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Hardware store looted and set on fire
A Daily News photograph showed smoke coming out of the store window and doors, and firefighters on the scene fighting the fire. One was swinging an axe at the display window, while a second firefighter stood behind him. A third firefighter was just inside the store, his boots visible beneath the smoke. In the original photograph, cropped from the published version, a hose ran across the photograph to the right in the direction of Rosenberg's notion store. A photograph of the same scene published in the Home News had that hose running to the left in the foreground and another hose going into the hardware store, and three firefighters in the doorway with their backs to the camera. The caption on that photograph misidentified it as a tailor's shop at 429 Lenox Avenue. Two different captions for the Daily News photograph also misidentified the location. The published image is reported as a "tailor shop at 420 Lexington Ave," an address well outside Harlem. The original version from the newspaper's photo morgue (which can be viewed at Getty Images) located the store at 420 Lenox Avenue. The Tax Department photographs of that building make clear that the address was incorrect: those storefronts sit above or below street level accessed by stairs (those buildings also featured in one of Berenice Abbott's 1936 photographs of New York City (which can be viewed in the New York Public Library Digital Collections)). Across the street, however, the stores had street level entrances. The Tax Department photograph cataloged as 429 Lenox Avenue showed 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 left was 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 was Rosenberg's notion store as hoisery was a name often used for notion stores. The photograph of the store on fire included a portion of the building to the right that matches the windows that would be 431 Lenox Avenue in the Tax Department photograph. (The MCCH Business survey, as it did on occasion, jumbled the addresses of the stores next to 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 left out Rosenberg's store).
Burned shelves in the window and further inside the store and damaged merchandise were visible in the photograph of the fire. Another Daily News photograph showed the damaged interior of the store the morning after the disorder, 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 appeared to be boarding up the store. Material hanging from the ceiling highlights the damage from the fire. Damaged merchandise covered the floor and the display table in the middle of the store, while the shelves to the right of the couple were still full of stock. Again, the address was misidentified 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 on the right from the street side. The Tax Department photograph showed that the doors to the two storefronts are side-by-side, so the store with the window to the right is 431 Lenox Avenue not 429 Lenox Avenue. The same smashed goods and shelves still full of merchandise were visible, with boarded up windows and fire damage in the background, in a similar photograph of the damaged store interior published in the Afro-American. The caption to that image identified the business as a hardware store. Two white men stood in the store, the same man in a coat and hat as in the New York Daily News photograph, and a man in a suit and tie. More of the store to the left of the men was visible, showing that the shelves on the wall and the left side of the table in the center have been burned. The fire apparently did not reach much further than the front of the table. A third photograph of the interior, also published in the Afro-American, provided the opposite view, from the door into the store, and showed shelves without any apparent fire damage (the caption gives the store address as 431 Lenox Avenue but misidentified the business as a notion store). The clashes between firefighters and the crowd on the street mentioned in the caption to that photograph were reported by stories in other newspapers as happening at Lash's store a block to the south, not the hardware store.
Two other photographs showed the damaged exterior of the store and the adjacent notion store at 429 Lenox Avenue after the disorder. In an Associated Press photograph, published in the New York Times, New York Herald Tribune and Afro-American, smashed display windows and doors could be seen in both stores, together with debris piled in front of the hardware store, likely a combination of material from the ceiling and the display window. Notwithstanding the damage to the windows, both stores appeared to still contain significant amounts of merchandise. A police officer and a Black man stood to one side, in front of the distinctive sign of the business to the right of the hardware store seen in other photographs. Patrolmen were stationed outside a number of damaged businesses the day after the disorder so featured in photographs of other locations. The Black man seemed to be posing for the camera, likely at the request of the photographer. A second photograph, published in the Daily Mirror, showed 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 gave precise locations for the businesses beyond it being on Lenox Avenue).
Notwithstanding the damage evident in the photographs, the presence of a hardware store at this address in the MCCH Business survey suggested that 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, was not visible; the sign did appear to be the one visible in the photograph of the firefighters taken in 1935.
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- [Photograph] "It is but a step from looting to incendiarism....," Daily News, March 21, 1935, 30.
- Feinstein v. City of New York, 157 Misc 157 (1935).
- [Photograph] "This One Was Fired," Afro-American, March 30, 1935, 17.
- [Photograph] "Fire Blamed on Rioters," Home News, March 20, 1935, 5.
- [Photograph] "Here is the wrecked front of a store in the Harlem section of New York...," Associated Press, March 20, 1935.
- "2d Damage Suit Lost by City in Harlem Rioting," New York Herald Tribune, October 16, 1935 [clipping].
- [Photograph] "Why Did This Happen?" Daily Mirror, April 1, 1935, 2.
- [Photograph] "This shop at 429 Lenox Avenue...," Daily News, March 21, 1935, 30.
- [Photograph] "Torch Applied to Store in Harlem Riots," International News Photo agency [Folder - Subject B297 Race Riots -- In Harlem, 1935, New York Journal-American Photographic Morgue, Harry Ransom Center].