Sylvia Pressley Net Worth, Income, Salary, Earnings, Biography

Sylvia Woods (February 2, 1926 – July 19, 2012) was an American restaurateur who, with her husband Herbert Woods, co-founded the iconic restaurant Sylvia’s in Harlem on Lenox Avenue in New York City in 1962. Not far from the Apollo Theater, the soul food restaurant is a favourite meeting spot for Harlem locals and visitors. Sylvia Pressley was born in Hemingway, South Carolina, to Julia and Van Pressley. Van Pressley, her father, died when she was three days old as a result of complications from injuries he had while fighting in World War I.

 She had resided in Williamsburg County, South Carolina, with her grandmother Sylvia Johnson, after whom she was named, by April 10, 1930. Johnson had worked as a farmer, something Pressley planned to pursue when she was older. Dennis Richmond Jr., a Yonkers, New York native, is researching Sylvia’s ancestors. Sylvia’s mother moved the rest of her family to New York in 1930 in order to better care for her family, leaving Sylvia’s grandmother, Sylvia Johnson, to raise Sylvia, who was three years old at the time. When Woods was 11 years old and Herbert was 12, they met in a bean field and married. In 1944, they married when he accompanied her to New York. Van, Bedelia, Kenneth, and Crizette were their four children.

 Woods graduated from high school in Hemingway, South Carolina, where she grew up. She studied to be a beautician in New York and also owned and operated a beauty salon in South Carolina. From 1954 until 1962, Woods worked as a waitress at Johnson’s Luncheonette in Harlem, as well as at a hat factory. Woods spent approximately seven or eight years at Johnson’s. When the owner decided to sell, he offered Woods $20,000 for the property. The company grew in the early 1990s, and it currently seats up to 450 people. It also runs a catering service. Sylvia’s own line of soul food items, which are marketed nationwide, was organised and launched by her son Van in 1992. Many of Woods’ specialty sauces, veggies, spices, syrup, and cornbread and pancake mixes are available. Woods wrote two cookbooks for William Morrow and Company: Sylvia’s Soul Food Cookbook, published in 1992, and Sylvia’s Family Soul Food Cookbook, released in 1999.

 The Woods family still owns and operates the restaurant. They celebrated 50 years in Harlem in August 2011. Quincy Jones, Diana Ross, Muhammad Ali, Bill Clinton, Robert F. Kennedy, and President Barack Obama have all attended. When Sylvia Woods was 80 years old, she retired from the restaurant’s day-to-day operations. Sylvia’s is now owned and run by her grandkids and children. Herbert, her husband, passed her in 2001. Woods died on July 19, 2012, at the age of 86, at her home in Mount Vernon, New York. She had been suffering from Alzheimer’s illness for a long time.

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