Harlem in Disorder: A Spatial History of How Racial Violence Changed in 1935Main MenuREAD ME: Help Navigating This BookIntroductionOn the StreetsIn the CourtsUnder InvestigationThe Mayor's Commission on Conditions in HarlemOver TimeEventsSourcesStephen Robertsona1bf8804093bc01e94a0485d9f3510bb8508e3bfStanford University Press
"Dr. M. T. Gilden, Optometrist, Has Office in Hotel Theresa Bldg," New York Amsterdam News, January 28, 1939, 4.
12021-08-30T01:54:16+00:00Maurice Gilden's Optician's store looted20plain2024-06-20T17:28:03+00:00Some time during the disorder, optometrist Maurice Gilden's shop at 2084 7th Avenue, in the Hotel Theresa just south of the corner of 7th Avenue and West 125th Street, was looted. Gilden claimed that several thousand dollars of optical supplies were stolen. The first arrest for looting around the intersection was around 11:00 PM, across the street at the Regal Shoe Store. Individuals likely began taking merchandise from Gilden's store around that time and extended perhaps as late as 3:00 AM. No one arrested during the disorder was recorded as being charged with breaking the shop's windows or taking merchandise from it.
Only the New York Postand New York Sun mentioned the attack on Gilden's store, as an aside when reporting that Gilden was organizing a group of businessmen to visit the mayor to complain that he was to blame for the disorder. Gilden told the New York Sun:
We are wondering if the Mayor's lenient attitude toward communistic groups in the city is not responsible for the soft treatment meted out to the rioters by the police. I was informed that high ranking police officials went among the uniformed men and advised them to talk to the members of the mob rather than to use force.
An immigrant from Russia who arrived in 1906, the thirty-seven-year-old Gilden had served his apprenticeship as an optician in Harlem in 1911, according to an advertisement in the New York Amsterdam News. In 1918 he worked for an optician on Columbus Avenue, according to his registration for the draft. By 1926, when he ran advertisements in the New York Amsterdam News, he had his taken over the optometrist's office established in the Hotel Theresa building in 1899. His main office was at 344 Madison Avenue, in midtown. Gilden lived in the Bronx, as many of the white business owners in Harlem did.
Despite the scale of damage Gilden claimed, his office continued to operate after the disorder. It appeared in the MCCH business survey, and is likely the business with the "Eyes Examined" sign visible near the corner of 125th Street in the Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941. The shop also featured in an advertisement in the New York Amsterdam Newsin 1939.
