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Harlem in Disorder: A Spatial History of How Racial Violence Changed in 1935

"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).

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Manhattan Renting Agency window broken The Manhattan Renting Agency at 385 Lenox Avenue had its window broken during the disorder. An ash can was still sitting in the smashed window of the business the day after the disorder in an unpublished image taken by a photographer for the Hearst newspapers and a similar image published in the Daily News. That section of Lenox Avenue was one in which businesses suffered extensive damage and looting beginning around 11:30 PM; the intersection with West 129th Street immediately to the south likely saw particularly extensive violence around 1:00 AM when Alice Mitchell and Hugh Young were injured by flying glass.

A sign identifies "H[ary] Pomrinse" as the proprietor, a sixty-six-year-old Jewish man who lived outside Harlem on the Upper West Side. The office was also used by Everard M. Donald, a twenty-seven-year-old Black businessman. A sign advertising rooms rented by him was visible on right hand edge of the photograph that gave his address as 385 Lenox Avenue, and a fragment of his name -- "NALD" -- remained in the window to the right of section smashed by the ashcan. Visible inside the office was a poster for the Sunshine Barber Shops, a chain of barbers that an advertisement in 1934 identified was owned by Donald. The poster was more clearly visible in a close-up view of the ashcan in the window in newsreel footage, which also showed the outline of the "DO" missing from Donald's name on the glass.

Almost all the stores on this block of Lenox Avenue had windows broken during the disorder; all three of the other businesses in the photograph are more severely damaged than the real estate office and have been looted. A cigar store, Anthony Avitable's Krasdale grocery store, and Manny Zipps' Savoy Food Market all contained the kind of items on which looting focused, unlike a real estate office. They were also white-owned businesses whereas the real estate office was shared by a white-owned business and a Black-owned business. The MCCH business survey taken after the disorder recorded the office as a white-owned business, but identified E. M. Donald as the owner. He was one of the Black business-owners interviewed by MCCH staff conducting the business survey. By the time Tax Department photograph was taken between 1939 and 1941 "E. M. Donald" had replaced Manhattan Renting Agency on the sign at 385 Lenox Avenue.

Hary Pomrinse reported his occupation as "real estate" for the first time in 1925, in the New York State Census. Before then, from 1915 to 1920 and perhaps earlier, he owned and managed a liquor store identified in the 1915 City Directory as the Ideal Wine & Liquor Store at 35 West 129th Street, living with his family above the store at least from 1915, and at the end of the block, at 2100 5th Avenue, in 1920. In 1920, Black residents made up almost all the population of that block. When Pomrinse shifted to working in real estate, he also moved out of Harlem, to West End Avenue on the Upper West Side, moving progressively further downtown, from number 915 in 1925, to number 697 in 1930 and number 260 in 1940. Only hints survive of what his real estate work involved — advertisements in the New York Age for the Manhattan Renting Agency offering five to six room apartments and private houses in the first months of 1933, and then an announcement of his wife selling 541 Lenox Avenue (a five-story building with two storefronts, between 137th and 138th) in 1936. E. M. Donald was the broker on that sale, further evidence of the men's business relationship. By 1939 or 1940, when the Tax Department photograph was taken, Pomrinse stopped using the office at 385 Lenox Avenue. In the 1940 Federal census his occupation is recorded as "own property" not "Real Estate."

Everard MacFalcon Donald appears to have taken sole occupancy of the office at 385 Lenox Avenue some time after the disorder. He had arrived in Harlem from the West Indies in 1910, aged two years, according to the 1930 Federal census. In 1928, Donald became the owner of the first of his Sunshine Barber Shops, according to an advertisement in the New York Amsterdam News. That "original store" was at 107 West 135th Street, the MCCH business survey notes on another shop at 547 Lenox Avenue record. Donald's occupation is recorded as proprietor of a barber shop in the 1930 Federal census. His father, Cleaver Donald, was also recorded as the proprietor of a barber shop in the 1930 census, having been a longshoreman in 1920. By 1931, Donald operated at least one additional barber shop, at 397 Lenox Avenue (although reported as 395 Lenox Avenue when he secured the lease), and by December 1934, he advertised four Sunshine Barber Shops, with additional locations at 409 and 547 Lenox Avenue. Notes in the MCCH business survey described the barber shop at 409 Lenox Avenue as “modern and orderly,” and the shop at 547 Lenox Avenue as “very neatly arranged.” Donald told an interviewer from the MCCH in 1935 that he felt “that his barber shops should do much more business than they do, and attributes this to failure of clientele to realize advantage of paying a few cents more for their service with the assurance of clean apparatus & surroundings.” "Negroes," he claimed, “do not appreciate finer things."

However, by the second half of 1935, Donald's “more important business,” according to the notes from his interview with the MCCH, was “in real estate and apartment house management.” That work involved “making collections & seeing that apartments are kept in condition & tenants complaints answered.” That part of his business overlapped with Pomrinse. In this work too, Donald reported problems with other Black residents of Harlem. “Encounters greatest difficulty with Negro tenants in the houses which he manages," the interviewer recorded him as saying, because "they resent having another Negro collect their rents, & often move out for that reason.” Despite those issues, Donald established himself in the real estate profession in the years after 1935, elected as a vice-president of a new organization, the Harlem Real Estate Board, launched in 1938, the New York Age reported, “for the benefit of real estate brokers attempting to retain management of properties in Harlem to give employment to Negroes.” Donald did also open a fifth Sunshine Barber shop at 433 Lenox Avenue sometime between 1935 and 1939, when it appears in an advertisement. When he married Geneva Dyer, a Texas-born beautician, in May 1940, Donald was living at 580 St Nicholas Avenue and gave his occupation as “Real Estate Broker.” A month later, Donald was arrested for allegedly taking rents he had collected on behalf of a property owner. While there is no evidence of the legal outcome of that arrest, Donald appears to have stopped working in real estate. His occupation was recorded as owner of the Sunshine Barber Shops, and his workplace as 397 Lenox Avenue, one of those shops, not the office at 385 Lenox Avenue, when he registered for the draft four months later. The number of shops he operated may also have been reduced: while the barber shops at 107 West 135th Street and 433 Lenox Avenue appear in Tax Department photographs taken between 1939 and 1941, those at 409 and 547 Lenox Avenue do not. By 1943, Donald was once again working in real estate, identified as the broker in the sale of a property on West 131st Street.
Philip Jaross' Tailor's shop looted Sometime during the disorder, Philip Jaross' Tailor's shop at 531 Lenox Avenue, between West 136th and West 137th Street, was looted. Jaross was 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 was no mention of this event in any other sources. It was the northernmost reported incident of looting of the disorder, one of a small number of events north of West 135th Street. A charge of petit larceny suggested that Davis was not alleged to have broken the store window or otherwise gained entry to the building, only to have stolen merchandise of low value. The business was likely attacked after midnight when looting became more widespread. Police would not have arrested Davis until sometime after that, as they were occupied with groups in the blocks around West 132nd Street and further south around midnight.

When Davis appeared in court on March 20, Magistrate Ford held him for the Court of Special Sessions. There was 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 indicated that it continued to operate after the disorder and it was still doing so when the Tax Department photographed the building between 1939 and 1941.
Earl Davis arrested Sometime 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 Guide. (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. When he appeared in that court on March 22, the Magistrates convicted Davis and sentenced him to ten days in the Workhouse, an outcome found only in the 32nd Precinct records.