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

Liggett's drug store windows broken (7th Avenue)

The Liggett drug store at 1919 7th Avenue, on the southeast corner of West 116th Street, is one of the businesses with broken windows identified by a reporter for La Prensa who walked along West 116th Street, as well as along West 125th Street, the day after the disorder. Four of the store's windows were "completely demolished," the reporter noted. So too were all the the window's of Jack Garmise's United Cigar store directly across 7th Avenue. That store had also been looted, which the story did not mention. The reporter appears to have identified stores as having been looted only when someone told him goods had been taken, as happened at the San Antonio Market and Mediaville liquor store. Given the scale of damage, it seems likely that the drug store had also been looted, as at least four others had been. However, police officers appear to have been stationed at the intersection after midnight, perhaps near enough to the drug store to prevent looting. Police arrested Thomas Jackson and Raymond Easley, and an hour later, Robert Tanner, for allegedly looting the cigar store. Additional businesses on West 116th Street east of 7th Avenue likely had broken windows as the La Prensa reporter concluded his list by noting he had not included others as they had only suffered minor damage ("y otras mas que por ser los danos ocasionados relativamente pequeños no creimus de interes catalogar entre los establecimientos ya mencionados").

No other sources mention the drug store, and no one arrested during the disorder is identified as breaking the store's windows.



The white-owned branch of the chain store appears in the MCCH business survey taken between June and December 1935, and is visible in the Tax Department photograph of the address taken between 1939 and 1941.

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