429 Lenox Avenue, c. 1939-1941.
1 media/nynyma_rec0040_1_01916_0031_thumb.jpg 2024-05-29T21:04:03+00:00 Stephen Robertson a1bf8804093bc01e94a0485d9f3510bb8508e3bf 1 2 The building had four businesses, two either side of the entrance to the apartments. The two stores to the left of the door are numbered 425 and 427. The stores immediately to the right of the door are 429 and 431. The "Jewelers" sign fits with 427 being Gonzales Jeweler's store. The "Hoisery" sign fits with 429 being Anna Rosenberg's notion store. Source: DOF: Manhattan 1940s Tax Photos (New York City Municipal Archives). plain 2024-05-29T21:04:20+00:00 nynyma_rec0040_1_01916_0031 20180305 090615+0000 Stephen Robertson a1bf8804093bc01e94a0485d9f3510bb8508e3bfThis page has tags:
- 1 2023-12-13T11:08:36+00:00 Anonymous Department of Finance, Manhattan 1940s Tax Photos: Lenox Avenue Anonymous 4 plain 2023-12-13T16:17:17+00:00 Anonymous
This page is referenced by:
-
1
2021-08-26T18:09:31+00:00
Hardware store looted and set on fire
94
plain
2024-05-29T21:05:00+00:00
Sometime during the disorder, the hardware store at 431 Lenox Avenue was looted. Between 11:00 PM and midnight the store was set on fire. So too was the business to the store's left, Anna Rosenberg's notion store at 429 Lenox Avenue. Herbert Canter, who owned the pharmacy several stores to the south, at 419 Lenox Avenue on the corner of West 131st Street, arrived at 11:00 PM to try and protect his business. He remained until 5:00 AM, and testified in the Municipal Court in the trial of Rosenberg's suit for damages from the city that he saw the fire but not who started it. What Canter did report seeing was "a "mob" carrying bricks, stones, and bottles, as well as canned goods, march down the street shouting, "Down with the whites! Let's get what we can," and hurling missiles through store windows. A block north, David Schmoockler, the manager of William Feinstein’s liquor store at 452 Lenox Avenue, also saw a crowd of around thirty people. Between 11:00 PM and midnight he watched as they "created disturbances, hurled various missiles, broke store windows, set fire to some stores, pillaged others, and in general damaged property of various merchants in the locality," according to Justice Shalleck's summary of his testimony in the Municipal Court. A similar narrative of how the store was looted and set on fire was provided in the caption to a photograph from the International News Photo agency taken the next day: "A store at 431 Lenox Avenue was put to the torch after rioters had smashed its windows with missiles and had helped themselves to stock in the windows and the store itself. The interior of the shop was a shambles after rioters had passed, and firemen had extinguished the fire." The photograph was not taken at the time of those events, so the source or reliability of the narrative was uncertain. Another fire reported during the disorder was set just after midnight a block to the south at 400 Lenox Avenue. Firefighters would have been able to get to the stores relatively quickly from the firehouse at 180 West 137th Street. No one arrested for looting was identified as having stolen goods from the store.
A Daily News photograph showed smoke coming out of the store window and doors, and firefighters on the scene fighting the fire. One was swinging an axe at the display window, while a second firefighter stood behind him. A third firefighter was just inside the store, his boots visible beneath the smoke. In the original photograph, cropped from the published version, a hose ran across the photograph to the right in the direction of Rosenberg's notion store. A photograph of the same scene published in the Home News had that hose running to the left in the foreground and another hose going into the hardware store, and three firefighters in the doorway with their backs to the camera. The caption on that photograph misidentified it as a tailor's shop at 429 Lenox Avenue. Two different captions for the Daily News photograph also misidentified the location. The published image is reported as a "tailor shop at 420 Lexington Ave," an address well outside Harlem. The original version from the newspaper's photo morgue (which can be viewed at Getty Images) located the store at 420 Lenox Avenue. The Tax Department photographs of that building make clear that the address was incorrect: those storefronts sit above or below street level accessed by stairs (those buildings also featured in one of Berenice Abbott's 1936 photographs of New York City, which can be viewed in the New York Public Library Digital Collections). Across the street, however, the stores had street level entrances. The Tax Department photograph cataloged as 429 Lenox Avenue showed a six-story building with four store fronts, two either side of the door leading to the apartments on the upper floors. In the MCCH business survey, the beauty salon to the left was listed as 425 Lenox Avenue and the jewelers as 427 Lenox Avenue. The store to the right of the door would therefore be 429; the Hoisery sign visible in the Tax Department photograph confirms that it was Rosenberg's notion store, as hoisery was a name often used for notion stores. The photograph of the store on fire included a portion of the building to the right that matches the windows that would be 431 Lenox Avenue in the Tax Department photograph. (The MCCH business survey, as it did on occasion, jumbled the addresses of the stores next to the jeweler, putting the hardware store at 429 not 431 Lenox Avenue and the stationary store next to it at 431 not 433 Lenox Avenue, and left out Rosenberg's store).
Burned shelves in the window and further inside the store and damaged merchandise were visible in the photograph of the fire. Another Daily News photograph showed the damaged interior of the store the morning after the disorder, and a white man and woman, presumably the owner and his wife, assessing the damage. Boards covering the destroyed windows and the missing glass in the door are visible behind them, together with a white man who appeared to be boarding up the store. Material hanging from the ceiling highlights the damage from the fire. Damaged merchandise covered the floor and the display table in the middle of the store, while the shelves to the right of the couple were still full of stock. Again, the address was misidentified in the caption, this time as 429 Lenox Avenue. However, in the background, the store window can be seen to the left of the door, so on the right from the street side. The Tax Department photograph showed that the doors to the two storefronts are side-by-side, so the store with the window to the right is 431 Lenox Avenue, not 429 Lenox Avenue. The same smashed goods and shelves still full of merchandise were visible, with boarded-up windows and fire damage in the background, in a similar photograph of the damaged store interior published in the Afro-American. The caption to that image identified the business as a hardware store. Two white men stood in the store, the same man in a coat and hat as in the New York Daily News photograph, and a man in a suit and tie. More of the store to the left of the men was visible, showing that the shelves on the wall and the left side of the table in the center have been burned. The fire apparently did not reach much further than the front of the table. A third photograph of the interior, also published in the Afro-American, provided the opposite view, from the door into the store, and showed shelves without any apparent fire damage (the caption gives the store address as 431 Lenox Avenue but misidentified the business as a notion store). The clashes between firefighters and the crowd on the street mentioned in the caption to that photograph were reported by stories in other newspapers as happening at Lash's store a block to the south, not the hardware store.
Two other photographs showed the damaged exterior of the store and the adjacent notion store at 429 Lenox Avenue after the disorder. In an Associated Press photograph, published in the New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, and Afro-American, smashed display windows and doors could be seen in both stores, together with debris piled in front of the hardware store, likely a combination of material from the ceiling and the display window. Notwithstanding the damage to the windows, both stores appeared to still contain significant amounts of merchandise. A police officer and a Black man stood to one side, in front of the distinctive sign of the business to the right of the hardware store seen in other photographs. Patrolmen were stationed outside a number of damaged businesses the day after the disorder so featured in photographs of other locations. The Black man seemed to be posing for the camera, likely at the request of the photographer. A second photograph, published in the Daily Mirror, showed a man on a ladder boarding up the hardware store windows, matching the man and repairs seen in the background of the photograph of the interior damage. (None of the captions to these photographs gave a precise location for the business beyond it being on Lenox Avenue.)
Notwithstanding the damage evident in the photographs, the presence of a hardware store at this address in the MCCH business survey suggested that the store continued to operate in the months after the disorder. The name of the business operating when the Tax Department photograph was taken, between 1939 and 1941, was not visible; the sign did appear to be the one visible in the photograph of the firefighters taken in 1935. -
1
2021-05-05T20:50:05+00:00
Anna Rosenberg's notion store looted and set on fire
74
plain
2024-05-29T21:05:52+00:00
Anna Rosenberg closed her notion store at 429 Lenox Avenue before the disorder reached it. When she returned the next morning, she found the store "in ruins," according to testimony she gave in the Municipal Court reported by the New York Herald Tribune: "most of the merchandise was either destroyed or stolen and the plate glass window had been shattered." As well as being looted, the store had been set on fire. So too was the hardware store to the store's right, at 431 Lenox Avenue. While fires set in stores often accompanied looting, particularly in later racial disorders, only one more was reported, at 400 Lenox Avenue, a block to the south. No one arrested for looting was identified as having stolen goods from Rosenberg's store.
The fire was started sometime between 11:00 PM and midnight. Herbert Canter, who owned the pharmacy five doors down from the notion store, at 419 Lenox Avenue, arrived at 11:00 PM to try and protect his business. He remained until 5:00 AM, and saw the fire but not who started it, according to the reports of his testimony in the Home News and New York Herald Tribune. What Canter did report seeing was "a mob" carrying bricks, stones, and bottles, as well as canned goods march down the street shouting, "Down with the whites! Let's get what we can," and hurling missiles through windows. A block north, David Schmoockler, the manager of William Feinstein’s liquor store at 452 Lenox Avenue, also saw a crowd of around thirty people. Between 11:00 PM and midnight, he watched as the crowd "created disturbances, hurled various missiles, broke store windows, set fire to some stores, pillaged others, and in general damaged property of various merchants in the locality," according to Justice Shalleck's summary of his testimony in the Municipal Court. The fire a block south at 400 Lenox Avenue was started just after midnight. A little over an hour later, Feinstein's liquor store was attacked by a crowd of thirty to forty people.
Photographs of firefighters attempting to put out the fire in the hardware store next door to the notion store offered further evidence of the fire at the notion store. Cropped from the version published in the Daily News, but visible in the original photograph, a hose runs in the direction of Rosenberg's notion store to the left, indicating a fire in that direction. (The captions to both versions provided an incorrect address for the location. Details in the image identified it as 431 Lenox Avenue.) A photograph of the same scene published in the Home News also included that hose running to the left in the foreground. In addition, two photographs taken the next day focused on the hardware store captured glimpses of the damage to the exterior of the notion store. Part of the storefront appeared on the left of an Associated Press photograph, with no glass and merchandise in its display window. Damage to the exterior wall below the window could be the result of the fire. Inside the store is an L-shaped counter on which a range of different goods are stacked (which distinguished the notion store from the hardware store next to it, which had a central display table). There may be some damaged items on the ground, but neither the ceiling nor the shelves and counter showed the fire damage visible in the store to the right. The whole storefront appeared in a second photograph, published in the Daily Mirror, to the left of a man on a ladder boarding up the hardware store windows. Unfortunately, details are not visible in the microfilm copy of the image.
Rosenberg had a policy covering her store with Royal Insurance. Their fire adjuster's appraisal put the cost of the damage at $980.13. However, the insurance policy did not cover damage resulting from a riot. As a result, Rosenberg joined other white merchants in suing the city for damages on the basis of the failure of police to protect their businesses. The New York Herald Tribune reported Royal Insurance was "a co-defendant with the city in the case," although the basis for the claim against the city was that a riot had taken place, at odds with the basis for an insurance claim. Defending the city, Aaron Arnold, an assistant corporation counsel, denied that a riot had taken place and maintained that the fire was unrelated to the disorder. The jury did not agree; they awarded Rosenberg $804.
The attacks on Rosenberg's store were mentioned only in stories about the Municipal Court trial in the New York Herald Tribune, Home News, New York American, and Times Union, with the later two stories not reporting any testimony, and obliquely in captions to the photographs.
Given that the court award covered the bulk of her losses, Rosenberg likely was able to remain in business after the disorder. The MCCH business survey did not include a notion store at 429 Lenox Avenue in the second half of 1935, but instead white-owned hardware and grocery stores. However, based on the Tax department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941, the investigator appeared to have mixed up addresses, as happened for other blocks in the survey, locating the hardware store at number 429, not 431 Lenox Avenue and the stationary store next to it at number 431, not 433 Lenox Avenue. Visible in the photograph was a hoisery store — a name often used for notion stores — that seems likely to be Rosenberg's business, still operating, at 429 Lenox Avenue. -
1
2022-07-14T17:08:00+00:00
11:30 PM to 12:00 AM
50
plain
2024-05-29T21:18:24+00:00
While violence continued on 8th Avenue and 7th Avenue north of 125th Street, it appeared to intensify on Lenox Avenue and on 7th Avenue south of 125th Street. When Deputy Chief Inspector McAuliffe, in charge of uniformed police in the borough of Manhattan, was driven through Harlem just before midnight, he saw “thousands of persons were staying in the streets late,” although he judged that “most of them appeared to be spectators.”
As an ambulance from Knickerbocker Hospital traveling down 7th Avenue arrived at 117th Street to treat Alice Gordon, groups in the area continued to attack white individuals they encountered on the street and turned their violence against white businesses. Around 11:30 PM, William Burkhard, a forty-three-year-old white man, alleged a group of Black men assaulted him around a block north of where Gordon had been attacked. He too suffered lacerations to his face before apparently escaping east along West 118th Street. It was midway along that block that the crew of an ambulance from Bellevue Hospital treated him. Burkhard, like Gordon, was a long way from home, which in his case was 533 East 12th Street at the opposite end of Manhattan. Police were in the area but evidently not in the vicinity of the attack as they made no arrests. Some officers did intervene as groups in the area turned their attention to white-owned businesses. However, police found it difficult to — or perhaps were not concerned to — distinguish those attacking stores from residents watching events on the street. Five or so people who threw objects at the windows of Mario Pravia’s candy store near the corner of West 118th Street were among those beginning to seek merchandise rather than targeting businesses with violence. As the Uruguayan-born Pravia and his German wife Gertrude watched from inside the store, the window shattered and some of those outside reached in and took merchandise. Officer Harmon and Detective Harry Wolf also saw the windows broken and arrived at the store in time to arrest Amie Taylor, a twenty-one-year-old Black butcher. The officers claimed to have seen Taylor throw a stone and reach into the window and take something. They found eighteen packets of chewing gum, valued at 3 cents each, in his possession. However, Taylor was likely part of the crowds on 7th Avenue into which those who had been attacking the candy store fled when police approached, as he was ultimately acquitted of the charges Harmon and Wolf made against him. He may have come from his home eight blocks to the south at 1800 7th Avenue to investigate the noise and disorder rather than from 125th Street.
Windows were also broken in Ralph Sirico’s shoe repair store a block north at 1985 7th Avenue. Among those on the street near the store was C. T. Berkeley, the superintendent of the apartments above the business. He did not recognize those who threw objects at the store. Soon after, two men climbed through the broken windows and began to throw merchandise out on to the street. In all, “18 or 20 hats which had been cleaned and blocked by [Sirico]; about 25 pair of shoes which he had repaired; 5 or 6 pairs of unfinished shoes; one dozen leather soles; two and a half dozen rubber heels and a quantity of polish and shoe laces” were taken. Attacks likely also began on the branch of the Butler grocery store chain in the block between Pravia’s candy store and Sirico’s shoe store that was also looted during the disorder. Not until later, around midnight when observers recognized the outbreak of looting, would merchandise likely begin to be taken from the stores whose windows were broken in the blocks between West 118th Street and West 125th Street.
Across 125th Street, crowds were moving up 7th Avenue, watched by residents, like Marshall Pfifer, gathered on the sidewalks and by police radio cars patrolling the avenues. Groups likely continued to break windows in white businesses, but police made no arrests and details of exactly what was happening are lacking. The situation on 8th Avenue was even less clear. Some of the looting in the blocks immediately north of 125th Street may have occurred around this time, and police may have made arrests in response, although more likely that would not happen until after midnight as part of the outbreak of looting noted by observers. Julius Narditch, a thirty-four-year-old white man did report being “jumped” by three black men on 8th Avenue near 147th Street. While such an attack was in keeping with the violence of the disorder, the location was well beyond the area where crowds were on the street at this time. In fact, there was no evidence of any other incidents related to the disorder north of 145th Street. Narditch reported the alleged assault to police, so it was in the records they shared with journalists. However, there was no indication that police limited the cases they included to incidents that they could link to the disorder. Rather than an element of the disorder, the assault on Narditch is better seen as a reminder that attacks on whites visiting Harlem were not limited to the disorder.
While there were crowds on 7th and 8th Avenues north of 125th Street, it was on Lenox Avenue that the violence was centered by this time, likely drawing a greater police presence that contributed to the lack of information about what was happening elsewhere. The group around 131st and 132nd Streets increased the violence of their attacks on white-owned businesses. With windows broken, some of those on the street began taking merchandise from the displays. Some went further, setting fire to Anna Rosenberg’s notion shop at 429 Lenox Avenue and the adjacent hardware store. Those efforts were somewhat at odds with the attempts of others to get items that they needed but lacked the money to buy, contradictory endeavors that highlighted the variety of people now on the streets. While the fires could have been lit only after the businesses had been emptied of merchandise, the episodic nature of most looting in the disorder made it unlikely the stores had been ransacked so quickly. More likely, they had been set on fire as an extension of efforts to destroy white-owned property. Once started, the fires drew crowds, with more residents coming on to the street when the response of the Fire Department added another set of sirens to the noise. While the closest fire company was at 180 West 137th Street, near the intersection with 7th Avenue, fire trucks likely also came from companies outside Harlem as white journalists and photographers were also at the scene of the fire. Uniformed police and detectives converged to manage the crowd. Spectators pressing forward to see the fire got in the way of firefighters, encounters sensationalized in the New York Evening Journal and New York Herald Tribune as efforts to prevent them from putting out the fire were accompanied by chants of “Let them burn.” While the fires were extinguished, the attention they drew let other groups attack and loot surrounding businesses with less interference from police arriving in the area. David Schmoockler, the manager of William Feinstein’s liquor store, watched as police drove groups attacking stores from one side of the street only to have them rush to the other side and continue to break windows in Estelle Cohen’s clothing store, the Gonzales jewelry store, and likely other businesses in the block.
Two blocks south on Lenox Avenue between 128th and 129th Streets, the situation had changed such that forty-eight-year-old Russian-born Benjamin Zelvin was unwilling to close and leave his jewelry business as his neighbor Louis Levy had done only half an hour earlier. Instead, he boarded up the windows to protect them and the stock inside, called the police station, and waited half an hour for officers to arrive, before he left his store at 372 Lenox Avenue. Such precautions indicated Zelvin likely had seen more people than usual on the streets, at least some of whom attacked white men and women they encountered. A group attacked William Ken, a white man going into the bar and grill where he worked, the Blue Heaven Restaurant, just two storefronts north of Zelvin’s business. Two unnamed Black coworkers intervened, pulling Ken inside before he was injured, and convincing the group to move on. Zelvin had likely also seen or heard windows being broken in nearby businesses. It was likely around this time that a window was broken in the grocery store across the street at 371 Lenox Avenue, leading the thirty-six-year-old Russian-born owner Irving Stekin to also call police (he waited two hours for officers to respond). The Peace Food Market south of Zelvin's jewelry store and the South Harlem Rotisserie and a laundry on the other side of Lenox Avenue would suffer damage. Michael D’Agostino’s business at 361 Lenox Avenue, Irving Stekin’s second business at 363 Lenox Avenue, and the Romanoff Drug store on that side of the street would also be looted, as would businesses owned by Samuel Mestetzky and Irving Guberman just around the corner on West 129th Street, although efforts to take merchandise likely had not yet begun. It was likely that the four Black-owned businesses on this block were not targeted. That the Chinese owners of the laundry at 367 Lenox Avenue reportedly put a sign in their windows that read "Me Colored Too," emulating those displayed by some Black businesses, suggests that they saw Black-owned businesses being spared from attacks.
Benjamin Zelvin could also have heard glass shattering in the block south of his store between 127th and 128th Streets. Groups coming from 125th Street and residents on the street could have moved into this block to avoid the police officers who had recently arrested Julian Rogers a block further south at 333 Lenox Avenue between 126th and 127th Street. Detective Perretti likely arrested two twenty-eight-year-old Black men on the northwest corner of 127th Street around this time. He allegedly had seen Arthur Bennett and James Bright throw stones through the window of a drug store at 339 Lenox Avenue. Other officers must have been with the detective for both men to have been arrested at the same time. On the block north of the drug store, businesses at 348 Lenox Avenue owned by Michael D’Agostino, Jack Stern and Sam Apuzzo, a grocery store at 340 Lenox Avenue, the cleaners across the street at 347 Lenox Avenue, an unknown store at 345 Lenox, Louis Levy’s store, and Harry Schwartz's laundry just off the avenue on West 128th Street, at least, would have windows broken during the disorder. It likely took until later for the windows to be damaged enough for some of those on the street to begin to reach into the displays and enter the stores to take merchandise.
Although beyond earshot of Zelvin, attacks on businesses close to 125th Street continued. Objects thrown at George’s Lunch and Harry Piskin’s laundry on 126th Street did further damage to their windows even as more police began to arrive on Lenox Avenue. Windows likely also continued to be targeted in the blocks of Lenox Avenue south of 125th Street. With few businesses in the blocks below 123rd Street, and few police apparently present, the groups in this area may have continued to focus their violence in the blocks immediately south of 125th Street. Bricks did continue to be thrown through the windows of Mrs. Salefas' delicatessen on the corner of 123rd Street, given that she spent some time in the rear of her shop taking shelter. Even if those attacks had started around 11:00 PM, they could still have been occurring around 11:30 PM. -
1
2022-02-09T03:39:49+00:00
Gonzales' jewelry store windows broken
15
plain
2024-05-29T21:06:28+00:00
Sometime during the disorder, windows were broken in L. S. Gonzales' jewelers and watch repair store at 427 Lenox Avenue. The business was in the same building as two of the stores set on fire during the disorder, Anna Rosenberg's notion store at 429 Lenox Avene and a hardware store at 431 Lenox Avenue. The jeweler was likely damaged between 11:00 PM and midnight when a crowd "created disturbances, hurled various missiles, broke store windows, set fire to some stores, pillaged others, and in general damaged property of various merchants in the locality," according to Justice Shalleck's summary of testimony in the Municipal Court. No one arrested during the disorder was identified as being charged with breaking the store's windows.
Lieutenant Samuel Battle, New York City's most senior Black police officer, mentioned the damage to the jeweler's store when he testified in the MCCH's first public hearing on March 30, 1935. Asked if the crowds made any distinction between white-owned and Black-owned stores, he answered that Gonzales, his jeweler, had his window broken. On the larger question of the attitude of the crowd, Battle first said "there was no distinction." However, when asked "Are you sure there was no distinction made?" he answered "In many cases, if they knew it was colored, they passed the shop up." Battle's testimony is the only report of damage to the store.
Gonzales' store was recorded in the MCCH business survey at 427 Lenox Avenue. Mentions of the store in the New York Age gave the address as 429 Lenox Avenue, a building that had four storefronts. Gonzales had operated the store for sixteen years. A story, accompanied by a photograph of Gonzales, in the New York Age in 1922, just over two years after he opened the business, identified him as a Cuban immigrant. In 1935 he had one regular Black employee. Interviewed by MCCH staff, he said that in the last three or four years, during the Depression, repair work comprised most of his business, with jobs not collected his biggest difficulty. Gonzales summed up Black business as "nothing," a situation that would not improve until Black unemployment was solved. In keeping with that perception, the MCCH staff member recorded that he "Apparently takes a great deal of interest in community welfare and has been closely engaged in recent picketing activities on 125th Street." A story in the New York Amsterdam News identified Gonzales as having served as the president of the Business and Professional Men's Forum in the 1930s, participating in a campaign to promote Black business, and in 1938, joining the newspaper's drive to get Harlem's businesses to hire Black workers. Gonzales appears to have still been in business when the Tax Department photograph was taken, between 1939 and 1941, as a sign identifying 427 Lenox Avenue as a jeweler is visible.