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

Andy Florist store window broken

The Andy Florist store on the "corner of Eighth Ave" is one of the businesses in a list of those with broken windows made by a reporter for La Prensa who walked along West 116th Street, Lenox Avenue and West 125th Street 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 8th Avenue. Based on the route the reporter took and the addresses of the other businesses in the list around the florist, the corner referred to is 8th Avenue and West 125th Street, and likely the southeast corner as there is evidence for businesses on the other corners and all the damaged stores mentioned in La Prensa are on the eastern side of 8th Avenue. The Liggett drug store drug store on the northeast corner of 8th Avenue and West 125th is also in the reporter's list. The Lazar department store is on the southwest corner, at 300 West 125th Street. The other corners are neither mentioned in reporting on the disorder nor appear in the MCCH business survey. There is a Tax photograph of the northwest corner, 2329 8th Avenue, taken between 1939 and 1941 that shows a cigar store, a business likely to have been present in 1935. Three other stores in the building on the southeast corner, at 2320 and 2318 8th Avenue, are also identified as having broken windows in La Prensa; a store listed as a "vacant establishment on 125th Street and Eighth Avenue" is likely also in that building.

Windows were broken in large numbers of businesses on the block of West 125th Street between 8th and 7th Avenue, the block of West 125th Street where police clashed with crowds gathered in front of Kress' store. Two newspapers reported very extensive damage. "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). However, the businesses identified in the New York Herald Tribune, New York American, and Daily Mirror as having windows broken were east of Kress' store, near the intersection with 7th Avenue rather than 8th Avenue. No reason is given in those stories for why that mix of businesses were singled out. The only mention of broken windows west of Kress' store came from the reporter for La Prensa, who walked West 125th Street all the way to 8th Avenue, and an anecdote regarding the Child's restaurant at 272 West 125th Street in the Afro-American. The stores that the reporter identified were around the eastern corners of 8th Avenue, with only London Shoes on West 125th Street west of Kress' store. It is possible that other stores in this area of the 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 the florist, and no one arrested during the disorder is identified as breaking the business' windows.

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