Title
Also naming Oxford Street between Broad Street and 15th Street as "Jake and Sarah Adams Avenue"
Body
WHEREAS, Since 1978, Jacob "Jake" Adams has owned New Barber's Hall in North Philadelphia. The Black-owned jazz bar has played host to jazz and R&B acts such as Dottie Smith, Robert "Bootsie" Barnes, Billy Paul, and Grover Washington Jr., and was patronized by the likes of Miles Davis, Isaac Hayes, Patti LaBelle, the Temptations, and "Smokin'" Joe Frazier; and
WHEREAS, Built in the 1860s, the three-story building in which New Barber's Hall would later occupy started as a single-family home before it was renovated as a clubhouse for the Quaker City Wheelmen, a chapter of a national bicycling organization. In the ensuing decades, the building was used by a variety of progressive social clubs, including the Philadelphia Section of the National Council of Jewish Women. Many of the clubs were organized by ethnic and racial groups; and
WHEREAS, Before Adams purchased the site with his older brother, it was owned by the National Barber's Sunshine Club, a social organization for Black barbers at which jazz musicians staying in the nearby integrated Chesterfield Hotel would perform. The National Barber's Sunshine Club emerged as North Philadelphia was becoming a center for the city's Black population. The group hosted professional development events, such as wig manufacturing courses; and
WHEREAS, As members of the National Barber's Sunshine Club aged and pass owned, the members wanted to sell the building. As the story goes, they had two stipulations in their decision as to whom they would sell the building to; 1) They wanted the new owner to be a Black business owner, and 2) they wanted the new owner to agree to keep the name of the building Barber's Hall; and
WHEREAS, Mr. Jake and his brother sought to purchase the club in 1978. After being denied financing from traditional sources, the National Barber's Sunshine Club agreed to hold the mortgage for the pr...
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