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• 1 2021-12-07T20:14:00+00:00 Rex Drug store windows broken 30 plain 2024-05-29T21:40:43+00:00 At 12:05 A.M., as Officer Anthony Barbaro of the 25th Precinct stood on the corner of Lenox Avenue and 126th Street, he saw a group of people gather in front of the Rex Drug store at 318 Lenox Avenue. He then heard two of the men say, "Com[e] on gang, here's two more windows, let's break them," according to his statement in the Harlem Magistrates Court. Those men, Leon Mauraine and David Smith, then allegedly threw stones at the store windows, breaking them, after which they ran north on Lenox Avenue. Barbaro chased them, catching and arresting both men at 322 Lenox Avenue, two buildings from the drug store. As the drug store was on the northeast corner of Lenox Avenue and West 126th Street, Barbaro was likely standing across 126th Street, on the southeast corner, as he would not have been able to hear the men or catch them so quickly from across Lenox Avenue.
  
  Around ten minutes after Barbaro arrested Mauraine and Smith, a group of people broke windows in a store across Lenox Avenue two stores south of 126th Street. Fifteen minutes later, the windows of a shoe store across Lenox Avenue north of the drug store were broken by large group of people. On both occasions, nearby police officers arrested one individual, indicating multiple police officers were stationed at the intersection at this time. They may not have been there throughout the disorder, as multiple stores close to the drug store were reported as looted or damaged, with particularly extensive damage to both George Chronis' restaurant diagonally across the intersection from the drug store on the southwest corner of Lenox Avenue and West 126th Street and Harry Piskin's laundry next to it on West 126th Street.
  
  
  
  A white-owned drug store was recorded as still at this address in the MCCH business survey taken in the second half of 1935. While the drug store is not named in the survey, an advertisement in the New York Amsterdam News in July 1934 identifies the "Rex Drug Co., 318 Lenox Avenue on 126 St. Corner." By the time the Tax Department photograph of 318 Lenox Avenue was taken, between 1939 and 1941, the Rex Drug store had relocated to 322 Lenox Avenue, two buildings north of the corner (a real estate office is recorded at that address in the MCCH business survey).
  
  Leon Mauraine and David Smith appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, charged with inciting a riot. Both were twenty-two-year-old Black men. Mauraine gave his occupation as window washer when examined in the court, while Smith said he was a clerk. They lived northeast of the store, Mauraine at 52 West 128th Street and Smith at 2094 Fifth Avenue, between 128th and 129th Streets. Magistrate Renaud held both men for the grand jury. A week later the grand jury transferred both men to the Court of Special Sessions for trial, likely for the misdemeanor forms of riot and malicious mischief, an offense involving damage to property used in other cases involving breaking windows. Convicted by the judges in that court, on April 2 both men received suspended sentences, according to the 28th Precinct police blotter.