Alfonso Principe's saloon [The Harlem Grill], 2140 7th Avenue, c.1939-1941.
1 media/nynyma_rec0040_1_01933_0029_thumb.jpg 2024-05-29T03:39:06+00:00 Stephen Robertson a1bf8804093bc01e94a0485d9f3510bb8508e3bf 1 2 Source: DOF: Manhattan 1940s Tax Photos (New York City Municipal Archives) plain 2024-05-29T03:39:38+00:00 nynyma_rec0040_1_01933_0029 20180308 085306+0000 Stephen Robertson a1bf8804093bc01e94a0485d9f3510bb8508e3bfThis page has tags:
- 1 2023-12-13T11:08:55+00:00 Anonymous Department of Finance, Manhattan 1940s Tax Photos: 7th Avenue Anonymous 4 plain 2023-12-13T16:17:45+00:00 Anonymous
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Around 10:30 PM, Louise Thompson left her friend’s home and returned to the streets, walking along West 118th Street to 7th Avenue and then north back to 125th Street. She would have passed groups coming in the opposite direction from 125th Street and likely others emerging from the surrounding residences to see what was happening and in some cases to join in the violence. Thompson would also have encountered police deploying from 125th Street, including some radio cars on patrol. At this time the number of police in the area would still have been small. When some officers tried to disperse people gathered at 121st Street, they quickly ran into trouble. Details are sparse, but for some reason the officers began shooting. They were only a block south of where Anthony Cados alleged he had been assaulted by Black assailants minutes earlier, so they may have encountered a group of people unwilling to accept being pushed and hit with batons. Or, being outnumbered, the officers may have decided to try to get people to move by firing in the air, a common tactic, and when that did not work, started firing at those on the street. The account of a group of police pushed to defend themselves by a threatening crowd that shot back at them, published in the New York Evening Journal to justify that shooting, drew on the repertoire of sensational tropes that publication employed rather than reports of what happened. Police officers in Harlem did not feel any need for such justifications to shoot at Black New Yorkers. One shot hit Lyman Quarterman, a thirty-four-year-old Black man, in the abdomen. The wound was serious enough for police to release a report that Quarterman had been killed, which multiple newspapers published. In fact, he was alive but would be hospitalized for at least three weeks. This would not have been the only occasion on which police would have discharged their guns as they ranged over Harlem attempting to clear people from the streets. Gunshots joined the sirens of police vehicles and ambulances, the crash of breaking glass and the shouts of groups on the street in announcing the intensification and spread of the disorder.
While Louise Thompson walked toward 125th Street, groups again broke through the police cordon at the intersection with 7th Avenue. The target for most was the Kress store down the block, but objects were thrown at the windows of other white businesses between the corner and the store. Among the damaged stores were likely Myladys shop, the W. T. Grant department store, McCrory and Woolworths 5 & 10 cent stores, and Chock Full O'Nuts restaurant on the south side of the street, and the Conrad Schmidt Music Shop, Adler Shoes, Scheer Clothing, Howard Suits, Minks Haberdashery, Savon Clothes store, Young's Hat Store, Willow Cafeteria, General Stationery & Supplies store, and United Cigar store on the north side. In front of the W.T. Grant store, an object also struck the head of Thomas Wijstem, a thirty-four-year-old white carpenter, knocking him unconscious. Unlike earlier in the evening, there were now enough police to make arrests in response to those attacks. Douglas Cornelius, a twenty-four-year-old Black man, was arrested for assaulting Wijstem, Claude Jones, a twenty-four-year-old Black musician, for breaking a window at the Blumstein department store, and William Ford, a seventeen-year-old Black laborer, for breaking a window at the Kress store. But there were not enough police to apprehend others involved in each of those attacks, let alone prevent the violence. At the Kress store, however, only one window was broken despite a “very large” crowd reportedly gathering. A significant number of police were still stationed there — and it was the headquarters for the senior officers directing the police response. These clashes could also have been when twenty-eight-year-old Andrew Lyons was hit on the head by a police baton, an injury that would eventually kill him.
While the smashing glass made clear that white businesses were the targets of those on 125th Street, the two patrolmen who arrested Jones and Ford both claimed that they had yelled threats against police. They may have been embellishing the charges against the men to make them more compelling to magistrates and judges; certainly no police officers were injured at the time, which would have been expected if they had actually been targeted. It was possible that Wijstem had been mistaken for a police officer. Detectives in plainclothes were now among those on the streets. Police practice in response to riots was to deploy plainclothes officers outside cordons among crowds to identify the individuals creating disorder.
At least one detective, Peter Naton, was outside the police cordon at the intersection of 125th and 7th Avenue at this time. When he saw a crowd of twenty-five to thirty people gathering, he "announced himself as a police officer," necessary since he was not in uniform, and told the group to "move on." John King, a twenty-eight-year-old Black fish and ice dealer, allegedly responded by yelling "I won't move for you this is my Harlem, and we will put that Kress store out of business and punish that man that injured the child." It would hardly have been the first time Naton had heard those sentiments expressed that evening, and they alone would not have justified arresting King. But the detective claimed that King grabbed hold of the billy club in his hand and broke its strap. If King actually did so, it was likely because Naton was hitting him with the club. It was just as likely that the detective arrested King to get him off the street, an option now available to police due to the increased number of officers in the area. The police presence also allowed Naton to quickly process King; the detective would be back at the intersection within half an hour.
A bus traveling up 7th Avenue bound for Boston arrived at 125th Street around this time as it encountered large crowds, "men, women and policemen rushing all around" according to the driver, Joseph Dawber. Then he heard gunfire and bullets began to hit the side of the bus. The twenty or so passengers on board ducked down or dropped to the floor. Eleven bullets holes would be found in the bus. While none of those rounds reached inside, a brick thrown at the left rear window did. Joseph Rinaldi, a white wrestler from Brooklyn traveling to a match in New Bedford, was cut on the face and right wrist by the shattered glass. The brick itself landed by Helen Travis and caused her to faint in shock. With no reports of shots fired by the residents on the streets, the bullets had likely come from police guns being fired in efforts to disperse the crowd. Dawber saw officers with revolvers in their hands in the police radio cars that went by the bus as he tried to navigate the large crowd. He followed those cars up 7th Avenue, avoiding people who had spilled from the sidewalk into the street. It took ten minutes for the bus to get through the crowds. The residents it passed by would have been aware that all the buses traveling through Harlem had white drivers and that this intercity bus likely had white passengers. Throwing objects at it was an attack both on white property and white individuals. It was also possible that at least some of the objects that hit the bus were intended for other targets as was the case with the police bullets.
The Boston-bound bus passed groups on 7th Avenue north of the intersection who continued to break windows in stores and some who had begun to take items from those window displays. Looting did not appear to yet be widespread, perhaps because staff remained in at least some stores. The manager of the Harlem Grill on the corner of 127th Street reported two more windows broken around this time, so he at least was still present. Just over $450 of stock would be taken from the saloon, but that seems to have occurred later as the manager mentioned it separately. The window of the auto supply store, abandoned by Eisenberg and his staff around 9:00 PM, by contrast, had been cleared of merchandise by 11:00 PM, when Howard Malloy walked by on his way to 128th Street. The unidentified businesses owned by Abe Mohr and Joseph Cohen on the east side of 7th Avenue between 126th and 127th Street could also have been looted around this time.
To the west, on 8th Avenue, both crowds and police arrived at least as far south as 122nd Street. There were not yet reports of looting there; instead attacks on white men and store windows continued. Max Newman, a thirty-six-year-old white man, closing his grocer’s store at 2274 8th Avenue for the night, allegedly encountered a group of Black men. He claimed they beat him around the head, leaving him with cuts and bruises on his forehead. An ambulance called to the scene treated Newman's injuries, but there were evidently no police nearby to respond to the attack.
Officers were on the opposite side of 8th Avenue around the same time, however, when an ashcan was thrown through the window of the Lokos clothing store at 2275 8th Avenue. Ashcans could be found on the street, like the rocks and bricks most often thrown at windows, but obviously were larger and did more damage to a window. Several patrolmen must have been driving by or had arrived as two men were arrested in front of the store, with others likely getting away. One of those arrested, William Norris, a twenty-two-year-old Black man, lived on 122nd Street a block east of the store, so may have initially come to the corner to see what was happening. Charles Wright, the other person arrested, a Black man of the same age as Norris, was homeless. While there would be only one more reported event on 8th Avenue south of 125th Street during the disorder, the area may not have been quiet. All the lack of reports means for certain is that the attention of police and journalists was focused elsewhere. But residents too might have been drawn to other parts of Harlem, where there were larger businesses and a greater Black population.
On the other side of 125th Street, crowds on 8th Avenue appear to have continued to break windows. By this time, those on the street, like those on 7th Avenue, would have been a mix of groups coming from 125th Street and residents drawn by the rumors and the noise. It was likely around this time that Rose Murrell, a nineteen-year-old Black woman, allegedly threw a stone that broke a window in a grocery store at 2366 8th Avenue on the intersection with 127th Street. She lived nearby, in the block of 126th Street between 8th and 7th Avenues, so could have either come to the street to see what was happening or have gone earlier to 125th Street in response to hearing rumors about events in the Kress store and been among those coming up 8th Avenue. The business was just over a block north of the stores whose windows were likely broken in the previous half an hour. Patrolmen were now on 8th Avenue, some likely in radio cars patrolling the street. Officer Libman, from the 32nd Precinct based to the north on 135th Street, arrested Murrell. A single arrest from the crowd of people likely around the store was a sign that few police were close enough to respond to the breaking glass. Libman, however, would be involved in the arrest of three other people in this area, so may have been stationed there. At least one of those arrests was also for breaking windows, but as the business was located several blocks further north between 130th and 131st Streets, it likely did not occur until the violence had spread further. While businesses in the surrounding blocks of 8th Avenue would be looted, there was no evidence that merchandise was taken before the widespread turn to looting nearer midnight.
For the first time, people began to move east on 125th Street toward Lenox Avenue, some breaking windows in the white-owned businesses as they went. The Regal Shoe Store on the southeast corner of 7th Avenue was undamaged when the assistant manager closed the business at 10:00 PM (having remained open throughout the clashes between crowds on the street and police on the other side of 7th Avenue). Windows were broken sometime soon after. So likely were windows in the Sylvia Dress shop in the next building, in the Hobbs Dress shop located a building further east, and in the Busch Kredit jewelry store in the middle of the block. The branch of the Liggitt's pharmacy on the southeast corner of 125th Street and Lenox Avenue may also have had windows broken at this time as all those facing north, on West 125th Street were smashed. That was the extent of the damage reported, suggesting that this block did not suffer the sustained attacks on businesses seen a block to the west. To the contrary, some stores suffered no damage at all, notably the Koch department store, despite its wide expanse of display windows. In contrast to its counterparts on the block to the west, that store had hired black staff in response to the campaigns of the previous year. The manager attributed his store being undamaged to that decision and called that "action of the mob" "one of the finest tributes that could be paid Koch's." The limited damage could also have been the result of fewer people passing along the street during the disorder. The violence that would soon break out on Lenox Avenue appeared to be the work of people coming out on to that street from the surrounding residences more often than groups coming from around the Kress store.
However, the first business on Lenox Avenue reported to be attacked, Toby’s Men’s shop on the northwest corner of 125th Street, likely was targeted by groups coming from 7th Avenue. It was still open around 10:30 PM when eight Black men burst in and started threatening the owner, Morris Towbin and a clerk named Cy Bear, knocking over fixtures and stealing clothing. The two staff retreated into the basement. Very few of those involved in the disorder went as far as directly confronting staff and robbing them. The men who did so likely were more accustomed to breaking the law than most of those on the streets at the time. The man later arrested with merchandise from the store in his possession, a twenty-six-year-old Black laborer named Edward Larry, did have multiple convictions for pickpocketing and theft, which set him apart from most of those taken into custody. However, the extensive damage and large loss of merchandise that the store suffered could not have been the work of the group who burst in alone. The intersection of 125th Street and Lenox Avenue would later be the site of several assaults and attacks on other businesses. Some of those who came to the area also targeted Toby’s Men’s shop as all of its display windows were broken and most of their contents removed. Towbin, however, was not present for those attacks and looting. After the group that burst into the store left, he emerged from the basement and headed to the 28th Precinct on West 123rd Street to report the robbery. Although he would be there for at least the next two and a half hours, Towbin was as unsuccessful as most of his counterparts in securing help from the police.
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Around 9:00 PM, soon after a window was broken in the Willow Cafeteria, Louise Thompson saw a group of people break through the police cordon on the corner of 125th Street and 7th Avenue. She had thought police had established some order at the intersection. Their cordon had prevented groups from going along the street to the Kress store, while officers in front of Herbert’s Blue Diamond Jewelry store on the east side had protected that business from further damage. As a result, Thompson had watched frustrated groups leave the area and move north and south on 7th Avenue. But then “another group broke through the police cordons and swept down to Kress’s once again,” and as Thompson watched, they “broke some windows.” Bricks hit the windows of Young’s Hat Store, the second store west of the corner at 201 West 125th Street. The hat store was in the same building as the Willow Cafeteria on the north side of the street. At least some of the broken windows in the four other stores in that building, the United Cigar store on the corner, the Minks Haberdashery next to it and the Savon Clothes store and General Stationery & Supplies store between the hat store and cafeteria, were likely the result of attacks at this time. Further west on that side of the street, in the building at 213-217 West 125th Street, on the other side of the Harlem Opera House, all four businesses — the Conrad Schmidt Music Shop, Adler Shoes, Scheer Clothing, Howard Suits — had windows broken during the disorder, some likely at this time. That may be as far as group who got past police made it along 125th Street before police pushed them back to the corners. Beyond that building were the Empire Savings Bank and Loew's Victoria Theatre. No stores west of the theater suffered significant damage other than those on the corner of 8th Avenue. A clerk in Young’s Hat Store reported that its windows were broken “right out,” hit repeatedly until little glass remained. With the glass gone, the merchandise displayed in the window was accessible to people on the street, and some of those hats were taken. There was no other evidence of merchandise being taken at this time, with most groups on the streets then apparently focused on breaking windows, and few store windows yet as damaged as those of the hat store.
Businesses, however, were no longer the only targets of violence. Three white men were also injured around this time near 125th Street, allegedly attacked by groups of Black men. All could have been on 125th Street making their way home, shopping or seeking entertainment, as they lived just west of Harlem, like the white man injured about thirty minutes earlier. Fifty-six-year-old Morris Werner received medical attention for a stab wound that he claimed was the result of being attacked by “by several unknown colored men” near the southwest corner of 125th Street and 7th Avenue. While typical of violence prosecuted as assault at other times in 1935, the injury was one of only two stabbings among the fifty-four assaults that would be reported in the disorder. Louise Thompson, with a group on that corner, did not mention such an assault. Nor did any of the journalists in the area write about it or police arrest anyone for being responsible. Werner may not have been the only white man injured at that intersection around this time. Three of the white journalists gathered by the police perimeter there suffered injuries. Harry Johnson, who worked for the New York American, was reportedly beaten by three Black men, leaving him with injuries to his face that required him to call his editors and ask them to send another reporter to take his place. Everett Breuer, a Daily News photographer, and James Martin, his assistant, were reportedly hit in the face by rocks as they took images of a group of Black men and women in the island in the middle of 7th Avenue. Those forms of violence were typical during the disorder, unlike Werner’s stab wounds. In neither case did police arrest anyone.
At the other end of the block of 125th Street on which the Kress store was located, two additional white men suffered injuries. Maurice Spellman received medical attention for cuts around his right eye that he said were the result of being attacked by several Black men around 9:00 PM at 8th Avenue and 125th Street. Groups of people had gathered there trying to get to the Kress store, but, as with the alleged assault on Werner, no journalist wrote about the attack, nor did police arrest anyone. At the same time a block further west on St. Nicholas Avenue up at 127th Street, Timothy Murphy, a twenty-nine-year-old rock driller on his way home, was knocked to the ground and hit and kicked by a group of Black men. He claimed one of those men said, “You white son-of-a-bitch, take it now,” a phrase that offered little explanation for the violence. While it referenced Murphy’s race, it did not make clear that was why he had been attacked let alone make any connection to rumors about a boy beaten or killed at the Kress store. There were few businesses in the area, so it was not somewhere groups would have come to break store windows. Rumors from 125th Street, however, would have reached residents.
Police witnessed the attack on Murphy unlike the other alleged assaults on white men at this time. Patrolman George Conn, in a radio car on its way to 125th Street, saw a group of around ten men gathered around Murphy. Jumping out of the car, Conn drew his pistol and fired a shot in the air to disperse the group as he ran toward them. As the men scattered, he fired a second shot at the group, hitting Paul Boyett, a twenty-year-old Black garage worker, in his right shoulder. Despite the wound, Boyett kept running toward his home, only a few buildings away at 310 West 127th Street. Conn caught up to him in the hallway and arrested Boyett despite his insistence that he was “an innocent onlooker” drawn to the disturbance who had not hit or kicked Murphy. Later, a trial jury did accept Boyett’s explanation and acquitted him. No one else was arrested for the assault on Murphy, who suffered cuts and bruises to his head, face and body, and a broken nose.
Somewhere on 125th Street, another police officer also responded to an assault on a white man around this time. Detective William Boyle attempted to “rescue an unknown white man being assaulted.” That man was likely having bricks and rocks thrown at him, as Boyle was hit in the left ankle. They may be the two men in a photograph published by the Daily News. By 9:15 PM, Boyle was in the 28th Precinct station on West 123rd Street. Dr. Sayet, who earlier in the day had treated the Kress store staff bitten by Lino Rivera, arrived in an ambulance from Harlem Hospital at that time to treat Boyle’s cuts and bruises. The detective then remained on duty. Columbia University student Hector Donnelly's experience suggests that Detective Boyle was not alone in intervening to prevent encounters between white pedestrians and Black residents from escalating into assaults. He reported being hit on the shoulder by a milk bottle while walking on West 135th Street and Lenox Avenue having gone to the neighborhood unaware of the disorder. As several members of the crowd on the street then moved toward him, he knew he was "in for it." A policeman came running, however, and dragged Donnelly away. Although the officer told him, "You better stay out of here," the white student met a reporter he knew so decided to stay "to watch the excitement." He remained despite further warnings from police until he "got into more trouble." A group of four or five men bumped him as they passed him on the sidewalk and then stopped and continued to push him. Again, a police officer came and "broke up the trouble." After that encounter, Donnelly decided that he needed to leave the neighborhood.
There would have been many more white men and women on the streets around 125th Street at this time than those identified as being assaulted, even though they were far outnumbered by Black residents. The presence of white men and women on West 125th Street and the nearby blocks of the avenues was nothing out of the ordinary, as can be seen in a photograph of the corner of West 125th Street and 7th Avenue taken in 1938. Columbia University student Hector Donnelly, unaware of the disorder, would not have been alone in going to the area that evening as usual. The small number of the white men and women in the area who were assaulted indicates that groups who directed violence at white individuals rather than white-owned businesses were a very small portion of those reacting to events at the Kress store. That violence occurred in the midst of the disorder; only those who attacked Timothy Murphy may have sought out someone to assault. The others encountered white men while focused on 125th Street and the Kress store. While at odds with later claims that the disorder was targeted at property, these attacks were in keeping with sentiments Thompson and Moss heard expressed in the crowds trying to get to the Kress store. That those rumored to have been involved in the boy’s death were white men mattered to at least some of Harlem’s Black residents, who directed their anger toward white individuals as well as white property. Crucially, unlike the disorders of subsequent decades, that anger would have found targets among the significant numbers of white New Yorkers who in 1935 still frequented as well as worked in the businesses around 125th Street.
While people on the four corners of 8th Avenue and 125th Street had not yet begun to move away and break windows at the time of the alleged attacks on the two white men, at the other end of the block more windows were being broken on 7th Avenue. On the northwest corner of 127th Street, around 9:00 PM, a window was broken in the saloon, next to the grocery store damaged a few minutes earlier. Three more windows were broken in the tailor and cleaning store in the middle of that block that had had a window broken earlier. As was the case earlier, those attacks do not appear to be the actions of a crowd acting together, but of small groups and individuals. They could have been the same people who had thrown objects at windows on this block earlier, or those people could have moved on and been replaced by others coming from or to 125th Street. There was still no evidence that police were in the area to deter or respond to these attacks. The white owners and staff of those businesses were still present; there was no indication that they were targeted by those breaking windows.
Fourteen blocks south of 125th Street, Lino Rivera left his home, where he had been since leaving the Kress store, at 9:00 PM. He had a cup of coffee somewhere relatively close by, where he saw “a lot of trouble around.” Whatever was happening likely involved some of the people that Carlton Moss had described people going south on 7th Avenue from 125th Street beginning around 8:30 PM. However, Rivera did not hear any explanation for the “trouble” that connected it with what had happened to him hours earlier. Perhaps still wary after that experience, he decided to cut short his plans for the evening, and returned home before 9:30 PM.
As Rivera was arriving home, Louise Thompson also decided to leave the streets and go to the home of a friend. For her, however, it was the lack of “trouble” and the diminishing number of people at 125th Street and 7th Avenue that appear to have prompted that decision. Police had cleared 125th Street of those who broke through the cordon half an hour earlier, and groups of people unable to reach the Kress store again began to disperse up and down 7th Avenue. Thompson likely joined those going south on 7th Avenue; when she returned about an hour later, it would be at 7th Avenue and 118th Street. -
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Alfonso Principe's saloon looted
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Around 9:00 PM, an object thrown from the street broke the first window in the Harlem Grill, a saloon at 2140 7th Avenue, the manager, Louis Fata, told James Tartar, an investigator for the MCCH. Over an hour later, between 10 and 11:00 PM, more objects thrown at the saloon broke two more windows. At some point in the evening, individuals went further into the business, stealing "about $700" of stock, Fata estimated. Further examination clearly revealed fewer losses, as when the owner Alfonso Principe filed a claim for damages, he asked for only $453.90, according to the New York Sun and New York Amsterdam News. Tartar also recorded information from the white owners of four of the other six occupied stores on this block of 7th Avenue, between West 127th Street and West 128th Street. They reported windows broken sometime between 8:45 PM and 11:00 PM, and stock losses ranging from $33 at the cigar store at 2154 7th Avenue, $200 at the grocery store next to the saloon at 2140 7th Avenue, and $150 at the cleaning company at 2152 7th Avenue, to $850 at the auto equipment store at 2152 7th Avenue. None of those neighboring storeowners were among the twenty-seven identified as suing the city for failing to protect their businesses, but an additional eighty-five who brought suits were not identified. The Black-owned Cozy Shoppe at 2154 7th Avenue, on the corner of 128th Street, was undamaged; someone from that store had written "Colored Shoppe" on the store window. Tartar included the "Cozy Shop" on his drawing of the block, together with a Black-owned beauty parlor to the left of the auto equipment store, but neither appear in his list of looted businesses, suggesting the beauty parlor may also have been undamaged.
When crowds that had been focused on the block of West 125th Street housing Kress' store began moving to other parts of Harlem, the blocks immediately north on 7th Avenue were among their first targets. The saloon sat on the corner of 7th Avenue and West 127th Street, so only two blocks from where the disorder began. As they had on West 125th Street, people threw objects at the windows of white stores, at whites on the streets, and around 11:00 PM, at a passing Fifth Avenue Company bus, and later looted stores. The time the crowds appeared was early enough in the evening that most of the stores would still have been open for business, or at least still staffed, as the saloon apparently was. That all those interviewed by Tartar could give a time when people threw objects that broke their store windows indicates they were present. Someone was also present in the Cozy Shoppe to write on its window that it was a "Colored Shoppe." It is not clear if the white business were occupied when they were looted. Tartar recorded the value of the stock stolen from their stores, suggesting that looting may have happened some time after windows were broken, as more general narratives in the press relate. Crowds smashed windows in stores on the opposite side of the street apparently without looting them around 9:45 PM, when a police officer arrested Leroy Brown for urging a group of people to follow his lead after he threw a tailor's dummy through a window. No one arrested for looting is identified as having stolen goods from the saloon.
James Tartar investigated the Harlem Grill, and those businesses neighboring it, because of what happened after the looting, or at least after the looting had started. Around 12:55 AM, two police officers in a squad car traveling south on 7th Avenue reported hearing smashing glass, and seeing Lloyd Hobbs, a sixteen-year-old Black student standing in the store window passing merchandise to a crowd of people on the street. After they stopped their car and chased after the crowd, one, Patrolman McInerney, fatally shot Hobbs. Hobbs and witnesses at the scene said he had been passing by, not taking goods from the store. The only other sources that mentioned the Harlem Grill are the New York Sun and New York Amsterdam News stories about the first group of business owners to sue the city (which gave the address of the business not its name). By the time the city comptroller heard testimony from those who had filed claims, 106 owners had sought damages. Principe was not among those whose testimony appeared in newspaper stories about that proceeding, nor did he appear in any of the reported court cases to resolve those claims.
The claim for $453.90 in losses was less than the median reported claim of $733. The city lost the court cases, so Principe likely was awarded some amount of damages, but based on those cases it was only a small proportion. However, it appears he was able to remain in business. The Harlem Grill appeared in both the MCCH business survey conducted in the second half of 1935, and in the Tax Department photograph of 2140 7th Avenue taken in 1939-1941.