> I almost never went near 125th Street, the unofficial boundary of Harlem
With my obnoxious local hat on: Harlem starts at 110th street and runs to roughly 155th street, narrowing on the West Side with each of the long parks (Morningside, St. Nicholas, Jackie Robinson).
125th street would be the "heart" of Harlem, not the boundary. This would have been even more obvious in the 1980s, when the racial divisions between Bloomingdale, Morningside Heights, Harlem, and Spanish Harlem were even more stark.
With my obnoxious local hat on: Harlem starts at 110th street and runs to roughly 155th street, narrowing on the West Side with each of the long parks (Morningside, St. Nicholas, Jackie Robinson).
125th street would be the "heart" of Harlem, not the boundary. This would have been even more obvious in the 1980s, when the racial divisions between Bloomingdale, Morningside Heights, Harlem, and Spanish Harlem were even more stark.