Historic Harlem Homes Plagued By Flooding As Residents Criticize City

HARLEM, NY — Just over a year ago, the city designated a picturesque corner of Harlem as its newest historic district, saying the rowhouse-lined blocks boasted "highly intact streetscapes" and close connections to the Harlem Renaissance.

Now, residents of those same rowhouses near Dorrance Brooks Square say the city is failing to address a pattern of severe flooding that has threatened to make their homes uninhabitable. The flooding began in April and has accompanied every single rainstorm since then, residents told Patch.

Initially affecting a handful of homes along Edgecombe Avenue between West 136th and 137th streets, the flooding has begun spreading eastward toward Frederick Douglass Boulevard, now inundating more than a dozen homes in total, residents said.

"It’s just a horrible situation that requires an expedient response," said Keith Taylor, a criminal justice professor and former City Council candidate who lives in one of the Edgecombe Avenue rowhouses.

Taylor's sub-basement containing his gym and office has routinely flooded with several inches of clear water, displacing furnishings and warping a set of wooden doors, he said.

Other neighbors have it worse. A couple of doors down, JoLinda Cogen's basement floods with nearly two feet of a putrid substance that appears to be raw sewage — complete with toilet paper, leaves, and in one recent case, two live rats.

Cogen, a realtor, said her husband Michael has been forced to don a HAZMAT suit to clean up their cellar with an industrial vacuum and jumpstart their hot water heater, which gets knocked out during each flood.

Dozens of 311 calls and pleas to their local community board and elected officials have not yielded any solutions. Workers from the city's Department of Environmental Protection do arrive promptly after each flood, using machinery to clear the block's sewer — but the damage has already been done.

"They come within the hour, but it's too late," Cogen said. "It has to be fixed so that the blockage is removed."

The root cause appears to be a blockage hidden deep in a nearby sewer line, DEP officials have told residents. But DEP has been unable to get the access it needs, because a manhole on the corner of West 137th Street and Edgecombe Avenue is covered by a sidewalk shed that surrounds the building at 46 Edgecombe Ave.

The Department of Buildings has contacted the Islamic center that owns the building, asking them to hire contractors to remove the sidewalk shed. But those efforts have been unsuccessful, according to Community Board 10 district manager Shatic Mitchell, who has worked with the Edgecombe Avenue residents.

"We do need the scaffolding removed in order to properly investigate the possibly damaged sewer," DEP spokesperson Ted Timbers told Patch. "In [the] meantime we can pump around the possibly damaged portion of the sewer – and have done so to stop backups into the other buildings. But that is certainly not a long-term solution."

Neighbors now say the problem has grown so dire that the city should cut open the entire street — whatever it takes to access the sewer and stop the flooding.

To Taylor, the city's paralysis is "ironic," given its efforts to protect the historic homes around Dorrance Brooks Square.

"The city and state government have designated collectively this neighborhood as a very special place," he said. "And to see this problem develop and not be addressed in a meaningful way is disheartening."

Have a Harlem news tip? Contact reporter Nick Garber at nick.garber@patch.com.

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