesant in 1658 as Nieuw Haarlem, it was named after Haarlem in the Netherlands. During the American Revolution it was the site of the Battle of Harlem Heights (Sept. 16, 1776). It was a farming area in the 18th century and a fashionable residential district in the 19th century. A black residential and commercial area by World War I, in the 1920s it was the centre of the cultural movement known as the Harlem Renaissance .