This page was created by Anonymous.
District Attorney's Closed Case Files, 203990 (1935) (New York City Municipal Archives).
1 2021-08-16T19:18:09+00:00 Anonymous 1 2 plain 2021-08-16T19:19:38+00:00 AnonymousThis page has tags:
- 1 2022-09-03T23:37:31+00:00 Anonymous District Attorney's Closed Case Files Anonymous 5 plain 2022-10-02T15:40:47+00:00 Anonymous
This page is referenced by:
-
1
2020-10-22T01:45:42+00:00
Regal Shoes looted
30
plain
2022-01-12T21:16:54+00:00
Edward Wittleder, the assistant manager, closed Regal Shoes, on the southeast corner of West 125th Street and 7th Avenue, at 10 PM, according to his Magistrate's Court affidavit. By that time store windows had been smashed the length of the block of 125th Street to the west, between 7th and 8th Avenues. Police trying to clear people from the street had pushed them toward the intersection on which Regal Shoes sat, creating large crowds, as well as concentrating the officers and riot control trucks there. After 10 PM, small groups had begun to attack businesses north and south of the intersection on 7th Avenue and further east on 125th Street. By 11 PM the store window had been smashed (a reporter from La Prensa included Regal Shoes among the businesses he saw with broken windows the next day). So too had the windows of the businesses on the other three corners of the intersection. Two of those stores, Herbert's Blue Diamond jewelry store and the United Cigar store had police guarding the storefronts that appear to have protected them from being looted. Police do not appear to have taken up positions in front of the shoe store, but were close enough to watch the store. Around 11 PM, Officer Peter Naton of the 28th Precinct claimed he saw John Vivien, a twenty-seven-year-old Black laborer, reach through the window and take a pair of shoes from the display. Naton then arrested Vivien, who he said still had the shoes in his possession. Wittleder identified them as coming from the store and being worth $5.50.
Vivien lived at 483 Manhattan Avenue, two blocks west of Regal Shoes, near the corner of West 120th Street. He appeared in the Harlem Magistrate's Court on March 20, where Magistrate Renaud held him for the grand jury on bail of $1000. The Home News reported those proceedings; the remainder of his prosecution is recorded only in legal records and police records. Vivien appeared before the grand jury on April 4, according to his District Attorney's case file; they sent him to the Court of Special Sessions rather than indicting him, indicating a lack of the evidence that he had broken into the store required for a charge of burglary. A charge of larceny was likely the alternative, with the items valued well below the $100 required for a felony charge. The judges in that court then convicted him and suspended his sentence, an outcome recorded in the 28th Precinct Police Blotter.
Regal Shoes continued in business after the disorder. The MCCH Business Survey from the second half of 1935 includes the store, whose address it gives as 2097 7th Avenue rather than 166 West 125th Street as in the reports of the looting. The store also appears in the Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941, of the building labeled 2901 7th Avenue. -
1
2020-10-22T01:47:08+00:00
John Vivien arrested
22
plain
2022-01-12T18:12:00+00:00
Around 11 PM, Officer Peter Naton of the 28th Precinct claimed he saw John Vivien, a twenty-seven-year-old Black laborer, reach through the smashed window of Regal Shoes and take a pair of shoes from the display. Edward Wittleder, the assistant manager, had closed the store, on the corner of West 125th Street and 7th Avenue, at 10 PM, before it was damaged, according to his Magistrate's Court affidavit. However, he would have known that it was likely to be attacked. By that time store windows had been smashed the length of the block of 125th Street to the west, between 7th and 8th Avenues. Police trying to clear people from the street had pushed them toward the intersection on which Regal Shoes sat, creating large crowds, as well as concentrating officers and riot control trucks there. After 10 PM, small groups had begun to attack businesses north and south of the intersection on 7th Avenue and further east on 125th Street. When Naton (and Officer Redmond, according to the Criminal Record) arrested Vivien, he claimed he found shoes which Wittleder identified as coming from the store in Vivien's possession. They had a value of $5.50, according to the affidavit. (Naton made two other arrests around this time, of John King, thirty minutes earlier, at the intersection of 7th Avenue and West 125th Street, and of James Pringle fifteen minutes later, two blocks south on 7th Avenue at West 123rd Street).
Vivien lived at 483 Manhattan Avenue, two blocks west of Regal Shoes, near the corner of West 120th Street, on margins of the Black neighborhood. He is listed among those arrested and charged with burglary in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and New York Evening Journal, his name, misspelled Vivian. He appeared in the Harlem Magistrate's Court on March 20, where Magistrate Renaud held him for the grand jury on bail of $1000. It was not Vivien's first time in court; he had been arrested for robbery in 1929, a charge dismissed by a Magistrate according to his Criminal Record. The Home News reported those proceedings, also misspelling his name Vivian; the remainder of his prosecution is recorded only in legal records and police records. Vivien appeared before the grand jury on April 4, according to his District Attorney's case file; they sent him to the Court of Special Sessions rather than indicting him. That outcome indicates a lack of evidence that he had broken into the store, a requirement for a charge of burglary; the charge Vivien instead faced was likely petit larceny, a misdemeanor, as the value of the items he had taken were well below the $100 required for a charge of felony theft. The judges in that court then convicted him and suspended his sentence, an outcome recorded in the 28th Precinct Police Blotter. -
1
2022-01-12T21:03:49+00:00
Regal Shoe store windows broken
7
plain
2022-07-12T17:41:24+00:00
Sometime between 10 PM and 11 PM, windows were broken in the Regal Shoes store on the southeast corner of West 125th Street and 7th Avenue. Edward Wittleder, the assistant manager, closed the store at 10 PM, according to his Magistrate's Court affidavit. By 11 PM the store window had been broken. Around that time, Officer Peter Naton of the 28th Precinct claimed he saw John Vivien, a twenty-seven-year-old Black laborer, reach through the window, and take a pair of shoes from the display. In the interim, crowds had filled the intersection of West 125th Street and 7th Avenue, pushed there by police trying to clear people from around Kress' store in the block to the west. After Wittleder left, groups from that crowd attacked businesses north and south of the intersection on 7th Avenue and further east on 125th Street, breaking the windows of the businesses on the other three corners of the intersection, Herbert's Blue Diamond jewelry store, a United Cigar store, and a branch of the Chock Full O'Nuts restaurant chain. No one arrested in the disorder was charged with breaking the windows of the shoe store.
The only mention of damage to Regal shoes other than the report of Vivien's arrest was the store's inclusion in a list of businesses with broken windows compiled by a reporter from La Prensa the next day. Regal Shoes continued in business after the disorder. The MCCH Business Survey from the second half of 1935 includes the store, whose address it gives as 2097 7th Avenue rather than 166 West 125th Street as in the reports of the looting. The store also appears in the Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941, of the building labeled 2901 7th Avenue.