Harlem in Disorder: A Spatial History of How Racial Violence Changed in 1935Main MenuREAD ME: Help Navigating This BookIntroductionOn the StreetsIn the CourtsUnder InvestigationThe Mayor's Commission on Conditions in HarlemOver TimeEventsSourcesStephen Robertsona1bf8804093bc01e94a0485d9f3510bb8508e3bfStanford University Press
151 Lenox Avenue, c. 1939-1941.
1media/nynyma_rec0040_1_01902_0033_thumb.jpg2024-06-01T02:08:00+00:00Stephen Robertsona1bf8804093bc01e94a0485d9f3510bb8508e3bf12Source: DOF: Manhattan 1940s Tax Photos (New York City Municipal Archives).plain2024-06-01T02:08:38+00:00nynyma_rec0040_1_01902_003320180308114742+0000Stephen Robertsona1bf8804093bc01e94a0485d9f3510bb8508e3bf
12021-10-14T12:37:14+00:00Billiard parlor windows broken23plain2024-06-01T02:09:45+00:00The billiard parlor at 151 Lenox Avenue, between West 117th Street and West 118th Street, is one of the businesses in a list of those with broken windows made by a reporter for La Prensa after he walked along West 116th Street, Lenox Avenue, and West 125th Street on the day after the disorder. The billiard parlor was one of at least six Black-owned businesses that responded to that damage by displaying signs identifying it as a "colored" business, according to another story published in La Prensa. (The MCCH business survey undertaken after the disorder also recorded the billiard parlor as having Black owners). Such signs were not an effort to establish a racial divide in the neighborhood, to segregate Black and white residents, as the author of that story claimed, but an attempt to protect stores from being the target of violence, according to stories in theHome News, New York Evening Journal,New York Times, New York Post, New York World-Telegram, and Afro-American. Those in the crowds on Harlem's streets appear to have largely avoided attacks on Black-owned businesses: only five appear in the sources as having windows broken. In the case of the billiard parlor, as happened with the Williams drug store, the signs may have stopped further damage and prevented looting. There were no Black-owned businesses among those identified as having been looted.
Two other business just north of the billiard parlor appear in the La Prensa reporter's list of those that had broken windows, a branch of the Wohlmuth Tailors chain at 157 Lenox Avenue and the Castle Inn at 161 Lenox Avenue. Additional businesses in the area also likely had broken windows, as the La Prensareporter concluded the list by noting that it did not include those that 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 one arrested during the disorder was identified as breaking the store's windows.