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Harlem in Disorder: A Spatial History of How Racial Violence Changed in 1935

"7 Harlem Store Owners Win Riot Damage Suits," New York Herald Tribune, March 5, 1936, 9.

In the New York Herald Tribune

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In the Supreme court on March 4, 1936 (7) Four months elapsed after Judge Shalleck upheld the verdict awarding damages to William Feinstein before any further claims went to trial, on March 4, 1936, in the Supreme Court, not the Municipal Court. Seven cases were decided at the trial, with the jury awarding a total of $1,200 in damages. The Supreme Court heard larger claims, but as only two of the seven business owners filed claims larger than those of Feinstein and Rosenberg tried in the Municipal Court, it appears these cases were tried in that court because they were grouped together. What the seven plaintiffs had in common was their attorney: Barney Rosenstein, the lawyer at the center of newspaper stories about filing claims in April and July 1935. He was mentioned in stories in the New York Post, New York Amsterdam News, and California Eagle (the last a Black newspaper). The number of cases and total awards were reported in stories in New York Times, New York Post, New York Herald Tribune, Daily News, and New York Amsterdam News, and beyond the city, in the Chicago Tribune and California Eagle. The total was mistakenly reported as $2,000 in a brief story in the Pittsburgh Courier, while a similarly brief Afro-American story did not mention a total.

The largest award, to Irving Stekin, did feature in the stories in the Pittsburgh Courier and Afro-American, and in the New York Times, New York Post, New York Herald Tribune, and New York Amsterdam News. That Stekin's claim involved damage to two stores was mentioned in all those stories other than the Pittsburgh Courier. The jury awarded him $550 according to the New York Times and New York Herald Tribune, $700 according to the New York Post and New York Amsterdam News, and $500 according to the Pittsburgh Courier. Stekin's award was contrasted with the smallest award in some of those stories, which was to Michael D'Agostino, of $70 for two stores according to the New York Times and New York Herald Tribune, and of $25 for one store according to the New York Post and New York Amsterdam News.

What the store owners had claimed was mentioned only in the New York Times and New York Herald Tribune, as $20,000 in total, with the Afro-American saying Stekin has claimed a total of $3,000 for his two stores and the New York Times and New York Herald Tribune a total of $2,000. If the total was accurate, the awards were for a significantly lower proportion of the claims than in the verdicts against Feinstein and Rosenberg: only 6% in total and 27.5% for Stekin if the award was $550 of $2,000 or 23% if it was $700 of $3,000, rather than 70% for Feinstein and 82% for Rosenberg. Newspaper stories in July 1935 had reported Stekin claimed $2,068 for a single store, so the larger sum may be the most accurate. Newspaper stories in April 1935 had reported D'Agostino claimed damages of $146.75 for one store and $196.25 for another, a total of $343. An award of $70 for the two stores amounted to 20% of those claims. All seven storeowners were identified in the New York Herald Tribune, but the story gave no information on either the claims or awards of the other five plaintiffs. Three are among those identified in stories in April 1935. Saloway's claim was $676 and the claim for George's Lunch, owned by George Chronis, was $14,000. While Berenson was not mentioned in those stories, the business at that address was, with Anthony Avitable as the owner. If that was the business referred to in the story, the damages claimed were $537. All the claims mentioned in the press total $18,566, leaving $1,444 for the claims by Schwartz and Romanoff. Given the sums claimed by D'Agostino, Saloway, and Avitable, the reported claims fit with the total claimed in the cases at trial being $20,000. It is striking that none of the stories mentioned the $14,000 claim for damages to George's Lunch resulting in an award of less than the $700–$550 that Stekin received. If the dramatically reduced proportion of the claims the jury awarded is taken into account, then the trial does not seem to be the straightforward loss for the city that the press reported it to be. Certainly, further awards at those levels would not impose the burden on the city predicted after the earlier trials.

A different corporation counsel lawyer defended the city in this trial, Matthew Troy rather than Aaron Arnold. Troy also appears to have made a different argument than Arnold, which he supported with testimony from police witnesses who had not been called in the previous trials. That his approach was new would fit with the description of the trial as a "test case" in the Daily News, Chicago Tribune, and Afro-American notwithstanding the fact that two other trials had occurred. In continuing to assert the city's position that a riot had not taken place, Troy argued “a riot is a concerted uprising and the disorders in Harlem did not answer that description,” according to the New York Post. The New York Amsterdam News and California Eagle also reported similar phrases were part of the city's defense, "no concerted movement of the mob" in the latter story and "no concentrated uprising" in the former story. The city's assertion that there had not been a riot appeared without any details of the basis of the claim in the New York Times, and Chicago Tribune. No mention was made of the arguments in the New York Herald Tribune, Daily News, Afro-American, and Pittsburgh Courier. Nor did any story refer to Judge Shalleck's arguments for dismissing the city's claim in his decision in the Feinstein case.

Troy had First Deputy Police Commissioner Harold Fowler, Inspector John Seery, and Deputy Inspector John Di Martini testify in support of the city's defense, according to the New York Post, New York Amsterdam News, and California Eagle. Their evidence did not persuade the jury, who likely held to their own understanding of a riot. Efforts to convince them that riot had a different meaning in civil court than criminal court would have run up against the use of the label riot to describe events in Harlem in the press.

As in the previous trials, the corporation counsel said that the city would appeal, according to the New York Times and Afro-American, and "probably appeal" according to the New York Herald Tribune. Most of the damage claims still had to be resolved at this time. While the New York Post and New York Amsterdam News referred to pending suits totaling $1 million, as had stories about Feinstein's earlier trial, the New York Times, New York Herald Tribune and Chicago Tribune mentioned fifteen "similar" cases awaiting trial in the Supreme Court. The later story attributed that information to Rosenstein, which suggests it referred to plaintiffs that he represented. Twenty store owners had appeared on the list he circulated to the press in April 1935.

There is no evidence, however, that any further claims went to trial or that the city appealed the verdicts in this trial. Given that this was the city's third loss at trial, which both New York Post and New York Herald Tribune noted, and that the jury awarded relatively small sums, city officials may have decided to settle the other claims.

Nor is there any evidence that efforts were made to amend the General Municipal Law to reduce or remove the city's liability for riot damage. However, in 1942, that section of the statute was suspended as part of the War Emergency Act. As a result, the law was not in effect when racial disorder broke out in Harlem in 1943. Notwithstanding the suspension, the New York Times reported 800 claims were filed against the city for $4 million of damages, evidence that the litigation in 1935 had increased awareness of the statute and likely had resulted in additional awards of damages beyond those in the three trials. Barney Rosenstein was again among the attorneys involved in those actions, and in trying to find a way around the suspension. He took a claim to the Appeals court to test the city's liability; the judges ruled in 1945 that the Act prevented the award of damages, as the New York Supreme Court had a year earlier. City officials had been confident of that outcome, historian Dominic Capeci has shown. The suspension was not lifted at the end of the war, but instead incorporated into the New York State Defense Emergency Act of 1951 that provided for civil defense administration, and renewed into the 1970s. Consequently, the city was also protected from liability for damage from the racial disorder in Harlem in 1964. Nonetheless, at least thirty-eight claims were again filed, the New York Amsterdam News reported, despite recognition that the statute was suspended. The city's press did not report the fate of those claims, nor did the one historical study of the 1964 racial disorder that mentioned them, Christoper Hayes' The Harlem Uprising.
In civil court on March 4, 1936 Four months elapsed after Judge Shalleck upheld a jury's decision to award damages of $450 to William Feinstein before any further claims resulting from the disorder went to trial. Those legal proceedings differed significantly from the two previous trials. The venue was the Supreme Court, not the Municipal Court, a change that resulted from the larger sum of damages claimed, a total of $20,000. Rather than a single plaintiff, the trial had seven: Anthony Avitable, George Chronis, Michael D'Agostino, Jacob Saloway, Harry Schwartz, Irving Stekin, and the unnamed owner of the Romanoff Drug Store. The damages were not distributed evenly among those seven plaintiffs; Chronis' claim was for $14,000 after crowds "completely demolished" his restaurant. All those business owners had been identified in the press in April and July as filing claims, and all were represented by attorney Barney Rosenstein. A different attorney opposed Rosenstein, with Assistant Corporation Counsel Matthew Troy taking the place of Aaron Arnold.

The differences between this trial and the earlier proceedings extended to how the corporation counsel approached defending the city. His argument still centered on the question of whether a riot had taken place, but now advanced a definition of a riot as involving concerted action that was not present in the disorder in Harlem. The exact terms Troy employed are uncertain in the absence of a legal record of the trial, as the three newspaper stories that mentioned the city's argument each reported different language: a "concerted uprising” according to the New York Post; "concentrated uprising" in the New York Amsterdam News; and "concerted movement of the mob" in the California Eagle. That was all the details that the stories gave of the definition, so the authorities on which it relied are unknown.

On what basis Troy argued that concerted action was not present in the Harlem disorder is also unknown. However, in another apparent departure from the earlier trials, he called witnesses in support of the city's defense. Three senior police officers testified: First Deputy Police Commissioner Harold Fowler, and two officers who had been present in Harlem during the disorder, Chief Inspector John Seery and Inspector John Di Martini. They could have described the disorder as involving a variety of individuals and groups behaving in different ways at different times in different places rather than a single group acting together. Drawing on that testimony, Troy might have argued that the crowd Anthony Avitable saw breaking into his store, those who attacked George Chronis' restaurant, and those who threw stones through the windows of Irving Stekin's grocery store were unrelated, each acting independently rather than in concert, pursuing their own goals, not participating in a riot.

Whatever the substance and logic of Troy's defense of the city, it proved no more persuasive than that offered by Arnold. The jury awarded the business owners damages totaling $1,200. On first glance, that was a larger sum than the verdicts in the previous trials, and most newspapers simply reported the number. But seen in relation to claims that had totaled $20,000, the damages were on a significantly smaller scale. Feinstein and Rosenberg had received 70% and 82% of the sums they had claimed. Irving Stekin's award, the largest made by this jury, by contrast, amounted to only around 27% of his claims, while Michael D'Agostino's award, the smallest made by the jury, amounted to only 20% of his claims. (The individual awards to the other plaintiffs were not reported.) In those terms, the verdicts cost the city far less than those in the previous trials.

In the immediate aftermath of the trial, the corporation counsel responded, as he had after the previous two trials, with a plan to appeal the verdict to a higher court. However, no appeal was filed. Nor were any further trials of claims for damages from the disorder reported in the press, notwithstanding that Barney Rosenstein had told reporters that fifteen similar cases were awaiting trial in the Supreme Court. If those cases, and the one hundred and sixty cases reported pending in the Municipal Court after Rosenberg's lawsuit, did not come to trial, the likeliest explanation is that the city reached settlements with the business owners. The relatively low awards in the Supreme Court verdict could have established a precedent for damages more manageable and acceptable for the city than the awards in the earlier trials. What a journalist from the Chicago Defender found when they "probe[d] into the city files" at the end of October, 1937 appeared to confirm that was what was happening. The story reported that fifty claims for $102,448 had been settled for $25,000 by that date. Twenty-four additional suits in which damages were awarded were still being paid. At that time, the cost of settling all the claims filed was estimated at $100,000.

Further evidence that the city had paid damages came after racial disorder broke out again in Harlem in 1943. Eight hundred claims were filed against the city for $4 million of damages, the New York Times reported, with Barney Rosenstein again among the attorneys representing the neighborhood's business owners. That scale of action would have been unlikely had the claims filed only eight years earlier not produced payments from the city. However, the law had changed since 1935. The War Emergency Act of 1942 had suspended section 70 of the General Municipal Law. While some uncertainty existed about whether the suspension applied to events not directly related to the war, the confidence of city officials that it did proved well placed. Barney Rosenstein was one of those who appealed a claim to test the city's liability; the Appeals Court ruled in 1945 that the Act prevented the award of damages, upholding the decision of the New York Supreme Court a year earlier. The suspension of section 70 was not lifted at the end of the war, but instead incorporated into the New York State Defense Emergency Act of 1951, which provided for civil defense administration, and renewed into the 1970s. Consequently, the city was also protected from liability for damage resulting from the racial disorder in Harlem in 1964 even as section 70 remained on the books. These continued efforts to protect the city from a repeat of the litigation in 1935 brought into focus how the disorder had challenged white economic and political power and the racial order that they imposed on Harlem. While civil litigation made evident the scale of the violence to an extent that the criminal prosecutions had not, the investigations and reports of the MCCH took only limited note of those accounts. Instead, they gave attention to another form of violence absent from the criminal prosecutions: police violence against Harlem residents.
Anthony Avitable's grocery store looted Anthony Avitable's grocery store at 381 Lenox Avenue was closed when crowds appeared on Lenox Avenue. That section of Lenox Avenue was one in which businesses suffered extensive damage with looting beginning around 11:30 PM. Around midnight, Avitable got news of the disorder in Harlem and drove back from the Bronx. He told the city comptroller that as he drove over the 138th Street bridge he saw crowds "just breaking into my store," the New York Sun reported. Seeing no police near the store, he drove on to the 28th Precinct Station on West 123rd Street and at 12:30 AM reported the looting, according to the New York Post. Officers there said they "couldn't do anything for me," and that he should contact police headquarters. When Avitable called, "a police officer at headquarters told him over the phone: 'I'll have men there in two minutes.'" They took forty-five minutes to arrive. Avitable's store likely suffered more damage in the violence around 1:00 AM, when Alice Mitchell and Hugh Young were injured by flying glass. No one arrested during the disorder was charged with looting this store.

Avitable joined one hundred and five other white business owners in suing the city for damages suffered by their stores during the disorder. The only mentions of his business are in newspaper stories about those suits. Those stories located his store at 383 Lenox Avenue. A second storeowner who sued the city, Manny Zipp, was also reported as having a grocery store at 383 Lenox Avenue by the New York Sun, New York Post, and New York World-Telegram. Photographs of 383 Lenox Avenue show only one business at that address, the Savoy Food Market, but there was a grocery store next door, with a Krasdale sign, at 381 Lenox Avenue, that appears to be the store that Avitable owned (the Krasdale company were wholesalers in 1935, not store operators). While the New York Sun identified Anthony Avitable as the owner of the Savoy Food Market, the New York Post and New York World-Telegram identified him only as the owner of a separate grocery store. He appeared separately from the Savoy Food Market in the New York Sun and New York Amsterdam News stories about those who brought the first twenty suits.

Zipp had only been in business for three days. Newsreel footage from the day after the disorder shows a banner reading "Grand Opening" hanging over the entrance to the Savoy Food Market (in the Daily News photograph discussed below that a piece of dark fabric has been hung to obscure that banner, or perhaps the banner has simply been reversed). Zipp also reported that his losses, $721 compared to the $537 claimed by Avitable, forced him out of business. It was the Savoy Food Market that went out of business; there was a different store at 383 Lenox Avenue in both the MCCH business survey taken between June and December 1935, and the Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941. The grocery store with the Krasdale sign, Avitable's business, did appear in both the MCCH business survey and the Tax Department photograph. He may have been helped by damages paid by the city. One of the claimants awarded damages in the March 4, 1936, trial in the New York Supreme Court listed in the New York Herald Tribune was a grocer at 381 Lenox Avenue. However, the story identified the owner as Louis Berenson. That could be an error as no one of that name appears in any other source related to the disorder.

An unpublished image taken by a photographer for the Hearst newspapers, and a similar image published in the Daily News, captured the clean-up on the section of Lenox Avenue containing Avitable's store the morning after the disorder. The windows are missing, and both the display and the shelves within the store are empty. Some goods appear to have been thrown on to the street; a man is clearing debris with a shovel. Zipp's Savoy Food Market, and Jacob Saloway's cigar store on the corner, also have no windows and empty displays and shelves. Saloway joined Avitable and Zipp in suing the city.
Romanoff Drug store looted Sometime during the disorder, the Romanoff Drug Store at 375 Lenox Avenue, on the southwest corner of West 129th Street, was looted. J. Romanoff of 375 Lenox Avenue was recorded as the complainant when Oscar Austin, a twenty-nine-year-old Black man, Jacob Bonaparte, a twenty-four-year-old Black man, and Sam Nicholas, a twenty-four-year-old Black man, were arraigned in the Harlem Magistrates Court. The docket book entry was the only source that mentioned the drug store. The business was located on a block that saw multiple stores attacked. Irving Stekin's grocery store at 371 Lenox Avenue, another business he owned at 363 Lenox Avenue, and Michael D'Agostino's business at 361 Lenox Avenue were all looted, as were stores at 372 and 374 Lenox Avenue across the street. The South Harlem Rotisserie at 365 Lenox Avenue and the laundry at 367 Lenox Avenue only had windows broken. Attacks on those stores likely began around 11:30 PM, with the three men arrested some time later.

The same officer from the 28th Precinct arrested all three men, according to the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book; the clerk's handwriting is too messy to decipher his name. After being arrested for burglary, all three men were charged with disorderly conduct, an offense not used in cases of alleged looting or breaking windows. The changed charge suggested that they had been in crowds the vicinity of the store but police had no evidence that they participated in looting or attacking the store. The three men lived close enough to the store to have been among the groups of spectators watching events. Jacob Bonaparte lived in the block of West 128th Street between Lenox and 7th Avenues. Oscar Austin lived on the same street, just west of 7th Avenue, and Sam Nicholas lived four blocks south, on West 124th Street, also west of 7th Avenue. When the men appeared in the Harlem Magistrate's Court on March 20, Magistrate Renaud acquitted them. While the acquittals indicated that there was no evidence linking the men to any disorder, the initial charges do suggest that the store was looted.

The damage the drug store suffered was apparently enough for the owner to join other Harlem business owners who sued the city seeking damages. While not identified in reporting of the progress of those actions, "Herbert M. Romanoff, pharmacist" was named as one of the seven claimants awarded damages in the New York Supreme Court on March 4, 1936, in a story published in the New York Herald Tribune. Whatever damage the Romanoff Drug Store suffered did not prevent it continuing to operate. It appeared in the MCCH business survey in the second half of 1935, and was visible in the Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941.
Jacob Saloway's stationery store looted Jacob Saloway's stationery store at 381 Lenox Avenue was looted during the disorder. There are no details of those events. That section of Lenox Avenue was one in which businesses suffered extensive damage and looting beginning around 11:30 PM; the intersection likely saw particularly extensive violence around 1:00 AM when Alice Mitchell and Hugh Young were injured by flying glass. Saloway appeared among the white business owners who filed the first twenty claims for damages against the city identified in stories in the New York Sun and New York Amsterdam News. The stories included only a name, business address, and the amount of damages sought, $676 in Saloway's case. By the time the city comptroller heard testimony from those bringing suit, 106 owners had sought damages. While Saloway was not among those whose testimony appears in newspaper stories about that proceeding, he was one of seven whose cases went to trial in the New York Supreme Court to test the claims in March 1936. The jury awarded damages in all those cases, but none of the newspaper reports of the proceeding mentioned the amount awarded to Saloway. Only the New York Herald Tribune identified him as one of the claimants, noting only that he was a stationer. No one among those arrested for looting was identified as taking goods from this store.

An unpublished image taken by a photographer for the Hearst newspapers, and a similar image published in the Daily News, captured the clean-up on the section of Lenox Avenue containing Saloway's store the morning after the disorder. Saloway's store can be glimpsed on the far left of the image, with signs visible indicating it sold cigars. The windows appear to be missing and the displays emptied of stock. The angle does not show the interior of the store. The two businesses to the right of the store, in the foreground of the picture, also have no windows and empty displays and shelves. Both Anthony Avitable, who owned the grocery store, and Manny Zipp, who owned the Savoy Food Market, also sued the city for damages.

Whatever the damages awarded him, it is possible Saloway was able to remain in business. The MCCH business survey included a white-owned stationery store (a type of store that sold cigars) at 381 Lenox Avenue in the second half of 1935, but no details to confirm that it was the same store there on the night of the disorder. A business also appeared in the Tax Department photograph from 1939–1941, but the signage is not visible. In 1930, the federal census recorded that Saloway lived at 363 Lenox Avenue, a building anomalous in this area of Harlem as being home to only white residents. The six other households included three headed by men who owned stores in Harlem later looted during the disorder who joined Saloway in suing the city, William Gindin, Irving Stekin, and Michael D'Agostino. There was no evidence of whether Saloway still lived there in 1935; Gindin, at least, had relocated to another building on Lenox Avenue by the time of the disorder.
George Chronis' restaurant looted George's Lunch, the lunchroom at 319 Lenox Avenue, on the southwest corner of West 126th Street, owned by George Chronis, was open for business when crowds appeared on the street. The intersection of West 125th Street and Lenox Avenue, and the blocks of the avenue to the north were the site of multiple acts of violence and attacks on businesses during the disorder. Crowds likely first broke windows around 11:00 PM, after a group of men robbed Toby’s Men’s shop on the northwest corner of 125th Street and Lenox Avenue at 10:30 PM and before 11:20 PM, when a patrolman arrived at the shoe store a block to the north to find smashed windows and merchandise missing from the display. Chronis told the city comptroller that the lunchroom was staffed by one white and two Black workers that evening, according to a story in the New York Post. The Black men reacted to the disorder by leaving the restaurant, while the white man called the police station house and then locked himself in a washroom. No police responded to his call. Groups continued to sporadically break windows, take merchandise, and occasionally attack whites they encountered on the streets on the blocks of Lenox Avenue north of 125th Street for the next three hours.

Chronis heard about the disorder and tried to get to his business. However, police prevented him from doing so for several hours, the New York Post reported he told the comptroller. It was 1:00 AM by the time that Chronis got to the restaurant. He found his white staff member still locked in the washroom, and the lunchroom "completely demolished," according to the story in the New York World-Telegram. The business next door, Piskin's laundry, was also destroyed. The only mention of the damage to George's Lunch was in newspaper stories about the claims for damages from the city made by white merchants. Chronis was not part of the group of twenty who brought the first suits, but was mentioned in stories published in the New York Post, New York World-Telegram, and New York Amsterdam News at the end of July about hearings before the city comptroller, by which time 106 merchants had filed suits. He appeared as an example in those stories because of the large damages he sought, $14,000, since, as the New York Sun put it, his business was "completely wiped out by looters." Those damages were also likely why Chronis was one of seven claimants in the first trial in the New York Supreme Court in March 1936, identified in the New York Herald Tribune.

Police did make arrests in the vicinity of George's Lunch around the time that they allowed Chronis access, indicating the presence of officers, although not in sufficient numbers to prevent ongoing attacks on businesses. But by then the damage to the restaurant had been done, and no one was arrested for those attacks. The jury awarded damages to all the claimants in the March 1936 trial, but no newspaper stories mentioned the amount awarded to Chronis. It would have been a small fraction of his claim of $14,000, as the largest reported amount was $550 to Irving Stekin. Even if the award to Chronis was close to what Stekin received, it was a dramatically smaller proportion than awarded to any other plaintiff. Surprisingly, it went unmentioned in the newspaper stories about the trial. It was no surprise then that Chronis appeared not to have reopened his business. It was missing from the MCCH business survey in late 1935 and replaced by another store in the Tax Department photograph from 1939–1941.
Harry Schwartz's laundry looted A laundry at 87 West 128th Street, in the building on the northeast corner of Lenox Avenue and 128th Street, was looted sometime during the disorder. The only mention of the looting was in a New York Herald Tribune story about the successful suit for damages from the city brought by the storeowner Harry Schwartz. He was named as one of seven claimants in a proceeding in the New York Supreme Court in March 1936, with his business and its address reported. No one arrested for looting was identified as having taken merchandise from his laundry.

Schwartz was one of 106 white business owners who brought suit against the city, only a small number of who were named in newspaper stories. Several of those who were identified had businesses located in the blocks of Lenox Avenue immediately surrounding Schwartz's store. The New York Supreme Court heard claims for larger amounts of damages, over $1,000, so the looting of Schwartz's laundry must have involved the theft of significant amounts of clothing and damage to the store fixtures. The story did not mention the amount of damages the jury awarded him.

A white-owned laundry was still operating at this address in the second half of 1935, when the MCCH conducted its business survey. The Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941 showed a laundry still at this location in photograph, suggesting that Schwartz was able to remain in business