Pest Control in Sugar Hill, Manhattan
Sugar Hill occupies the eastern part of Hamilton Heights, roughly between 145th and 155th Streets from Edgecombe Avenue to Amsterdam Avenue, perched on a bluff overlooking the Harlem River valley. Its name reflects the sweet life of prosperous Black residents in the 1920s through the 1950s. Stately apartment buildings like 409 and 555 Edgecombe Avenue once housed luminaries including W.E.B. Du Bois, Thurgood Marshall, Duke Ellington and Paul Robeson. Rowhouses on Convent and St. Nicholas Avenues display ornate facades. Jackie Robinson Park provides a pool and green space. The A, B, C and D at 145th Street and 155th Street serve the neighborhood.
Also known as: Hamilton Heights, Harlem.
About Sugar Hill
Developed around the turn of the twentieth century with rowhouses and elevator buildings for middle-class white families, Sugar Hill became the most prestigious address for Black New Yorkers during the Harlem Renaissance and after. Doctors, lawyers, artists and activists settled here. The area declined in the late twentieth century, but landmark designation in 2000 and 2002 helped protect its architecture and encourage restoration of its rowhouses.
Common Pest Problems in Sugar Hill
Sugar Hill's large prewar apartment buildings have long hallways, shared heating risers and old plumbing where mice and German cockroaches can spread between units. Rowhouses on Convent and St. Nicholas Avenues have stone foundations and basements with gaps that mice exploit. Rats forage around trash at commercial corners on Amsterdam Avenue and 145th Street and burrow along the wooded slopes of Jackie Robinson Park. The steep park slopes offer hidden cover for burrows.
In apartments and rowhouses filled with decades of heirlooms, books, rugs and wool clothing, clothes moths and silverfish can cause quiet damage. Old radiators and plumbing leaks keep humidity high in some units, which favors silverfish in bathrooms and closets. Pigeons roost on the elaborate facades of the Edgecombe Avenue apartment buildings, and building owners often deal with droppings on window ledges. Because many residents are longtime tenants, clutter in basements and storage rooms can accumulate and shelter pests over the years.