Harlem in Disorder: A Spatial History of How Racial Violence Changed in 1935Main MenuREAD ME: Help Navigating This BookIntroductionOn the StreetsIn the CourtsUnder InvestigationThe Mayor's Commission on Conditions in HarlemOver TimeEventsSourcesStephen Robertsona1bf8804093bc01e94a0485d9f3510bb8508e3bfStanford University Press
"Harlem: Survey - Census Tract #228 (33)," 1935, Roll 81, Subject Files, Office of the Mayor, Fiorello H. La Guardia records (New York City Municipal Archives).
12021-09-01T14:04:33+00:00Philip Jaross' Tailor's shop looted11plain2021-09-05T23:53:44+00:00Sometime during the disorder, Philip Jaross' Tailor's shop at 531 Lenox Avenue, between West 136th and West 137th Street. Jaross is recorded as the complainant in the prosecution of Earl Davis, a twenty-six-year-old Black man, for Petit Larceny in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court. There is no mention of this event in any other sources. It is the northernmost reported looting of the disorder, one of a small number of events north of West 135th Street. A charge of petit larceny suggests that Davis was not alleged to have broken the store window or otherwise gained entry to the building, just to have stolen merchandise of low value.
Davis is among those named as charged with petit larceny in the list published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Gazette (he is not in the list published in the New York Evening Journal). When Davis appeared in court on March 20, Magistrate Ford held him for the Court of Special Sessions, on bail of $100. There is no record of the outcome of that prosecution.
The investigator for the MCCH Business survey noted that Jaross' Merchant Tailors was a "Store operated by two Jewish men. Carry a cheap line of tailor made clothes. Been here 3 1/2 years." Its presence in the survey indicates that it continued to operate after the disorder, and was still doing so when the Tax Department photographed the building between 1939 and 1941.
12021-09-01T14:06:32+00:00Earl Davis arrested6plain2021-09-07T15:27:37+00:00Sometime during the disorder, Officer William Butler of the 18th Precinct arrested Earl Davis, a twenty-six-year-old Black man. The arrest likely took place near 531 Lenox Avenue as that is the address listed for the complainant against him in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court, Philip Jaross. Although that column of the docket book was for the complainant's residence, clerks commonly instead recorded the address of looted or damaged stores. The address, on the block between West 135th and West 136th Streets, opposite Harlem Hospital, was the location of Jaross' Merchant Tailors, which the MCCH Business survey described as a "Store operated by two Jewish men. Carry a cheap line of tailor made clothes. Been here 3 1/2 years."
Davis is among those named as charged with petit larceny in the list published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Gazette (he is not in the list published in the New York Evening Journal). A charge of petit larceny suggests that Davis was not alleged to have broken the store window or otherwise gained entry to the building, but rather to have stolen merchandise of low value. There is no mention of this event in any other sources. It is the northernmost reported looting of the disorder, one of a small number of events north of West 135th Street. Davis lived at 110 West 127th Street, between Lenox and 7th Avenues, to the south of the store.
When Davis appeared in Washington Heights Magistrates Court on March 20, Magistrate Ford held him for the Court of Special Sessions, on bail of $100. There is no record of the outcome of that trial.