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

Eleanor Laundry windows broken

The Eleanor Laundry at 277 Lenox Avenue was 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. The laundry appeared in a list of stores the reporter "found to have broken windows" as he walked north on Lenox Avenue from West 116th Street. After identifying several locations that suffered damage between 115th and 119th Streets, the reporter listed no damaged buildings until the laundry, which was between 123rd and 124th Streets. It was possible some stores suffered minor damage in the intervening blocks of Lenox Avenue; the La Prensa reporter concluded his list by noting he had not included others as they had only suffered minor damage ("y otras mas que por ser los danos ocasionados relativamente pequeños no creimus de interes catalogar entre los establecimientos ya mencionados"). However, there are no other reported events on those blocks during the disorder. Few businesses were located in that area. The first windows were likely broken around 11:00 PM, when the crowds that had come to Lenox Avenue along 125th Street began to attack businesses in the the blocks to the north. As happened on 8th Avenue and 7th Avenue, some groups also went south. Windows were broken in the Empire Grill and Victoria Pharmacy in the block between 124th and 125th Streets and in the branch of the Liggett's Pharmacy on the southeast corner of 125th Street.



No other sources mentioned this store, and no one arrested during the disorder was identified as breaking the store's windows. The MCCH business survey taken in the second half of 1935 did not record a laundry at 277 Lenox Avenue, only a white-owned stationery store. The business at the address when the Tax Department photograph was taken between 1939 and 1941 cannot be identified.

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