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

Jacob Saloway's store looted

Jacob Saloway's store at 381 Lenox Avenue was looted during the disorder. There are no details of those events. That section of Lenox Avenue was one in which businesses suffered extensive damage and looting, based on the claims for damages made by owners. Saloway appears only in a list of white business owners who brought the first twenty suits for damages against the city for the failure of police to protect their stores, published in the New York Sun. The list includes only a name, business address, and the amount of damages sought. By the time the city Comptroller heard testimony from those bringing suit, 106 owners had sought damages. Saloway is not among those whose testimony appears in newspaper stories about that proceeding, and he is not one of those whose cases went to trial to test the claims. No one among those arrested for looting was identified as taking goods from this store.

The New York Daily News published a photograph of the clean-up on the section of Lenox Avenue containing Saloway's store the morning after the disorder. Saloway's store can be glimpsed on the far left of the image, with signs visible indicating it sold cigars. The windows appear to be missing and the displays emptied of stock. The angle does not show the interior of the store. The two businesses to the right of the store, in the foreground of the picture also have no windows and empty displays and shelves. Both Anthony Vitable, who owned the Savoy Food Market, and Manny Zipp, who owned the grocery store, also sued the city for damages.

Saloway sued for $676 in losses, one of the larger claims. The city lost the test cases, so Saloway likely was awarded some amount of damages, but based on those case it was likely only a small proportion. Whatever the award, Saloway appears to have been able to remain in business. The MCCH business survey includes a white-owned stationary store (a type of store that sold cigars) at 381 Lenox Avenue in the second half of 1935. A business also appears in the Tax Department photograph from 1939-1941, but the signage is not visible. In 1930, the federal census records that Saloway had lived at 363 Lenox Avenue, a building anomalous in this area of Harlem in being home to only white residents. The six other households included three headed by men who owned stores in Harlem later looted during the disorder who joined Saloway in suing the city, William Gindin, Irving Stetkin and Michael D'Agostino. There is no evidence of whether Saloway still lived there in 1935; Gindin at least had relocated to another building on Lenox Avenue by the time of the disorder.

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