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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 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 Department 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. Two vacant stores in the same building as the florist on the southeast corner of 8th Avenue are also listed by the reporter as having broken windows, 2324 8th Avenue and 2320 8th Avenue. It is possible that other stores around this corner 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").



In the first hours of the disorder, crowds around Kress' store on West 125th Street moved down 8th Avenue to 124th Street, to the rear of the store. Later, after 9:00 PM, Inspector McAuliffe ordered police to establish a perimeter around the main business blocks of the street, from 8th to Lenox Avenues, and from 124th to 126th Streets, according to stories in the New York Times, Daily Mirror, New York Herald Tribune, and Pittsburgh Courier. The presence of such large numbers of police does appear to have resulted in only isolated looting of stores around the corners of 8th Avenue and West 125th Street, even if it came too late to protect store windows. Only the Danbury Hat store north of 125th Street, next to the Liggett's drug store, was reported as being looted.

No other newspapers mention the florist or identify stores with broken windows at this intersection. 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. No one arrested during the disorder is identified as breaking the business' windows.

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