The Hotel Theresa is located at 2082–96 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard between West 124th and 125th Streets in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City.

The hotel, which was known in its heyday as "the Waldorf of Harlem", exemplifies the Blums' inventive use of terracotta for ornamentation, and has been called "one of the most visually striking structures in northern Manhattan".

[3][4] The hotel had a two-story penthouse dining room which featured views of Long Island Sound to the east and the Palisades to the west,[4] as well as a bar and grill.

In 1960, Fidel Castro came to New York for the opening session of the United Nations, and, after storming out of the Hotel Shelburne on Lexington Avenue in Midtown Manhattan because of the management's demand for a $20,000 deposit, he and his entourage stayed at the Theresa,[5] where they rented 80 rooms for $800 per day.

[2] While Castro was there, he was visited by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, activist Malcolm X, poets Langston Hughes and Allen Ginsberg, President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru of India, and radical sociologist C. Wright Mills.

Ron Brown, who was the United States Secretary of Commerce in the Clinton administration, grew up in the hotel, where his father worked as manager, and U.S.