Where There Is Now Lincoln Center, There Was Once San Juan Hill

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY – The world premiere of “San Juan Hill: Manhattan’s Lost Neighborhood,” a documentary directed by Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Stanley Nelson, will take place on Wednesday, Oct. 9, at Lincoln Center, as part of the 62nd New York Film Festival.

The documentary, narrated by "West Side Story" star and Academy Award-winning actress Ariana DeBose, traces the history and cultural legacy of Manhattan’s San Juan Hill, a neighborhood demolished in the 1950s to make way for the construction of Lincoln Center.

Nelson, an award-winning documentarian behind films including “The Murder of Emmett Till,” “Jonestown: The Life & Death of People's Temple,” and “Freedom Riders,” among others, spoke with Patch by phone on Tuesday.

West Side Story

“The story of San Juan Hill is one that I think most people don’t know, which is that Lincoln Center was built where there was a real neighborhood – and the neighborhood was destroyed to build Lincoln Center,” Nelson said.

The film, which was commissioned by Lincoln Center in 2022, is part of the organization’s ongoing effort to contend with this history, a project that includes tearing down a wall that literally and figuratively separates Amsterdam Avenue – and the final remnants of San Juan Hill – from the world-renowned performing arts complex.

“San Juan Hill was, for almost a hundred years, a poor, immigrant neighborhood. It wasn’t always an immigrant neighborhood, and at times was a place where white New Yorkers, black New Yorkers, and Puerto Rican New Yorkers lived, but it was always a neighborhood that people with not much money could afford. It was a transitional neighborhood, and it was a vibrant neighborhood, rich in the arts, [because] so many cultures met in San Juan Hill.”

Numerous artists are associated with the area, including stride piano pioneer James P. Johnson, Thelonious Monk, Benny Carter, painters George Bellows and Robert Henri, and even playwright Eugene O’Neill.

San Juan Hill was also the neighborhood that inspired “West Side Story,” which was written by Arthur Laurents, Jerome Robbins, Leonard Bernstein, and Stephen Sondheim in the late 1950s, as the neighborhood was being demolished.

'I Didn't Know'

“We have these incredible interviews [in the film], people who remember hearing the wrecking balls and seeing the dust from the buildings coming down as kids. Another guy, who is older now, remembers students in his classroom disappearing because they were moving,” Nelson said. “These are the kinds of things you can’t get from historians.”

Nelson, who grew up on the Upper West Side, went to school in the area in the years immediately following the construction of Lincoln Center.

“I went to Brandeis in ninth grade, and Brandeis was on 65th and Amsterdam, so it was right there” he recalled. “I remember Lincoln Center being built, and the beauty of Lincoln Center, but I didn't know the story of what had been destroyed.”

Like Seneca Village, a predominantly African-American community which was razed to make way for the construction of Central Park in the 1850s, the story of San Juan Hill reflects the complicated history of what’s lost – and what’s gained – as the city changes.

“I think it’s essential that we understand that to build, we’re also going to have to take away. Lincoln Center was built at a time when urban renewal was kind of the thing across the country,” Nelson said, referring to the controversial era of federally-backed redevelopment that took place across the country in the middle of the twentieth century.

“So many neighborhoods were destroyed, and destroyed heartlessly," Nelson reflected. “‘These are slums, we gotta tear ‘em down, and we’re going to put something great in their place,’ and there wasn’t much thought given to what we were destroying. One of the good things about this film is that we’re thinking about what we take away when we add, and that’s something that I believe is really important.”

Nelson’s Own San Juan Hill?

“Immediately I think of Harlem, which has really changed, and continues to change very, very quickly,” he said. “It's no longer majority African-American. It’s being gentrified,” he continued.

“It’s startling. But it’s also kind of a done deal. You can lament it, but Harlem has changed.”

Returning to San Juan Hill, Nelson said he’s looking forward to Wednesday’s screening.

“It’s going to be the first time I’ve seen it on a big screen, and I’m looking forward to seeing the reaction from the audience. A lot of people who are in the film from the neighborhood are going to be there.”

More information is available here. Although Lincoln Center plans to make the film available to a broader audience following the screening, no specifics are available at this time, a spokesperson told Patch.