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3 unusual facts about A'Lelia Walker


A'Lelia Walker

She grew up in the neighborhood where Scott Joplin and other ragtime musicians gathered at Tom Turpin's Rosebud Cafe on St. Louis's Market Street.

In October 1927, she converted a floor of the home into The Dark Tower, a cultural salon that became legendary as one of the gathering place of the era, a places where Harlem's talented artists socialized with their Greenwich Village counterparts as well as European and African royalty.

Freeman Ransom

On land purchased for $58,000 in 1924, Ransom worked alongside A'Lelia Walker to construct a building in honor of Madame Walker.


Villa Lewaro

The name Villa Lewaro was coined by a distinguished visitor, Enrico Caruso, from the first two letters of each word in Lelia Walker Robinson, the name of her daughter, who later went by the name of A'Lelia Walker.


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