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

Adler's shoe store windows broken

Adler's shoe store at 215 West 125th Street is one of the businesses in a list of those with broken windows made by a reporter for La Prensa on the day after the disorder. After walking north on Lenox Avenue from West 116th Street, the reporter turned left on West 125th Street, walking west toward Kress' store where the disorder originated. Opposite the W. T. Grant and Blumstein department stores, the shoe store was four buildings from the intersection of West 125th Street and 7th Avenue, on the block of West 125th Street where police clashed with crowds gathered in front of Kress' store.

Windows were broken in large numbers of businesses on this block of West 125th Street. Two newspapers reported very extensive damage. Attacks on this store likely began around 7:30 PM or 8:00 PM, with more windows likely broken around 9:00 PM and further damage possibly done around 10:30 PM. "Practically every store window on the block had been shattered by 10 PM," according to the Home News; that damage was both less extensive and took longer in the New York Herald Tribune story: "By midnight one or more windows had been smashed in almost every storefront" on that block between 7th and 8th Avenues (although in another mention of that damage in the story it had been done by 8 PM). Two other stores in the building housing Adler's shoe store, Scheer's Capitol clothing store and the Conrad Schmidt music store, are among the seven mentioned as having broken windows by the New York Herald Tribune, New York American, and Daily Mirror. No reason is given in those stories for why that mix of businesses was singled out; Adler's may have been damaged less or later than those stores. The reporter for La Prensa identified a total of nineteen businesses with broken windows between 7th and 8th Avenues, not including four identified by the other newspapers. Where the other newspapers mentioned only stores between 7th Avenue and Kress' store at 256 West 125th Street, the La Prensa reporter walked all the way to 8th Avenue. It is possible that other stores in this block suffered only minor damage; the La Prensa reporter concluded his list by noting he had not included others as they had only suffered minor damage ("y otras mas que por ser los danos ocasionados relativamente pequeños no creimus de interes catalogar entre los establecimientos ya mencionados").



No other sources mention Adler's shoe store, and no one arrested during the disorder is identified as breaking the business' windows. The MCCH business survey taken between June and December 1935 does record the white-owned business. The shoe store is also visible in the Tax Department photograph of 213-217 125th Street taken between 1939 and 1941.

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