New York Rens Court (Manhattan)
Present name:None
Location:Northeast corner of West 137th Street and Adam Clayton Jr. Boulevard
Honoree: The New York Rens basketball team was the first all-black professional and African-American owned basketball team. Formed in Harlem in 1923, the Rens were immediately successful. They helped shift the presence of African-Americans in sports from the amateur to the professional level. The team won 88 consecutive games in the 1932-1933 season, a record unmatched by any professional basketball team in the history of the game. In 1939, they won the first professional basketball championship in the World Professional Basketball Tournament. They were inducted in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 1963. The Rens home court was the ballroom of the Renaissance Ballroom and Casino, a storied entertainment complex, built and initially owned by Afro-Americans, that stood on the east side of Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard between 137th and 138th Streets. It was closed in 1979 and demolished in 2015. (Perkins)
LL:2018/139