Meet Me at the Theresa: The Story of Harlem's Most Famous Hotel.

Meet Me at the Theresa: The Story of Harlem's Most Famous Hotel by Dr. Sondra Kathryn Wilson, Atria Books February 2004, $27.50 IBSN 0-743-46688-8

Sondra Kathryn Wilson gives that old expression "if the walls could talk" new meaning in her Meet Me at the Theresa. Almost every notable black entertainer or celebrity who passed through Harlem stayed there, after the famous hotel at the corner of 125th Street and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard was desegregated in 1940.

Wilson has thoroughly combed the hotel's registers and the memories of people who once resided, frequented or worked at the Theresa. If they did not occupy one of the fabulous suites as Sugar Ray Robinson and his wife did, they took the elevator to the top of the 13-story building and basked in the glow of glittering chandeliers in the Skyline Ballroom, or they were patrons at the hotel's J-shaped, 51-foot bar.

Many planted their elbows on the bar that was a fixture after the hotel's erection in 1913. "The bar was a crossroads where everybody stopped by during the day," said writer Albert Murray. "Duke [Ellington], on his way downtown to his office in the Brill Building. Joe Louis, editors and reporters from the Amsterdam News ... anybody who wanted to know something about Harlem and what was going in the black world."

When Fidel Castro was booted from a midtown hotel back in 1960, he sought refuge at the Theresa. After Joe Louis defeated Max Schmeling in the summer of 1938, fans clustered outside in front of the hotel, waiting for the champ to wave to them from the balcony. The late Ron Brown, whose father was the hotel's manager, used to prowl the corridors seeking autographs from the rich and the famous. At one time, Congressman Charles Rangel was a desk clerk, where he was privileged to watch such beauties as Lena Horne, Billie Holiday and Edna Mae Robinson sashaying to the mezzanine to shop at Etienne's Boutique.

By 1970, the hotel's glamour had vanished in the winds of squalor that swept through Harlem. Gone are the colorful Cadillacs lined in front of the hotel. Gone is the Skyline Ball room, the bar, the bellhops, and gone is the hotel that was gradually transformed into a complex of offices.

However, the memories persist. Wilson has teased and coaxed a number of informants to do what the walls and floors of the hotel cannot do. From their lively anecdotes, the Theresa is once more vibrant with gossip and chatter; you can hear the music stealing down the stairwells from the second floor where disc jockey Hal Jackson was at the turntable; you can feel the excitement of the lobby and the temptation to peep through the Venetian blinds and watch your favorite star.

Yes, the lobby, the bar and the rooms often overflowed with stars, but the real star, as Wilson makes abundantly clear, was the Theresa.

--Reviewed by Herb Boyd Herb Boyd is the author of Pound for Pound: The Life and Times of Sugar Ray Robinson (Amistad), which is slated for release this winter. His book We Shall Overcome: A History of the Civil Rights Movement (Source Books) is to be published this fall.