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"Harlem: Survey - Census Tract #221-222 (26)," 1935, Roll 80, Subject Files, Office of the Mayor, Fiorello H. La Guardia records (New York City Municipal Archives).
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2021-08-19T17:29:52+00:00
Lafayette Market looted
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2024-05-30T17:28:47+00:00
The Lafayette Market at 2044 7th Avenue, on the northwest corner of West 122nd Street, was looted at sometime during the disorder. The Daily News published a photograph of the damaged store on March 21. All the market's display windows were missing in the photograph, although there was no glass and little other debris visible. It was likely that store staff had cleaned up and swept the street before the photograph was taken, sometime the day after the disorder given that the image was taken in daylight and published the next day. The window displays had been emptied of goods, but the photograph did not offer a clear view of the extent of the looting of the store's interior — although it did indicate that the store could have been accessed through the corner window display. The caption's phrasing also left ambiguous the extent of the looting; the statement that "windows were smashed and contents looted" could refer to the contents of the windows or the store more broadly. (The caption of the photograph in the Afro-American described the business as a "poultry store." The signage, cropped out of that version of the photograph, indicated it sold a wider range of groceries.) Channing Tobias, the fifty-three-year-old Black secretary of the Colored Division of the National Council of the YMCA, lived in the building next to the Lafayette Market, at 203 West 122nd Street. Interviewed there after the disorder by E. Franklin Frazier, he mentioned that "there was not a whole window in this store right here" after the disorder, likely a reference to the market.
Crowds pushed off the block of West 125th Street around the Kress store toward 7th Avenue later moved up and down the avenues, leading to multiple reports of assaults, broken windows, and looting in the area around the Lafayette Market. When some of that violence took place was not specified in the sources, but a cluster did occur between 11:00 PM and 12:30 AM, including the assault of a white man a few buildings west of the market on 122nd Street and rocks thrown at Fred Campbell's car as he sat stopped at the traffic lights at the intersection across the avenue from the market, as well as the looting of a delicatessen a block north. Campbell described considerable disorder in the area around Lafayette Market, crashes and shots being fired, store windows shattering, and police trying to disperse crowds. Channing Tobias, awake in his home in the next building, heard "smashing of glasses [sic] and the firing of guns" between midnight and 1:00 AM. The gunshots he heard suggested that looting of the store began around midnight, the time observers noticed such attacks intensified.
Almost as many Black-owned as white-owned businesses operated on the block on which the Lafayette Market was located. The stationery store visible in the storefront next to the market was one of those Black-owned business, according to the MCCH business survey. It was a "[n]eat store, carries full line of cigars, cigarettes and candies" according to the investigator who visited it. That store did not appear to have been attacked or looted, as the windows visible in the photograph were intact, offering evidence that crowds avoided Black-owned businesses during the disorder.
Although the caption described the police officer standing in front of the market's doors as "guarding" the store, he was more likely to have been patrolling the area monitoring passersby, or stationed at the intersection, behind where the photographer stood to take the image. There were far too many damaged and looted businesses in Harlem for police to be guarding them individually the day after the disorder. Police officers featured in several other photographs of damaged buildings taken after the disorder (and some taken during the night).
Albert Bass, a twenty-seven-year-old Black man, was likely arrested in the vicinity of the market during the disorder sometime after midnight. Salvatore Marrone, with his address recorded as 2044 7th Avenue, was the complainant against Bass in the Harlem Magistrate's Court docket book. While both the list published in the New York Evening Journal and the 28th Precinct police blotter recorded the charge against Bass as burglary, when he was arraigned in the Magistrate's Court he was charged with Disorderly Conduct. That change indicated that police had encountered Bass been on the street in the area of the looted store but had no evidence he had either broken windows or taken merchandise. Magistrate Renaud convicted Bass and ordered him to pay a $50 or spend five days in the Workhouse, according to the docket book. The 28th Precinct police blotter recorded the sentence as a fine of $25, which suggested he took that option.
The Lafayette Market continued to operate after the disorder. The store was included in the MCCH business survey in the second half of 1935, categorized as a white-owned meat market. The investigator's notes described it as "Very neat - hires one Negro as clerk." It was also visible in the Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941. -
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2021-08-12T23:28:20+00:00
Sarah Refkin's delicatessen looted
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2024-05-30T19:46:31+00:00
Around 12:30 AM, Acting Captain Conrad Rothengast of the 6th Detective Division claimed that he heard shots being fired on 7th Avenue near 123rd Street, according to a Probation Department investigation report. Looking around for the source of the shooting he saw a group of men standing in front of the delicatessen at 2067 7th Avenue, owned by Sarah Refkin and managed by Nathan Pavlowitz, a thirty-one-year-old Romanian immigrant living in the Bronx. Approaching the group, he saw Hezekiah Wright, a thirty-six-year-old Black janitor, kick and smash the store's plate glass window, reach in and take four lamps and two jars of food. When Wright saw him, Rothengast alleged he dropped those items and held his hands above his head. The detective somehow interpreted that stance as indicating that Wright was about to attack him, so struck him with his baton before arresting him. The Magistrate Court affidavit included few of those details. In that account, Rothengast simply saw Wright kick in the window and take a quantity of groceries.
A Home News story about Wright's arraignment in that court put the value of the goods he allegedly stole at $100. The Probation Department investigation report specified that the items Rothengast alleged Wright tried to steal had a combined value of $11.10, the lamps 90 cents each, and the jars of food $3.75 each. Stories in the New York Age and New York Times reporting later stages of his prosecution included the details that he had allegedly stolen "four lamps and a quantity of food," with the latter story misstating the value of those items as "about $8 in all." Pavlowitz, the store manager, estimated that between $50 and $75 of merchandise was missing from the store, according to Probation Department investigation report. He told a probation officer that he thought people other than Wright had taken those goods. There were certainly many other people on the street around this time. Arrests for breaking windows and looting continued to be made for at least another hour after Rothengast arrested Wright. Attacks on the store likely began around 11:15 PM. A crowd of twenty-five to thirty people was observed by Detective Peter Naton on 7th Avenue around 123rd Street at that time smashing store windows and attacking white men and women. The plainclothes officer arrested one member of the group, but the others continued along the street.
Wright denied any involvement in the looting of the store when interviewed by a probation officer. Instead he said he was returning to his home at 155 West 123rd Street, around the corner from the delicatessen, having gone out to buy cigarettes, when he saw the crowd in front of the store. Those men ran when they saw Rothengast approaching; Wright said he stayed where he was as he was not involved in attacking the store. He appeared in the Harlem Magistrate's Court on March 20, was sent to the grand jury by Magistrate Renaud, and indicted. After Wright pled guilty Judge Donnellan sent him to the Workhouse for three months.
The store appears to have remained in business despite the damage and losses. Refkin had insurance for the store windows, which cost $47.41 to replace according to the Probation Department investigation report (the insurance company unsuccessfully sought to have the judge require Wright to pay them restitution for that cost). A white-owned delicatessen is recorded at 2067 7th Avenue in the MCCH business survey from the second half of 1935, with the investigator adding the note that it was a "Small, neat store." The business captured in the Tax Department photograph from 1939–1941 is also likely Refkin's delicatessen; while the name is not legible, signage typical of grocery stores can be seen in the window. By then Nathan Pavlowitz was likely no longer the store manager. He told census enumerators in 1930 and 1940 that he was a painter, making his job in the store likely the result of being unable to find such work in the Depression. By the time he registered for the draft in 1942, he was employed as a painter, still traveling from his home at 1225 Boston Road in the Bronx to Harlem, to the Superior Decorating Company based at 271 West 125th Street. -
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2021-08-30T01:54:16+00:00
Maurice Gilden's Optician's store looted
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2024-06-20T17:28:03+00:00
Some time during the disorder, optometrist Maurice Gilden's shop at 2084 7th Avenue, in the Hotel Theresa just south of the corner of 7th Avenue and West 125th Street, was looted. Gilden claimed that several thousand dollars of optical supplies were stolen. The first arrest for looting around the intersection was around 11:00 PM, across the street at the Regal Shoe Store. Individuals likely began taking merchandise from Gilden's store around that time and extended perhaps as late as 3:00 AM. No one arrested during the disorder was recorded as being charged with breaking the shop's windows or taking merchandise from it.
Only the New York Post and New York Sun mentioned the attack on Gilden's store, as an aside when reporting that Gilden was organizing a group of businessmen to visit the mayor to complain that he was to blame for the disorder. Gilden told the New York Sun:We are wondering if the Mayor's lenient attitude toward communistic groups in the city is not responsible for the soft treatment meted out to the rioters by the police. I was informed that high ranking police officials went among the uniformed men and advised them to talk to the members of the mob rather than to use force.
An immigrant from Russia who arrived in 1906, the thirty-seven-year-old Gilden had served his apprenticeship as an optician in Harlem in 1911, according to an advertisement in the New York Amsterdam News. In 1918 he worked for an optician on Columbus Avenue, according to his registration for the draft. By 1926, when he ran advertisements in the New York Amsterdam News, he had his taken over the optometrist's office established in the Hotel Theresa building in 1899. His main office was at 344 Madison Avenue, in midtown. Gilden lived in the Bronx, as many of the white business owners in Harlem did.
Despite the scale of damage Gilden claimed, his office continued to operate after the disorder. It appeared in the MCCH business survey, and is likely the business with the "Eyes Examined" sign visible near the corner of 125th Street in the Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941. The shop also featured in an advertisement in the New York Amsterdam News in 1939. -
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2021-11-15T19:41:48+00:00
Vacant store windows broken (2324 8th Avenue)
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2024-02-03T00:11:54+00:00
A vacant store "on 125th Street and Eighth Avenue" ("esquina norte de la Octava y 125") 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 vacant store was not located on any of the corners themselves: a branch of the Liggett drug store chain on the northeast corner and Andy's Florist on the southeast corner appear in the reporter's list; an Optima cigar store on the northwest corner, and the Lazar department store on the southwest corner appear in the MCCH business survey and Tax Department photographs. The La Prensa reporter listed damaged buildings on the east side of 8th Avenue both north and south of 125th Street, but this vacant store appears with those on the south, so is likely 2324 8th Avenue, which is recorded in the MCCH business survey as an "Empty store." (Police arrested Viola Woods for allegedly smashing the windows of a vacant store at 2314 8th Avenue, but that address is closer to 124th Street than 125th Street).
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 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.