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

George Chronis' restaurant looted

George's Lunch, the lunchroom at 319 Lenox Avenue, on the southwest corner of West 126th Street, owned by George Chronis, was open for business when crowds appeared on the street. The intersection of West 125th Street and Lenox Avenue, and the blocks of the avenue to the north were the site of multiple acts of violence and attacks on businesses during the disorder, but there is no clear evidence of when crowds would have first arrived at the restaurant other than the report that looting of a store at the intersection started around 10.30 PM. Chronis told the city Comptroller that the lunchroom was staffed by one white and two Black workers that evening, according to a story in the New York Post. The Black men reacted to the disorder by leaving the restaurant, while the white man called the police station house and then locked himself in a washroom. No police responded to his call.

Chronis heard about the disorder and tried to get to his business, but the New York Post reported he told the Comptroller that police prevented him from doing so for several hours. It was 1.00 AM when he got to the restaurant, where he found his white staff member still locked in the washroom, and the lunchroom "completely demolished," according to the story in the New York World-Telegram. The business next door, Piskin's laundry, was also destroyed. The only mention of the damage to George's Lunch was in newspaper stories about the claims for damages from the city made by white merchants. Chronis was not part of the group of twenty who brought the first suits, but was mentioned in stories published in the New York Post, New York World-Telegram, and New York Amsterdam News at the end of July about hearings before the city Comptroller, by which time 106 merchants had filed suits. He appeared as an example in those stories because of the large damages he sought, $14,000, since, as the New York Sun put it, his business was "completely wiped out by looters." Those damages are also likely why Chronis was one of seven claimants in the first trial in the New York Supreme Court in March 1936, identified in the New York Herald Tribune.

Police did make arrests in the vicinity of George's Lunch around that time that they allowed Chronis access, indicating the presence of officers, although not in sufficient numbers to prevent ongoing attacks on businesses. But by then, the damage to the restaurant had been done and no one was arrested for those attacks. The jury awarded damages to all the claimants in the March 1936 trial, but no newspaper stories mentioned the amount awarded to Chronis. It would have been a small fraction of his claim, as the largest reported amount was $550 to Irving Stetkin. It is no surprise then that Chronis appears not to have reopened his business, which is missing from the MCCH business survey in late 1935 and replaced by another store in the Tax Department photograph taken in 1939-1941.
 

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