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Anthony Avitable's grocery store looted
Avitable joined one hundred and five other white businessowners 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. 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, a branch of the Krasdale chain, at 381 Lenox Avenue, that appears to be the store that Avitable owned. 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 grocery store at 383 Lenox Avenue. He appeared separately from the Savoy Food Market in the New York Sun list of 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 New York 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 Krasdale grocery store, Avitable's business, does appear in both the MCCH business survey and the Tax Department photograph.
The Daily News published a photograph of 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.
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This page references:
- [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).
- [Photograph] "Ash can lies inside window of store...," Daily News, March 21, 1935, 30.
- "106 Suits Filed Under Mob Law in Harlem Riot," New York World-Telegram, July 23, 1935 [clipping]
- "Claim $38,000 Riot Damages," New York Sun, April 23, 1935 [clipping]
- "Harlem Riots to Cost Dearly," New York Sun, July 23, 1935 [clipping]
- "Cops not on Job, Say Harlem Suits," New York Post, July 23, 1935 [clipping]