This page was created by Anonymous. The last update was by Stephen Robertson.
Anthony Avitable's grocery store looted
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An unpublished image taken by a photographer for the Hearst newspapers, and a similar image published in the Daily News, captured the clean-up on the section of Lenox Avenue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.
This page has tags:
This page references:
- [Photograph] "Ash can lies inside window of store...," Daily News, March 21, 1935, 30.
- [Newsreel] Savoy Food Market with crowds on the street, Excerpt from unidentified newsreel, in New York: A Documentary Film, episode 6, "City of Tomorrow," directed by Ric Burns, 2001, PBS, 1:32:21-1:32:25. (Amazon).
- "106 Suits Filed Under Mob Law in Harlem Riot," New York World-Telegram, July 23, 1935 [clipping].
- C. C. Nicolet, "Deputies Smash Harlem Riot Club," New York Post, March 22, 1935, 1.
- "Claim $38,000 Riot Damages," New York Sun, April 23, 1935 [clipping].
- "Cops Not on Job, Say Harlem Suits," New York Post, July 23, 1935 [clipping].
- "Harlem Riots to Cost Dearly," New York Sun, July 23, 1935 [clipping].
- "7 Harlem Store Owners Win Riot Damage Suits," New York Herald Tribune, March 5, 1936, 9.
- [Photograph] "Row of stores windows demolished between 129th & 130th St. on Lenox Ave," New York American/New York Evening Journal, March 20, 1935.
- "Owners Want Riot Damages," New York Amsterdam News, June 1, 1935, 18.
- 383 Lenox Avenue, c. 1939-1941.