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

Manny Zipp's grocery store looted

Manny Zipp's grocery store at 383 Lenox Avenue, was looted during the disorder. There are no details of those events other than Zipp's statement to the city Comptroller that "everything in his store was taken," forcing him out of business, as the New York Post reported it. He had been operating the store for only three days. That section of Lenox Avenue was one in which businesses suffered extensive damage and looting, based on the claims for damages made by owners. No one among those arrested for looting was identified as taking goods from this store.

Zipp was one of seven business owners mentioned in stories published in the New York Post, New York Sun and New York World-Telegram on July 23 describing testimony to the Comptroller from white businessmen suing the city for damages based on the failure of police to protect their stores. He was not in the list of those who brought the first twenty suits published earlier in the New York Sun, but included in that list was the Savoy Food Market. Newsreel footage from the day after the disorder shows a banner reading "Grand Opening" hanging over the entrance to the Savoy Food Market, fitting with Zipp's account of having opened his store only three days earlier (in the New York Daily News photograph discussed below that a piece of dark fabric has been hung to obscure that banner, or perhaps the banner has simply been reversed). While the New York Sun identified Anthony Avitable as the owner of the Savoy Food Market, the New York Post and New York World-Telegram identified him only as the owner of a grocery store at 383 Lenox Avenue. Photographs of 383 Lenox Avenue show only one business at that address, but there was a grocery store next door, a branch of the Krasdale chain, at 381 Lenox Avenue. That appears to be the store that Avitable owned. He appeared separately from the Savoy Food Market in the New York Sun list of those who brought the first twenty suits, and ultimately claimed a lesser amount of damage than Zipp, $537 compared to $721, which does not seem enough to have been enough to wipe out a business. It is the Savoy Food Market that goes out of business, fitting with Zipp's story: there is a different business than the Savoy Food Market at 383 Lenox Avenue in both the MCCH business survey taken between June and December 1935, and the Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941. The Krasdale grocery store does appear in both the MCCH business survey and the Tax Department photograph.

Zipp damage claim of $721 was close to the median reported claim of $733. The Daily News published a photograph of the clean-up on the section of Lenox Avenue containing the Savoy Food Market. To its left is the grocery store that must be Avitable's business, with the Krasdale grocery chain sign visible. The market's windows have been smashed and the display emptied. Some goods appear to have been thrown on to the street; a man is clearing debris with a shovel. Another man can be seen through the window, inside the store; that may be Avitable cleaning up. The two other businesses visible beyond the market also have no windows and empty displays and shelves.  Jacob Saloway, who owned the cigar store on the corner, as well as Avitable, also sued the city for damages.

The three newspaper stories all reported the name differently: the New York Sun called him "Manny Zipp," the New York Post reported his name as "Manning Zipp," and the World-Telegram "Manny Vitt." The name used here, Manny Zipp, combines the most frequently repeated elements of those variations.

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