Philip A. Payton
1876–1917

Real estate developer

In a career that spanned less than twenty years, Philip A. Payton Jr. became known for providing African Americans in New York City with an opportunity to live in quality housing in the northern Manhattan community of Harlem. As a real estate broker, property manager, and owner, Payton gained a national reputation among African American business leaders during the first decade of the twentieth century.

Philip A. Payton was born February 27, 1876, in Westfield, Massachusetts, the eldest of four children of Philip A. Payton and Annie Ryans Payton. Although both of Payton's parents were entrepreneurs (his father owned a barbershop and his mother operated a hairdress-ing business), Payton Jr. did not seem destined for a career in business. He attended public schools in West-field but later noted that he had the least education of his siblings. In a profile in Booker T. Washington's 1907 work The Negro in Business, Payton characterized his aimless teen years as highlighted by his dropping out of high school during his senior year due to a football injury. Thereafter he decided to follow his father's trade and worked as a barber.

In 1899 Payton moved to New York City where he had a series of jobs and eventually found work as a porter in a real estate office. Exposed to the real estate profession, in less than a year he decided to start his own real estate business with a partner. The real estate partnership of Brown & Payton struggled, and Brown left during the first year. Payton, who had married in 1900, eventually began to get contracts to manage houses.

A real estate boom occurred in the northern Manhattan community of Harlem after 1900. The predominantly white community of Harlem, settled in the 1600s, had initially been a Dutch farming community. It became a residential community as transportation links with the lower Manhattan business districts improved in the second half of the 1800s. Merchants and other businessmen who worked in lower Manhattan were able to move their families to the developing community in upper Manhattan. By the 1880s and 1890s sections of the community were lined with four-story brownstone row houses and the area was known as a prosperous residential neighborhood. In 1900 construction began on the subway line extending from New York's City Hall in lower Manhattan north to 145th Street in Harlem. The line had been discussed since the 1880s. Real estate developers responded to the construction start by building apartment houses in close proximity to the line. Philip Payton recognized an opportunity for African Americans in these developments.

Chronology

1876

Born in Westfield, Massachusetts on February 27

1899

Moves to New York City

1900

Marries Maggie (maiden name unknown); forms Brown and Payton real estate company

1903

Forms Afro-American Realty Company partnership

1904

Incorporates Afro-American Realty Company

1906

Afro-American stockholders file lawsuit against Payton

1907

Company issues first dividend

1908

Court finds company liable for prospectus misrepresentations; company ceases to do business; forms Philip A. Payton Jr. Company

1917

Dies in Allenhurst, New Jersey on August 29

After 1890, the African American community in New York had begun to grow substantially as migrants from southern states relocated in New York for better opportunities. By 1900 African Americans in Manhattan were primarily dispersed throughout midtown Manhattan in an area approximately from 23rd Street north to the numbered streets in the low 60s (a smaller number lived in Harlem). A race riot in the midtown area in 1900, sparked by the murder of a police officer by an African American man, made the area less than hospitable for African Americans. Compounding their problems was the demolition of the residential community at 34th Street and Eighth Avenue to make way for the construction of the Pennsylvania Railroad Station. Payton recognized an opportunity to link African Americans seeking housing with the white Harlem property owners.

The Afro-American Realty Company

In 1903 Payton formed a partnership with nine African American businessmen to acquire five-year leases on Harlem properties owned by whites with a plan to rent the properties to African Americans. Payton indicated that the idea for the company had come to him while attending the annual meeting of Booker T. Washington's National Negro Business League in 1902. The league had been founded in 1900, and its annual meetings served as a gathering place for African American businessmen. Since the league was led by Washington, Payton's involvement in it most likely provided him with valuable access to the most powerful African American in the United States. Payton's real estate business was incorporated in 1904 as the Afro-American Realty Company with authorization to issue 50,000 shares of stock at $10 per share. According to Gilbert Osofsky, the company's prospectus stated that it would "buy, sell, rent, lease, and sub-lease, all kinds of buildings, houses … lots; and other … real estate in the city of New York…."

In 1904, when the subway opened, Payton's observations of potential opportunity proved to be accurate. The number of new apartments built in Harlem far exceeded the residential demand of white New Yorkers. Residential segregation, while not the law in New York City, became more a part of the city's tradition as the African American population of the city increased. African Americans were not a logical alternative tenant group for white Harlem property owners. The Afro-American Realty company facilitated occupancy by African Americans of these properties. The company eventually leased and managed buildings in which it placed African American residents. Yet the process was not without obstacles. There was organized resistance by white property owners to the incursion of African Americans into Harlem. White property owners formed organizations such as the Anglo-Saxon Realty Corporation and the Save-Harlem Committee promising not to lease or sell to blacks and justifying their activities as efforts to prevent a decline in property values. But the economic pressure of continuing to hold vacant properties that were not generating income proved too much for some white Harlem property owners, and Payton continued to receive contracts to manage buildings. He also purchased buildings. As he prospered Pay-ton and his wife Maggie purchased a home in the community as well, an eleven-room brownstone at 13 West 131st Street.

The African American movement to Harlem continued through the first years of the twentieth century, and to meet the demand, the Afro-American Realty Company continued to sell stock advertising in the black press with promises of 10 percent profit. Payton continued to expand operations to meet the growing demand, leasing and purchasing buildings using high interest financing. The Afro-American Realty Company's board of directors advised caution but the expansion continued although the company did not issue a dividend to stockholders. In 1906 a lawsuit was filed by forty-three disgruntled stockholders. The suit, filed in the name of stockholder Charles Crowder, claimed that in the prospectus used by the company to generate stock sales, the realty company had exaggerated the amount of property it owned and also had failed to disclose that much of this property was mortgaged. At a 1908 trial the court concluded that 37 of 134 allegations had been proven, including a finding of guilt in the company's misrepresentations in its prospectus. The stockholders recovered their initial investments, plus damages and legal costs.

The Afro-American Realty Company declared its first dividend in June 1907, but the negative publicity associated with the trial led to a devastating loss in investor confidence. The recession of 1907–08 exacerbated the company's problems, reducing the demand for housing in Harlem. Payton searched for ways to keep the company afloat, appealing to Booker T. Washington to intercede with philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. Washington refused and Payton approached Carnegie on his own, but was turned down. In 1908 the company ceased to do business. In spite of appeals from Emmett Scott, a shareholder, and Booker T. Washington's secretary, for Payton to formally communicate the end of the company's operations, Payton never formally announced its having closed.

Payton's confidence did not seem dimmed or his reputation tainted by the lawsuit or by the end of the Afro-American Realty Company. He continued in real estate work doing business as the Philip A. Payton Jr. Company, owning and managing buildings in Harlem identifiable by signs containing his "PAP" logo. Newspapers continued to seek his opinion on matters related to Harlem real estate. Payton continued to appeal to African Americans' heritage in naming his properties. A Payton advertisement for Harlem apartments included buildings with the names Attucks Court, Toussaint Court, and Wheatley Court.

Philip A. Payton, Jr. died of liver cancer on August 29, 1917 at his summer home in Allenhurst, New Jersey. His funeral took place at St. Marks Methodist Episcopal Church on West 53rd Street in Manhattan. He was survived by his wife Maggie and his sister Susan Payton Wortham. His brothers James and Edward had predeceased him. William Wortham, Susan Payton's husband, continued to operate the Philip A. Payton Jr. Co. at least until the early 1940s.

Although the Afro-American Realty Company was short-lived, the company and its leader Philip A. Payton played a significant role in the racial transition of Harlem. By the time of Payton's death a substantial area of Harlem was occupied by African American residents and businesses, setting the stage for the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s when the community became known as the "Negro Capital of the World" with Payton remembered as the "Father of Colored Harlem."

REFERENCES

Books

Anderson, Jervis. Harlem: The Great Black Way, 1900–1950. London: Orbis Publishing, 1982.

Johnson, James Weldon. Black Manhattan. New York: Knopf, 1930.

Lewis, David Levering. When Harlem Was in Vogue. New York: Random House, 1982.

Osofsky, Gilbert. Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto: Negro New York, 1890–1930. New York: HarperCollins, 1966.

Washington, Booker T. The Negro in Business. Wichita, Kan.: Devore and Sons, Inc. 1992, originally published by Hertel, Jenkins & Co., 1907.

Watkins-Owens, Irma. Blood Relations: Caribbean Immigrants and the Harlem Community, 1900–1930. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1996.

Periodicals

Gray, Christopher. "'Father of Harlem' Called It Home." New York Times (16 June 1991): 6.

"Local Realty Men Doing Big Business." New York Age (6 December 1912):1.

"Payton Buried at Westfield." New York Age (6 September 1917): 1.

"The World's Finest Housing Proposition." New York Age, 16 August 1917.

Collections

Documents associated with the case of Charles J. Crowder against Afro-American Realty Company and Philip A. Payton Jr. are in the archives of the New York County Surrogate's Court.

                                           Kevin McGruder