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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 125th Street, as well as along West 116th Street and the adjacent blocks of Lenox Avenue, the day after the disorder. The MCCH business survey gave the address of the white-owned store as 2336 8th Avenue (a report of a looting at 2334 8th Avenue appears to refer to the Liggett's Drug Store on the corner of 8th Avenue and West 125th Street, as the item allegedly taken was a baseball bat). Both addresses for the Danbury Hat store place it north of the drug store, in one of the two store fronts visible in the same building, under the elevated railroad tracks, on the left of the Tax Department photograph. 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.

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