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

Vacant store windows broken (2320 8th Avenue)

A vacant store at 2320 8th Avenue is 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. After walking north on Lenox Avenue from West 116th Street, the reporter turned left on West 125th Street, and walked west to 8th Avenue and looked a block north and south of that intersection. The empty store is midway down the block between 125th and 124th Streets. Andy's Florist on the southeast corner of West 125th Street and another vacant store at 2324 8th Avenue in the same building just north of this address are also identified as having broken windows in La Prensa. In addition, the Arrow Sales 5 & 10c store at 2318 8th Avenue on the south side of the vacant store is listed as having broken windows. Police arrested Viola Woods for allegedly smashing the windows of a a third vacant store at 2314 8th Avenue. It is possible that other stores in this area suffered only minor damage; 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").


In the first hours of the disorder, crowds around Kress' store on West 125th Street moved down 8th Avenue to 124th Street, to the rear of the store. However, windows in the vacant store do not seem to have been broken then. Smashing glass was reported in the area around 8:00 PM and then again around 9:30 PM, and groups of people began moving south on 8th Avenue around 10:00 PM. The establishment of a police perimeter around the corners of 8th Avenue and West 125th Street beginning after 7:00 PM appears to have prevented merchandise from being taken from the store, even if it could not protect store windows. Only the Danbury Hat store north of 125th Street, next to the Liggett's drug store, was reported as being looted.

No other sources mention the vacant store at this address, and no one arrested during the disorder is identified as breaking the business' windows. The Tax Department photograph shows a one-story building constructed after 1935.

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