3. Mount Olivet Baptist Church

Photo: Myles Aronowitz/Netflix

A couple of the kids that frequent Pop’s Barbershop (and one who also works at the Paradise Nightclub) agree to do a job to take money meant from a weapons deal. It’s an inside job planned by Cottonmouth, but it goes wrong when Shameek Smith decides to kill one of the kids because he starts to freak out after Smith shoots someone during the hit. Shameek goes to meet Cottonmouth, who beats him to a pulp, kills him, and dumps him in front of Mount Olivet Baptist Church, on Malcolm X Avenue and 120th Street. The neoclassical church, with its Corinthian columns and stained glass, is just a block from Pop’s Barbershop, and was originally a Jewish temple, the Temple Israel. It’s one of the many buildings in Harlem that used to be synagogues, when Harlem was the second largest Jewish community in the United States.

An important later scene takes place in the interior sanctuary of the church.