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

Chock Full O'Nuts restaurant windows broken

A branch of the Chock Full O'Nuts restaurant chain at 200 West 125th Street 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 Kress' store where the disorder originated. They did not name this business, including it as a restaurant on the west corner of 125th Street and Seventh Avenue ("Restaurant, esquina oeste de la calle 125 y Séptima Ave."). The MCCH business survey taken between June and December 1935 identified a white-owned restaurant at 200 West 125th Street that was a branch of Chock Full O'Nuts. The reporter would not have been referring to the other corner west of 7th Avenue; a branch of the United Cigar chain was on that corner.

The Businesses on the other three corners of the intersection also had windows broken during the disorder. The United Cigar store and Herbert's Blue Diamond Jewelry store on the northeast corner were guarded by police and protected from looting, while Regal Shoes on the southeast corner was reported looted. Police trying to clear people from West 125th Street around Kress' store to the west had pushed the crowd toward this intersection, creating large crowds, some of who broke away and threw objects at the windows of stores on 7th Avenue. After 9.00 PM, emergency trucks were stationed at the intersection, as part of the perimeter Inspector McAuliffe ordered police to establish around the main business blocks of the street, from 8th to Lenox Avenues, 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 on the corners and the two surrounding blocks of West 125th Street even if it came too late to protect store windows.

No one arrested during the disorder is identified as breaking the business' windows. There is no Tax Department photograph of the southwest corner of West 125th Street and 7th Avenue taken between 1939 and 1941. A store entrance with a triangular pediment (which may have been a feature of Chock Full O'Nuts luncheonettes, is visible in the photograph of 202 West 125th Street, but no details of the store can be made out.

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