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

Alfonso Principe's saloon looted

Around 9:00 PM, an object thrown from the street broke the first window in the Harlem Grill, a saloon at 2140 7th Avenue, the manager, Louis Fata, told James Tartar, an investigator for the MCCH. Over an hour later, between 10 and 11:00 PM, more objects thrown at the saloon broke two more windows. At some point in the evening, individuals went further into the business, stealing "about $700" of stock, Fata estimated. Further examination clearly revealed fewer losses, as when the owner Alfonso Principe filed a claim for damages, he asked for only $453.90, according to the New York Sun and New York Amsterdam News. Tartar also recorded information from the white owners of four of the other six occupied stores on this block of 7th Avenue, between West 127th Street and West 128th Street. They reported windows broken sometime between 8:45 PM and 11:00 PM, and stock losses ranging from $33 at the cigar store at 2154 7th Avenue, $200 at the grocery store next to the saloon at 2140 7th Avenue, and $150 at the cleaning company at 2152 7th Avenue, to $850 at the auto equipment store at 2152 7th Avenue. None of those neighboring storeowners were among the twenty-seven identified as suing the city for failing to protect their businesses, but an additional eighty-five who brought suits were not identified. The Black-owned Cozy Shoppe at 2154 7th Avenue, on the corner of 128th Street, was undamaged; someone from that store had written "Colored Shoppe" on the store window. Tartar included the "Cozy Shop" on his drawing of the block, together with a Black-owned beauty parlor to the left of the auto equipment store, but neither appear in his list of looted businesses, suggesting the beauty parlor may also have been undamaged.



When crowds that had been focused on the block of West 125th Street housing Kress' store began moving to other parts of Harlem, the blocks immediately north on 7th Avenue were among their first targets. The saloon sat on the corner of 7th Avenue and West 127th Street, so only two blocks from where the disorder began. As they had on West 125th Street, people threw objects at the windows of white stores, at whites on the streets, and around 11:00 PM, at a passing Fifth Avenue Company bus, and later looted stores. The time the crowds appeared was early enough in the evening that most of the stores would still have been open for business, or at least still staffed, as the saloon apparently was. That all those interviewed by Tartar could give a time when people threw objects that broke their store windows indicates they were present. Someone was also present in the Cozy Shoppe to write on its window that it was a "Colored Shoppe." It is not clear if the white business were occupied when they were looted. Tartar recorded the value of the stock stolen from their stores, suggesting that looting may have happened some time after windows were broken, as more general narratives in the press relate. Crowds smashed windows in stores on the opposite side of the street apparently without looting them around 9:45 PM, when a police officer arrested Leroy Brown for urging a group of people to follow his lead after he threw a tailor's dummy through a window. No one arrested for looting is identified as having stolen goods from the saloon.

James Tartar investigated the Harlem Grill, and those businesses neighboring it, because of what happened after the looting, or at least after the looting had started. Around 12:55 AM, two police officers in a squad car traveling south on 7th Avenue reported hearing smashing glass, and seeing Lloyd Hobbs, a sixteen-year-old Black student standing in the store window passing merchandise to a crowd of people on the street. After they stopped their car and chased after the crowd, one, Patrolman McInerney, fatally shot Hobbs. Hobbs and witnesses at the scene said he had been passing by, not taking goods from the store. The only other sources that mentioned the Harlem Grill are the New York Sun and New York Amsterdam News stories about the first group of business owners to sue the city (which gave the address of the business not its name). By the time the city comptroller heard testimony from those who had filed claims, 106 owners had sought damages. Principe was not among those whose testimony appeared in newspaper stories about that proceeding, nor did he appear in any of the reported court cases to resolve those claims.

The claim for $453.90 in losses was less than the median reported claim of $733. The city lost the court cases, so Principe likely was awarded some amount of damages, but based on those cases it was only a small proportion. However, it appears he was able to remain in business. The Harlem Grill appeared in both the MCCH business survey conducted in the second half of 1935, and in the Tax Department photograph of 2140 7th Avenue taken in 1939-1941.

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