Sylvia Woods, the entrepreneur whose vision and decades of hard work turned her Harlem restaurant into a world renown culinary destination, died on July 19 after a courageous battle with Alzheimer’s. She was born in South Carolina in 1926, and following the death of her father she was raised by her mother and grandmother. At age eleven Sylvia met her future husband, Herbert, while they were working in a bean field; they married in 1944.
Sylvia got her beautician’s license in South Carolina and opened a farmhouse beauty parlor. But her entrepreneurial instinct took her to Harlem, where she worked for several years in Johnson’s Luncheonette on Lenox Avenue and 127th Street. Using her own savings and a mortgage on her mother’s house, she bought the restaurant in 1962 and built it into a successful business, Sylvia’s, while her husband supplemented the family income by driving taxis and trucks. Her big break was a favorable 1979 review by New York Magazine critic Pauline Kael, who loved the ribs and hominy grits but allowed “the neighborhood, alas, is shabby and forlorn, perhaps a bit forbidding.” Sylvia’s became a regular stop on European tourists’ Harlem circuit, along with the Apollo Theatre and the Savoy. Over the years Sylvia and her sons developed ancillary businesses including a catering hall, a national line of Soul Food and two cookbooks.
Sylvia Doesn’t Get all the Credit for Sylvia’s; It Was a Collective Effort
We know from President Obama’s teachings that Sylvia didn’t build her business on her own. She was smart, but lots of people in Harlem were smart. She worked hard, but there were a whole bunch of hardworking people in Harlem. Much of the credit for her success must go to the people who gave her help — her mother, her husband, the banker who gave her a loan, Mr. Johnson who sold her the restaurant, and Pauline Kael who gave her a favorable review. So clearly Sylvia does not deserve all the credit for her success; it was a collective effort.
And don’t forget government. Her restaurant was located at Lenox Avenue and 127th Street, which Sylvia didn’t build – the government did. Suburbanites made their way to her restaurant via the George Washington Bridge, Brooklyn Bridge, Holland Tunnel, and Lincoln Tunnel—all government built. Foreign tourists came via JFK and LaGuardia airports, which the government built. Sylvia advertised on the Internet, which the government invented. And many of her customers worked for the government.
So Sylvia should not get all that much credit for building a world famous restaurant in a tough uptown neighborhood; it was a collective effort.
