My father's first job in Manhattan was at the Harmon Foundation, a non-profit organization established in 1922 to promote black artists and black-owned businesses.

Above: The former Walker Mansion, "Villa Lewaro." Below: A'Lelia Walker

Dad was a young immigrant who had recently fled from the Nazi annexation of Austria. He produced films for the Harmon Foundation toward the end of the Great Depression. In 1940, the Harmon Foundation was a surviving vestige of the Harlem Renaissance, a pivotal era of vitality in American culture. That creative surge had been dealt a death-blow by the Depression.

In that year Dad cranked out documentary films about struggling black artists who emerged from that period. That same year the poet, Langston Hughes, published his autobiography, conjuring up memories of the Harlem Renaissance. In that book he remembered his friend, A'Lelia Walker, the social queen of Harlem in the 1920s, "the joy goddess of Harlem" during its renaissance.

When A'Lelia Walker and her mother, Madam C. J. Walker, arrived at Irvington in 1917, it is unlikely that the people of the sleepy suburban village had ever seen a joy goddess. The mother had chosen a very prominent spot for her lovely mansion. It is said that she intended it to serve as a moral lesson to what African American industry could achieve. One can only imagine what exquisite torments some local folk prepared for Madam Walker's obliging real estate agent. The mansion had not long been completed when Madam Walker died in 1919 — some say a victim of her own work ethic. A'Lelia died only twelve years after her mother — some say a victim of "the good life." I have noted, in following the life stories of the rich, that the building of a dream mansion is often closely followed by death.

The aura of traditional respectability in the success story of Madam C. J. Walker, tends to overshadow the life and achievement of her daughter, A'Lelia. Despite their very different characters, these two Madam Walkers have assumed a rather blended identity in local lore. Most of us are unaware of how briefly the elder woman actually occupied the Irvington mansion (from 1917 to 1919). There is also the mistaken impression that the Walker mansion, Villa Lewaro, served as a country retreat packed with hard-working business people, or sober and dedicated social reformers. In fact, it was a scene of decadent living with the tall, attractive, flamboyant A'Lelia surrounded with a coterie of eccentric friends. One friend remembered that, "She looked like a queen and frequently acted like a tyrant." The throngs of guests at the house were greeted by footmen in wigs and entertained with music from a gold-plated piano and a $60,000 pipe organ. The name Lewaro is said to be an acronym of A'Lelia's name, devised by Enrico Caruso.

A'Lelia was born at Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1885 and worked for her determined mother as she established her hair products business. To Madam Walker, her only child represented an inspiration to succeed, and it appears that her efforts were directed at providing A'Lelia with wealth and status. That the daughter turned out to be a markedly different kind of woman from her mother is no surprise. Madam Walker may have hoped and willed it to be so. A'Lelia Walker may have been as accomplished in her social realm as her mother was in business. Neither remained long at their apex.

The wealth left to A'Lelia did not last long, but it would have gone a great deal farther had the Depression been postponed. The miracle of the younger Walker was the speed with which she adapted to her newly acquired wealth and status. She invented a memorable social aptitude, almost overnight. Prior to her mother's death, she was an able substitute at society fundraisers. After her mother died, A'Lelia played a central role in creating the memorable cultural phenomenon of the Harlem Renaissance.

After Madam Walker's death, her daughter changed her name from Lelia to A'Lelia — perhaps a symbolic gesture of independence. Some would call her new lifestyle wasteful, prodigal, or selfish. She was indeed spendthrift and careless of where the money was coming from or going to, but then again, using wealth to create more wealth is not exactly altruistic. "A'Lelia Walker was a gorgeous dark Amazon, in a silver turban," wrote Langston Hughes. "[She] made no pretense at being intellectual or exclusive." Her vast entourage included bankers, poets, artists, and musicians; her parties were a catalyst for cultural and social growth. They included black and white, straight and gay. She named her Harlem salon, "the Dark Tower" a gathering place for the guests whose names "read like a blue book of the seven arts."

With the approach of the Depression, her health began to suffer along with company finances. Financial worries led her to sell the contents of Villa Lewaro, in 1930. The auction offered an "optical orgy for curious white folk — valuables bought by those who opposed mansion on the Hudson," according to one publication. In the summer of the following year A'Lelia Walker was struck down by a cerebral hemorrhage while visiting Long Branch, New Jersey. Her funeral was a huge Harlem event, and, according to Langston Hughes, signaled the end of the Harlem Renaissance.

Henry Steiner is the village historian of Sleepy Hollow. He is an associate broker with Hudson Homes in Tarrytown.