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

Danbury Hat store windows broken

The Danbury Hat store at 2334 8th Avenue is one of the businesses with broken windows identified by the reporter for La Prensa who walked along West 116th Street, up Lenox Avenue and across West 125th Street to 8th Avenue on the day after the disorder. As well as businesses on the block immediately south of 125th Street, their list included two other businesses on the block to the north with broken windows: the branch of the Liggett's drug store chain on the corner; and a seafood restaurant on the other side of the hat store at 2338 8th Avenue. The MCCH business survey gave the address of the white-owned store Danbury Hats as 2336 8th Avenue (a report of a looting at 2334 8th Avenue appears to refer to the Liggett's Drug Store as the item allegedly taken was a baseball bat). Both addresses for the Danbury Hat store place it in one of the two store fronts visible in the Tax Department photograph to the left of the drug store, under the elevated railroad tracks. The MCCH business survey listed a barber as the other business at 2336 8th Avenue in the second half of 1935.

The business is also likely the storefront that appears in a photograph published in the Decatur Review. Although the caption does not identify the business, hats are visible in the display window, together with the last few letters of the store name on an unbroken section of glass at the bottom of the window: "RY HAT CO.." (The only other hat store recorded as having been damaged or looted is Young's Hat store). Two white men pose in front of the damaged store; white bystanders are most likely to be found near West 125th Street, where the Danbury Hat store was located. A large basket sits inside the display window, perhaps a trash bin taken from the sidewalk. The stock just visible behind the basket suggest that the store was not looted.

Police pushed the crowds that gathered in front of Kress' store to the intersection of 125th Street and 8th Avenue early in the disorder. 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, 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 Liggett drug store on the northeast corner was reported as being looted. Other isolated reports of looting and arrests on 8th Avenue occurred further north, around 127th and 128th Streets.

No other sources mention the Danbury Hat store, and no one arrested during the disorder was identified as having broken the store window.

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