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Maurice Gilden's Optician's store looted
Only the New York Post and New York Sun mentioned the attack on Gilden's store, as an aside when reporting that Gilden was organizing a group of businessmen to visit the mayor to complain that he was to blame for the disorder. Gilden told the New York Sun:
We are wondering if the Mayor's lenient attitude toward communistic groups in the city is not responsible for the soft treatment meted out to the rioters by the police. I was informed that high ranking police officials went among the uniformed men and advised them to talk to the members of the mob rather than to use force.
An immigrant from Russia who arrived in 1906, the thirty-seven-year-old Gilden had served his apprenticeship as an optician in Harlem in 1911, according to an advertisement in the New York Amsterdam News. In 1918 he worked for an optician on Columbus Avenue, according to his registration for the draft. By 1926, when he ran advertisements in the New York Amsterdam News, he had his taken over the optometrist's office established in the Hotel Theresa building in 1899. His main office was at 344 Madison Avenue, in midtown. Gilden lived in the Bronx, as many of the white business owners in Harlem did.
Despite the scale of damage Gilden claimed, his office continued to operate after the disorder. It appeared in the MCCH business survey, and while it was not visible in the Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941, the shop featured in an advertisement in the New York Amsterdam News in 1939.
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This page references:
- C. C. Nicolet, "One Dead in Wake of Harlem Riots," New York Post, March 20, 1935 [clipping].
- World War I Selective Service System Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918, M1509, National Archives and Records Administration (Ancestry.com).
- "Dodge Begins Investigation of Worst Disorders Here in Years," New York Sun, March 20, 1.
- "Dr. M. T. Gilden, Optometrist, Has Office in Hotel Theresa Bldg," New York Amsterdam News, January 28, 1939, 4.
- "Harlem: Survey - Census Tract #221-222 (26)," 1935, Roll 80, Subject Files, Office of the Mayor, Fiorello H. La Guardia records (New York City Municipal Archives).
- [Display Advertisement] "Eyes Examined," New York Amsterdam News, August 18, 1926, 7.