The media treated itself to a field day in 2001 when former President Bill Clinton announced that he had signed a 10-year lease, at $354,000 per year, for office space in Harlem on West 125th Street. The news brought much needed hope and inspiration to those who had witnessed the United States’ most famous neighborhood struggle to survive the ravages of decayed buildings, a decreased population, dwindling employment, and the same debilitating drug traffic that crippled communities all over the country. That Clinton’s ever-so-cool Harlem shuffle lent a major boost to the community’s profile and real estate business is not to be denied. However, few things could better symbolize the in-progress twenty-first century Harlem Renaissance than the restoration of a Harlem brownstone sponsored by ESSENCE Magazine and the Abyssinian Development Corporation (ADC). As part of its year-long 35th anniversary celebration, ESSENCE Magazine entered into a partnership with the Abyssinian Development C