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History

The Harlem School of the Arts (HSA) was founded in 1964 by nationally acclaimed soprano Dorothy Maynor. Its first classes were held in the basement of Saint James Presbyterian Church, located at the corner of St. Nicholas Avenue and 141st Street. Ms. Maynor first taught piano, then added Suzuki violin, drama, art and dance classes for neighborhood children who had no other place to develop their musical and artistic talents. She believed that any child exposed to a full range of organized arts activities and instruction would grow up emotionally and intellectually richer. She also believed that commitment to and involvement in the child's studies of the arts would strengthen the family.

Today, in HSA's modern facilities located adjacent to St. James Church, this philosophy continues.

Dorothy Maynor

Dorothy Leigh Maynor was born in 1910.  As a child, she sang in her father's church. At the age of 14, she enrolled in the college-preparatory program at Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) and began singing in its choir. R. Nathaniel Dett, the school's famed chorus master, noticed her talent and encouraged her to become a soloist.           

After graduation from Hampton in 1933, Ms. Maynor attended Westminster Choir College in Princeton, NJ In 1936, she moved to New York to study voice privately and led a church choir in Brooklyn. At the 1939 Berkshire Festival in Tanglewood, MA, she sang for Serge Koussevitzky, conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He arranged for her to give a performance at a picnic, which led to a rave review in The New York Times.

"Her voice is a miracle," the conductor declared, "a musical revelation that the world must hear." The critics echoed Koussevitzky's praise after Ms. Maynor's New York debut in November 1939, and she was soon "a fixture in the elite group of black artists that included Marian Anderson, Roland Hayes and Paul Robeson," Rosalyn M. Story wrote in "And So I Sing: African-American Divas of Opera and Concert."

Ms. Maynor remained a concert artist. In her day, few opera companies would engage a black singer. Her appearance, "a plump, cherubic figure standing less than five feet tall," as Story put it, also worked against her being cast in the romantic lead roles usually sung by sopranos.

She nonetheless learned arias from dozens of operas and featured them in her concerts. One, "Depuis le jour," from Charpentier's  Louise, became her signature piece, guaranteed to evoke standing ovations. At the peak of her career, Ms. Maynor performed with most of the major American orchestras and was one of the most sought-after and highly paid singers in the concert world. Her recordings were bestsellers and she was regularly heard on popular radio shows.

In 1942, Ms. Maynor married the Rev. Shelby Rooks, pastor of Saint James Presbyterian Church. When her husband became ill, she retired from performing to care for him and became active in church affairs. She was soon planning a venture that would resonate as powerfully as her singing: founding a school for young black artists. In 1964 the Harlem School of the Arts opened in the basement of St. James Presbyterian Church with piano classes for 12 youngsters. By 1979, when she retired from direction of the school, it occupied a $2 million, 37,000-square-foot facility and had enrolled more than 1,000 students in college preparatory programs in performing and visual arts.

In 1975, Ms. Maynor, who was never given the opportunity to sing at New York's Metropolitan Opera, became the first African-American to join its board of directors. Ms. Maynor spent her last years out of the limelight, living with her husband in a small town in Pennsylvania. Dorothy Maynor passed away in 1996. The Harlem School of the Arts is her legacy.