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"Harlem: Survey - Census Tracts #225-226 (30)," 1935, Roll 81, Subject Files, Office of the Mayor, Fiorello H. La Guardia records (New York City Municipal Archives).
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2021-11-16T21:28:42+00:00
Manhattan Renting Agency window broken
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2024-06-03T13:45:20+00:00
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 An ash can was still sitting in the smashed window of the business the day after the disorder in an unpublished image taken by a photographer for the Hearst newspapers and a similar image published in the Daily News.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. -
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2021-08-17T20:39:09+00:00
Wohlmuth Tailors clothing store looted
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2024-05-29T21:22:56+00:00
Wohlmuth Tailors clothing store at 477 Lenox Avenue, on the southwest corner of West 134th Street, was looted sometime during the disorder. The Afro-American published a photograph of the damaged store on March 30. Both the name of the store and its street number were visible in the image. Wohlmuth Tailors was a national chain of approximately fifty stores, with seven in Harlem listed in this detail from an advertisement in the New York Amsterdam News. The company was one of the few white businesses that advertised in Harlem's Black newspapers in the 1930s. There was only one reported looting further north than this store, on the corner of the next block, West 135th Street and Lenox Avenue. The clothing store was located on a block on which almost three-quarters of the businesses were owned by whites, as was the case with the other blocks of Lenox Avenue north of West 125th Street.
The store must have been closed at the time it was attacked, as the iron gate in front of the store was torn away, and can be seen lying on the street in the photo. The caption referred only to the store front being demolished, and the windows can be seen broken and empty, with the door appearing intact. It was possible that means that the interior of the store was not looted. The image appeared to have been one of a number taken of damaged buildings, primarily on Lenox Avenue, the day after the disorder.
The only other mention of this store being looted was a vignette that Adam Clayton Powell included in an article the New York Post published to "present the Negro's point of view on the recent disturbances in Harlem.""Witness a young man step through the window of Wohlmuth's Tailoring Establishment at 134th and Lenox Avenue dressed on that cold, rainy night in nothing but a blouse, pants and an excuse for shoes. He comes out a moment later wearing a velvet collar Chesterfield and a smile upon his face - first overcoat this winter."
This was the most specific of Powell's three vignettes of looters in the article and the only one to give a specific location. The others featured an adult man carrying two pieces of salt pork taken from a butcher's window and two "young lads" lugging two sacks of rice and sugar. The account did not clarify if the interior of the store was looted. In stepping through the window, the unnamed man may only have entered the display, not the store itself.
No one arrested for looting was identified as having stolen goods from the store, although there are no details of the circumstances that led to the arrest of twenty-nine of those charged with burglary.
This branch of Wohlmuth Tailors remained in business after the disorder. It appeared both in the MCCH business survey from the second half of 1935, and in the Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941. -
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2021-08-17T17:59:11+00:00
General Meat & Grocery Store looted
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2024-06-02T02:01:05+00:00
Around 12.35 AM, as Fred Campbell, a thirty-two-year-old Black man, collected the day's receipts from his barber's shop at 2213 7th Avenue, he told MCCH staff he saw the show window of the "Butcher shop located at 7th Ave and 131 Street S.W. corner" opposite his store being broken. The building on that corner is 2214 7th Avenue. In the MCCH business survey the business at that address is the General Meat & Grocery Store, a grocery store, not simply a butcher's shop. The investigator described it as a "Large corner store operated by Italians. One Negro clerk. Large display on sidewalks." That business is still present in the Tax Department photograph of 2214 7th Avenue, taken between 1939 and 1941, with a sign reading General Food Market.
While Campbell watched, "some negroes were taking hams from the windows," with "no police in sight." This looting does not seem to have been part of a broader wave of attacks. Campbell had driven up 7th Avenue to get to his shop, and told the MCCH staff that about 12:30 AM beginning at 121st Street, he saw store windows being broken and police attempting to disperse crowds on both sides of the avenue up to at least 123rd Street. He did not mention any violence further north, but did see stores with broken windows up to 127th Street. Beyond that point, in the four blocks before he arrived at his store near 131st Street, Campbell apparently did not see any signs of damage or clashes involving police, nor was anyone attacking the grocery store when he entered his shop. This was the only reported looting on 7th Avenue north of 128th Street. That may be because the majority of the businesses on the blocks north of 127th Street were Black-owned at the time of the MCCH business survey, after the disorder, including the block on which the General Meat & Grocery Store was located. The opposite side of the next block, between 131st and 132nd Street, was home to the Lafayette Theater, a nightclub and several restaurants, which likely meant that there were more people on the street here at this time than other parts of 7th Avenue.
About five minutes after Campbell saw the store being attacked, police arrived. Campbell then continued to his second shop, further up the street at 2259 7th Avenue. His statement made no mention of what happened at the grocery store after police arrived. The statement is a summary of what he said, not a transcript. No other sources mention any arrests at that address, although there are no details of the circumstances that led to the arrest of twenty-nine of those charged with burglary. Nor are there any sources that describe damage to the store. Police were patrolling the avenue in cars around this time. Approximately ten minutes later, a police officer would shoot and kill Lloyd Hobbs three blocks to the south, having seen a crowd in front of a damaged automobile parts store while driving up 7th Avenue in a patrol car. It seems likely that that police who arrived at the grocery store similarly came by car, and caused the crowd to disperse, with officers unable to catch and arrest any of those looting the store. Those officers would have soon after returned to patrolling the avenue, leaving the store vulnerable to further looting later in the disorder. -
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2021-05-03T18:12:30+00:00
Estelle Cohen's clothing store looted
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2024-05-29T17:29:41+00:00
The windows of the Norman Toggery store at 437 Lenox Avenue, near West 132nd Street, were smashed during the disorder, and the goods on display stolen. The only information on the attack on the store was a letter the store's white owner, Mrs. Estelle Cohen, wrote to Mayor La Guardia on March 21, 1935. A Black salesman was present in the store when the windows were broken. He could do nothing to prevent the looting, but did telephone Cohen at her home in Washington Heights, 605 West 170th Street. She then called the police precinct and police headquarters, telling La Guardia with clear frustration that "all the satisfaction I got was that all the men were out and that all windows were being smashed." Given that the store was still open, the attack likely came sometime soon after 11:00 PM, when staff in nearby stores either side of Norman Toggery reported a crowd gathered around Lenox Avenue and West 132nd Street. Herbert Canter, who owned a pharmacy at 419 Lenox Avenue, saw "a mob" carrying bricks, stones, and bottles, as well as canned goods, march down the street shouting, "Down with the whites! Let's get what we can," and hurling missiles through the windows, in testimony in the Municipal Court reported by the New York Herald Tribune. A block north, David Schmoockler, the manager of William Feinstein’s liquor store at 452 Lenox Avenue, also saw a crowd of around thirty people. Between 11:00 PM and midnight he watched as the crowd "created disturbances, hurled various missiles, broke store windows, set fire to some stores, pillaged others, and in general damaged property of various merchants in the locality," according to Justice Shalleck's summary of his testimony in the Municipal Court. A little over an hour later, Feinstein's liquor store was attacked by a crowd of thirty to forty people.
What Cohen wanted, she wrote La Guardia, was "police protection at all times. I have my sons in that store, and am a widow; business is very hard besides and I don't wish them to lose their lives." Lacking that protection during the disorder, Cohen sent someone to the storefront to board up the windows after they were smashed and the merchandise taken from the display. However, the boarded-up window failed to protect the inside of the store, Cohen wrote:...they came back and broke through the windows again and smashed the cases and took the goods out. The shirts were taken off the forms, which showed that they had ample time to work. The floors were scattered with glass and goods all trampled up.
No one arrested for looting was identified as having stolen goods from the store. Cohen estimated her losses as at least $800. A little over a month later, when the New York Sun, New York World-Telegram, and New York Amsterdam News reported that she had joined nineteen other merchants in filing suit against the city government, she claimed $1,219.77 in damages. Unlike some other store owners, Cohen did not have burglary insurance, she wrote, "on account of not being able to get it up in that section." Given that the city lost the trials on such claims reported in the press, it was likely that Cohen received some compensation for the losses. She did seem to have been able to remain in business. The Toggery shop was included in the MCCH business survey; the investigator recorded that the store had been there for three years, managed by "Mr Thomas and a friend," and had "a neat display of ties, hats and shirts in window." The store also appeared in the Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941.