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George Chronis' restaurant looted
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 World-Telegram. The business next door, Piskin's laundry, was also destroyed. The only mention of the damage to George's Lunch is in newspaper stories about the civil suits against the city brought by white merchants. Chronis is not part of the group of twenty who brought the first suits, but is mentioned in stories published at the end of July, by which time 106 merchants had filed suits. He appears as an example in those stories because of the large damages he sought, $14,000, because, as the New York Sun put it, his business was "completely wiped out by looters."
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 city lost the civil cases that went to trial to test the merchants' claims, so it is likely that Chronis received some damages, but those awards were for only a portion of the claims. 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.