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1. 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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• 1 2021-05-21T20:17:17+00:00 J. P. Bulluroff's grocery store looted 18 plain 2024-06-02T01:39:48+00:00 Around 8:45 PM, an object thrown from the street broke a window in J. P. Bulluroff's grocery store at 2140 7th Avenue, he told James Tartar, an investigator for the MCCH. By 10 PM, more objects thrown at the store had broken two more windows. At some point in the evening, individuals went further into the business, stealing $200 of stock. Tartar also spoke to the 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, $700 at the saloon next to the grocery store at 2140 7th Avenue, and $150 at the cleaning company at 2152 7th Avenue, to $850 at the auto equipment store at 2150 7th Avenue. Bulluroff was not 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. 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 businesses 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 store.
  
  James Tartar's survey is the only source that mentions the grocery store. His investigation was related to 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 window of the auto equipment store at 2150 7th Avenue 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.
  
  It appears that Bulluroff was able to remain in business. A grocery store, the Harlem Market, appears in the Tax Department photograph of 2140 7th Avenue taken in 1939–1941, with Bulluroff's name visible on the awning in the photograph of 2142 7th Avenue. (However, the MCCH business survey identifies the grocery store at 2140 7th Avenue as a black-owned business named the Economy Grocery Store.)