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Hardware store looted and set on fire
A New York Daily News photograph shows smoke coming out of the store window and doors, and firefighters on the scene fighting the fire. One is swinging an axe at the display window, while a second firefighter stands behind him. A third firefighter is just inside the store, his boots visible beneath the smoke. In the original photograph, cropped from the published version, a hose runs across the photograph to the right, in the direction of Rosenberg's notion store. The captions to both versions misidentify the location. The published image identifies its subject as a "tailor shop at 420 Lexington Ave," an address well outside Harlem. The original version from the newspaper's photo morgue identifies the store's address as 420 Lenox Avenue. The Tax Department photographs of that building make clear that it is incorrect: the storefronts sit above or below street level accessed by stairs (those buildings also feature in one of Berenice Abbott's 1936 photographs of New York City). Across the street, however, the stores have street level entrances. The Tax Department photograph cataloged 429 Lenox Avenue features a six story building with four store fronts, two either side of the door leading to the apartments on the upper floors. In the MCCH Business survey, the beauty salon to the right is listed as 425 Lenox Avenue and the jewelers as 427 Lenox Avenue. The store to the right of the door would therefore be 429; the Hoisery sign visible in the Tax Department photograph confirms that it is Rosenberg's notion store, as hoisery was a name often used for notion stores. The original photograph of the includes a portion of the store to the right of the burning store that matches the windows to the right of storefront that would be 431 Lenox Avenue in the Tax Department photograph. (The MCCH Business survey. as it did on occasion, jumbles the addresses of the stores after the jeweler, putting the hardware store at 429 not 431 Lenox Avenue and the stationary store next to it at 431 not 433 Lenox Avenue, and leaves out Rosenberg's store).
A second New York Daily News photograph shows the damaged interior of the store, and a white man and woman, presumably the owner and his wife, assessing the damage. Boards covering the destroyed windows and the missing glass in the door are visible behind them, together with a white man who appears to be boarding up the store. Material hanging from the ceiling is likely damage from the fire. The store interior has been attacked rather than looted. The shelves to the right of the couple are still full of stock and the floor and the display table on the left are covered with smashed and damaged merchandise. Again, the address is misidentifed in the caption, this time as 429 Lenox Avenue. However, in the background the store window can be seen to the left of the door, so to the right from the street side. The doors to the two storefronts can be seen side-by-side in the Tax Department photograph, so the store with the window to the right is 431 Lenox Avenue not 429 Lenox Avenue.
A similar image of the damaged store interior was published in the Afro-American, with a caption that identified the business as a hardware store. The same damage is visible, smashed goods and shelves still full of merchandise, with boarded up windows and fire damage in the background. While taken from the same position, the published image is square, so lacks the sense of the length of the store provided by the New York Daily News photograph. Two white men stand in the store, the same man in a coat and hat in the other image, and a man in a suit and tie in place of the white women in the other image. No other sources make the connection between the looting of this store and the objects thrown during the disorder asserted in the caption.
At least two other photographs appear to show the damaged exterior of the store and the adjacent notion store at 431 Lenox Avenue. In an Associated Press photograph published in the New York Times, New York Herald Tribune and Afro-American smashed display windows and doors can be seen, together with debris piled in front of the store window, likely damage caused by the fire. A police officer and a Black man stand to one side, in front of the distinctive sign of the adjacent business seen in other photographs. Notwithstanding the damage to the windows, both stores appear to still contain significant amounts of merchandise.
A second photograph, published in the Daily Mirror, shows a man on a ladder boarding up the hardware store windows, matching the man and repairs seen in the background of the photograph of the interior damage. None of the captions to these photographs give precise locations for the businesses beyond Lenox Avenue.
Notwithstanding the damage evident in the photograph, the presence of a hardware store at this address in the MCCH Business survey suggests the store continued to operate in the months after the disorder. The name of the business operating when the Tax Department photograph was taken, between 1939 and 1941, is not visible.