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Harlem in Disorder: A Spatial History of How Racial Violence Changed in 1935

[Photograph] "Row of stores windows demolished between 129th & 130th St. on Lenox Ave," New York American/New York Evening Journal, March 20, 1935.

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Windows broken (72) A window in the S. H. Kress 5 & 10c store being hit by an object and breaking began the disorder. Objects thrown at the windows of stores, mostly those with white owners, was the most prevalent event in the following hours, with at least 300 businesses damaged. Such attacks were unfamiliar from the racial disorder of previous decades. Business and residential property had been the targets of violence, but that property had been Black-owned and damaged or destroyed by white crowds. However, white businesses in Harlem had been the focus of protests against their failure to hire Black workers in the years immediately prior to the disorder, culminating in a campaign by a coalition of Black organizations in 1934. Those efforts involved boycotts and pickets, not breaking store windows. A competing campaign by the Communist Party did extend to smashing windows in the Empire Cafeteria. The potential for picketing to lead to violence, and specifically to a “race riot,” was one of the justifications given by the judge in the New York State Supreme Court who outlawed the tactic in 1934, effectively ending the boycott campaign for the hiring of Black workers. That sentiment was echoed after the disorder by Black columnist Theophilus Lewis in the New York Amsterdam News, a critic of the boycott movement: "There was a time, during the peak of the boycott movement, when a slight indiscretion by a policeman, a white salesgirl or a colored shopper who defied the boycott would have started an outburst quite as serious as the recent disorder. The feeling of race antipathy, perhaps not intended by the leaders of the boycott, has remained pent up in the community waiting for a spark to set it off." The turn to breaking windows as a final resort was captured by Gill Horton, a Black former cabaret owner quoted by Joseph Mitchell in the New York World-Telegram after the disorder. "I didn’t throw no rocks," he reportedly said. "I broke my last window when I was going on 10. Of course, if I was pushed a little I might let loose a few bottles and brickbats, but nobody pushed me yet.” Many others in Harlem clearly had been pushed. When James Hughes, a twenty-four-year-old Black shoe repairer returning home, found himself in a crowd at 8th Avenue and West 125th Street, he heard people saying, "Let's break windows," he later testified in court.

Historians Cheryl Greenberg and Larry Greene have argued that decision had the opposite effect to what the judge intended, shutting off an outlet for discontent and protest, and leaving Harlem’s residents with fewer alternatives to violence. The events in front of Kress’ store before someone threw the object that broke one of its windows replicated and recapitulated those tensions. Three men had been protesting the store employees’ treatment of Lino Rivera by walking in front of the store with banners — picketing. Police officers arrested the group, shutting down those means of protest. On this occasion, unlike earlier protests, members of the crowd attacked the store.

The objects thrown at store windows were most often described as rocks or stones, and less often as bricks — the objects recovered from the windows of Herbert’s Blue Diamond jewelry store displayed by a clerk for a Daily News photographer the day after the disorder. All those objects could be found around Harlem. An employee of the Blackbird Inn told a reporter for the New York Post that much of that material came from the island that ran down the middle of 7th Avenue, where stones and debris left after the paving of the street had been dumped. Other larger objects found on the street were sometimes used: ashcans and trashcans. (The tailor’s dummy allegedly thrown through Sam Lefkowitz's store window likely came from another damaged store.) In a handful of cases, the missiles were objects more likely brought from home — bottles, clubs, and hammers — or items individuals happened to have with them, such as umbrellas (there was rain on the night of the disorder). At least two windows in looted stores were allegedly kicked in.

While newspaper reports routinely described store windows as “smashed,” the extent of the damage they suffered varied. A single object generally broke and created a hole in a window rather than shattering it entirely, as is evident in a photograph published in the Daily News that shows a white police officer and a white store manager speaking through a hole in an unidentified shoe store. To remove most or all of the glass from a display window took more than one object, which usually meant more than one person, depending obviously on the size of the window. Stores on West 125th Street, particularly the department stores and those that wrapped around the corners of the intersections with 8th, 7th, and Lenox Avenues had far larger windows than the smaller businesses on the avenues themselves. More extensive damage to windows appears to have been associated with looting, and may have occurred when groups or individuals returned to stores with broken windows to take merchandise. A section of Lenox Avenue in a photograph published by the Daily News and an unpublished image by another photographer shows that variety of damage: closest to the camera is a rental agency with a hole in its window, which still contained the ashcan that created it, that does not appear to be looted; to its left are two grocery stores and a cigar store whose windows are almost entirely gone, and whose contents have been taken. The sources do not offer a clear picture of the extent of the damage to the stores identified as having broken windows but not as looted. The reporter for La Prensa who listed thirty-five businesses with broken windows on Lenox Avenue, West 125th Street, and 8th Avenue, ended their list by alluding to an unspecified number of other stores not on the list that suffered relatively little damage compared with those listed. There are no details for just under half of those identified (33 of 69) in the sources; of the remainder, fragmentary information suggests fourteen businesses could have been suffered limited damage.

Efforts to damage stores may also have extended to destroying merchandise by throwing it into the street, on a night when it rained. The Afro-American most directly reported that practice, in which “the goods was dragged in the wet sidewalk and destroyed.” The New York Times and Atlanta World reported goods taken out of windows and “strewn” and “scattered” on the sidewalk without mention of the intention. So too did Betty Willcox, who told a New York Evening Journal that on West 125th Street, "I saw that the windows of all the stores around there had been shattered and the goods thrown all over the place." Merchandise on the street, however, could also have been a byproduct of looting rather than attacks on businesses, thrown or carried out of stores so they could be taken — as seemed to be the case in a photograph of a damaged grocery store published in the New York Evening Journal. Some of those arrested during the disorder denied "breaking the store windows" and instead insisted "that they had picked the articles up from the street after others had thrown them out of the stores," according to a story in the New York Sun (which dismissed those claims as an effort to avoid responsibility).

When objects broke windows, glass went flying, hitting individuals on at least five occasions. All those reported injuries came after 1:00 AM, so during the period when most of the reported looting took place, and in the areas where that looting was concentrated, on Lenox Avenue from 127th Street to 130th Street and on 7th Avenue and 116th Street. Evidence about the circumstances of those injuries is fragmentary, brief details in lists and hospital records rather than discussions in stories. One record explicitly linked the injuries to windows being broken in stores. In the 32nd Police Precinct book of aided cases, Herbert Holderman was listed as “cut by flying glass when some unknown persons broke windows of stores.” "Flying glass” and “falling glass” were the reported causes of the four other injuries. That glass could have come from smashed windows in cars and buses driving on Harlem's streets, which also had objects thrown at them, although such attacks were reported only on 7th Avenue. Those injuries could also have been the result of throwing objects at windows or climbing or reaching into broken windows to take merchandise. However, crowds of bystanders were on Harlem's streets throughout the disorder, on sidewalks close enough to stores to be hit by glass when someone broke store windows. One storeowner, Herman Young, was also injured by glass from a window broken by a stone.

The seventy-two businesses identified in the sources as having broken windows, and the additional sixty stores looted as well as damaged, amount to around 30% of the total number estimated to have had windows broken. Newspaper stories offered a range of initial assessments of the damage. By noon on March 20, the New York Plate Glass Service Bureau, “whose member companies do 98 per cent of the glass insurance business in the city,” told a reporter for the New York Post that 110 clients had reported broken glass, a fraction of the expected total damage. Other newspapers published totals for the number of windows broken, not stores effected: “at least 130 costly plate gas windows,” according to the New York American; 200 plate-glass store windows according to the New York Times, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Chicago Defender, and Norfolk Journal and Guide; and “more than 250 windows” according to the New York Herald Tribune, 300 windows in the Afro-American, and “more than 1,000 panes of glass” in the New York Post. Inspector Di Martini offered an "approximate number of windows broken" that totaled 624 in his "Report on Disorder" to the police commissioner on March 20, with the disclaimer that the "extent of property damage cannot be estimated at this time." A later survey of forty-seven insurance companies by the National Bureau of Casualty and Surety Underwriters, reported by the New York Times and Pittsburgh Courier, combined the two counts, reporting claims for 697 plate glass windows in 300 businesses, amounting to two-thirds of the broken windows. With the uninsured glass included, the total damage would have been just over 1,000 windows in around 450 businesses.

“Breakages were most numerous on 125th street, near Seventh avenue,” according to that survey, but also occurred in an area that extended “from 114th to 143rd streets, between Fifth and Eighth Avenues. Several thousand businesses were located in that area, the MCCH business survey found, so attacks away from 125th Street were clearly less extensive. The "approximate number of windows broken" Inspector Di Martini reported to the police commissioner on March 20 was broken down by precincts, with almost all (86%, 538 of 624) located in the 28th Precinct, south of 130th Street. Newspapers stories consistently identified West 125th Street as the most damaged area, with the New York Age specifying the two blocks from 8th to Lenox Avenues, and the New York Herald Tribune identifying the block between 8th and 7th Avenues, on which Kress’ store was located. Those general descriptions are in line with the events which are reported in the sources, which are concentrated on that block, with fewer on the block between 7th and Lenox Avenues. Those blocks were where the disorder originated, and the largest crowds gathered; where Harlem’s largest stores were located; and where all the businesses were white-owned. Beyond 125th Street, newspaper stories presented different pictures of the extent of the area in which windows were broken. As neither the police department nor the MCCH appear to have collected details of the damage, as would happen after the racial disorder in Harlem in 1943, that variation might reflect the limits of what individual reporters investigated or, in the case of very wide areas, a lack of investigation. Only the Daily News identified an area as extensive as the insurance survey, from 110th to 145th Streets. The New York Evening Journal and New York Herald Tribune only encompassed as far south as 120th Street, and as far north as 138th Street. Two newspapers focused only on 7th Avenue, the Pittsburgh Courier reporting smashed windows from 116th to 140th Streets, and the Daily Mirror only from 120th to 125th Streets. The Black newspaper’s area fits the reported events, and suggests an investigation throughout Harlem; the white newspaper included only a portion of that area, the blocks closest to 125th Street. Eighth Avenue attracted special attention in the New York Herald Tribune, which reported “windows broken in virtually every other store and glass covering the sidewalk” from 124th Street to 130th Street, and less damage in the blocks further north. Lenox Avenue, where the reported events are concentrated, drew particular attention only from the Afro-American, which offered the only specific count, that “In the three blocks from 125th to 128th Street, west side Lenox Avenue, there were twenty-two windows broken.” The Times Union offered the vaguest area, "for blocks around the five and ten cent store two-thirds of shop windows had been smashed." The tendency to draw the boundaries at 120th Street, together with inattention to West 116th Street by both the Black and white press, effectively left Spanish-speaking areas of Harlem out of discussions of the disorder.

The businesses reported with windows broken differed from those reported as targets of looting. (Of the seventy-two stores with broken windows, three are unknown, three were vacant, and five were later looted, leaving sixty-one that are identified.) Clothing stores of various types and businesses involving miscellaneous goods (which included department stores, which sold a variety of goods, including clothing but generally not food) were the largest groups; the food stores that made up the largest group of those looted were the smallest portion of those with broken windows. Those different patterns suggest that those who returned to damaged stores to take merchandise, or turned to looting, focused on what they needed, not on the wider range of stores that had been targets earlier in the disorder.

When objects were thrown at windows beyond Kress' store, their targets were initially other businesses on West 125th Street, where all the stores had white owners. As groups moved away from 125th Street, they continued to focus their attacks on white-owned businesses. Five Black-owned businesses were among those identified as having windows broken, a number far below their presence in the neighborhood. Posting signs that identified a business as Black-owned appears to have stopped attacks and prevented windows from being broken. No Black-owned businesses are among those later looted. In addition to Black businesses, there were two white-owned businesses specifically identified as not being damaged in the disorder. Koch's department store was well-known for having hired Black staff. A group of Black boys reportedly protected the other store.

Arrests for allegedly breaking windows were reported for only 24% (17 of 72) of the businesses that suffered damage, a smaller proportion than for looted stores (as no one was arrested for the first broken window in Kress' store, the store appears among those cases in which no arrests were made even though an arrest was made for allegedly breaking a window after another attack over four hours later). The twenty-six individuals arrested for breaking windows were identified either because they were charged with malicious mischief, an offense involving damage to property, or by details of what police alleged they had done recorded in legal records or reported in the press. For five individuals arrested for breaking windows there is no information about their alleged targets; some of those four men and one woman may have been charged with breaking windows in stores for which there was no reported arrests. Three of those arrested were women, and one a white man, similar numbers as among those arrested for looting, but twice the proportion of those arrested. Police do not appear to have made arrests during the first hours of the disorder, when windows were broken on West 125th Street as they struggled to keep crowds from Kress' store and off the streets. The arrests that were made in that area came around 10:30 PM. Leroy Brown's arrest on 8th Avenue at 9:45 PM was during that early phase of violence. The handful of other arrests where the time is known occurred on 7th Avenue and Lenox Avenue when reported looting intensified, thirty minutes either side of midnight.

Courts treated breaking windows less severely than other activities during the disorder, in large part because the value of damaged windows was only sufficient to make a charge of malicious mischief, a misdemeanor. Most store windows cost less than $100 to repair, well below the $250 required for the crime to be a felony. Only the five men also charged with inciting others to violence were sent to the grand jury, just over a third of the proportion of those arrested for looting, and the grand jury sent all those men to the Court of Special Sessions to be prosecuted for misdemeanors. Similarly, magistrates transferred nine men and one woman directly to the Court of Special Sessions. In the remaining eleven cases the charges were reduced to disorderly conduct, indicating that police did not have evidence those individuals had broken windows. They were likely in the crowds around businesses with broken windows. In those cases, the magistrate discharged Viola Woods and convicted nine men and one woman of disorderly conduct.
Manhattan Renting Agency window broken The Manhattan Renting Agency at 385 Lenox Avenue had its window broken during the disorder. An ash can was still sitting in the smashed window of the business the day after the disorder in an unpublished image taken by a photographer for the Hearst newspapers and a similar image published in the Daily News. That section of Lenox Avenue was one in which businesses suffered extensive damage and looting beginning around 11:30 PM; the intersection with West 129th Street immediately to the south likely saw particularly extensive violence around 1:00 AM when Alice Mitchell and Hugh Young were injured by flying glass.

A sign identifies "H[ary] Pomrinse" as the proprietor, a sixty-six-year-old Jewish man who lived outside Harlem on the Upper West Side. The office was also used by Everard M. Donald, a twenty-seven-year-old Black businessman. A sign advertising rooms rented by him was visible on right hand edge of the photograph that gave his address as 385 Lenox Avenue, and a fragment of his name -- "NALD" -- remained in the window to the right of section smashed by the ashcan. Visible inside the office was a poster for the Sunshine Barber Shops, a chain of barbers that an advertisement in 1934 identified was owned by Donald. The poster was more clearly visible in a close-up view of the ashcan in the window in newsreel footage, which also showed the outline of the "DO" missing from Donald's name on the glass.

Almost all the stores on this block of Lenox Avenue had windows broken during the disorder; all three of the other businesses in the photograph are more severely damaged than the real estate office and have been looted. A cigar store, Anthony Avitable's Krasdale grocery store, and Manny Zipps' Savoy Food Market all contained the kind of items on which looting focused, unlike a real estate office. They were also white-owned businesses whereas the real estate office was shared by a white-owned business and a Black-owned business. The MCCH business survey taken after the disorder recorded the office as a white-owned business, but identified E. M. Donald as the owner. He was one of the Black business-owners interviewed by MCCH staff conducting the business survey. By the time Tax Department photograph was taken between 1939 and 1941 "E. M. Donald" had replaced Manhattan Renting Agency on the sign at 385 Lenox Avenue.

Hary Pomrinse reported his occupation as "real estate" for the first time in 1925, in the New York State Census. Before then, from 1915 to 1920 and perhaps earlier, he owned and managed a liquor store identified in the 1915 City Directory as the Ideal Wine & Liquor Store at 35 West 129th Street, living with his family above the store at least from 1915, and at the end of the block, at 2100 5th Avenue, in 1920. In 1920, Black residents made up almost all the population of that block. When Pomrinse shifted to working in real estate, he also moved out of Harlem, to West End Avenue on the Upper West Side, moving progressively further downtown, from number 915 in 1925, to number 697 in 1930 and number 260 in 1940. Only hints survive of what his real estate work involved — advertisements in the New York Age for the Manhattan Renting Agency offering five to six room apartments and private houses in the first months of 1933, and then an announcement of his wife selling 541 Lenox Avenue (a five-story building with two storefronts, between 137th and 138th) in 1936. E. M. Donald was the broker on that sale, further evidence of the men's business relationship. By 1939 or 1940, when the Tax Department photograph was taken, Pomrinse stopped using the office at 385 Lenox Avenue. In the 1940 Federal census his occupation is recorded as "own property" not "Real Estate."

Everard MacFalcon Donald appears to have taken sole occupancy of the office at 385 Lenox Avenue some time after the disorder. He had arrived in Harlem from the West Indies in 1910, aged two years, according to the 1930 Federal census. In 1928, Donald became the owner of the first of his Sunshine Barber Shops, according to an advertisement in the New York Amsterdam News. That "original store" was at 107 West 135th Street, the MCCH business survey notes on another shop at 547 Lenox Avenue record. Donald's occupation is recorded as proprietor of a barber shop in the 1930 Federal census. His father, Cleaver Donald, was also recorded as the proprietor of a barber shop in the 1930 census, having been a longshoreman in 1920. By 1931, Donald operated at least one additional barber shop, at 397 Lenox Avenue (although reported as 395 Lenox Avenue when he secured the lease), and by December 1934, he advertised four Sunshine Barber Shops, with additional locations at 409 and 547 Lenox Avenue. Notes in the MCCH business survey described the barber shop at 409 Lenox Avenue as “modern and orderly,” and the shop at 547 Lenox Avenue as “very neatly arranged.” Donald told an interviewer from the MCCH in 1935 that he felt “that his barber shops should do much more business than they do, and attributes this to failure of clientele to realize advantage of paying a few cents more for their service with the assurance of clean apparatus & surroundings.” "Negroes," he claimed, “do not appreciate finer things."

However, by the second half of 1935, Donald's “more important business,” according to the notes from his interview with the MCCH, was “in real estate and apartment house management.” That work involved “making collections & seeing that apartments are kept in condition & tenants complaints answered.” That part of his business overlapped with Pomrinse. In this work too, Donald reported problems with other Black residents of Harlem. “Encounters greatest difficulty with Negro tenants in the houses which he manages," the interviewer recorded him as saying, because "they resent having another Negro collect their rents, & often move out for that reason.” Despite those issues, Donald established himself in the real estate profession in the years after 1935, elected as a vice-president of a new organization, the Harlem Real Estate Board, launched in 1938, the New York Age reported, “for the benefit of real estate brokers attempting to retain management of properties in Harlem to give employment to Negroes.” Donald did also open a fifth Sunshine Barber shop at 433 Lenox Avenue sometime between 1935 and 1939, when it appears in an advertisement. When he married Geneva Dyer, a Texas-born beautician, in May 1940, Donald was living at 580 St Nicholas Avenue and gave his occupation as “Real Estate Broker.” A month later, Donald was arrested for allegedly taking rents he had collected on behalf of a property owner. While there is no evidence of the legal outcome of that arrest, Donald appears to have stopped working in real estate. His occupation was recorded as owner of the Sunshine Barber Shops, and his workplace as 397 Lenox Avenue, one of those shops, not the office at 385 Lenox Avenue, when he registered for the draft four months later. The number of shops he operated may also have been reduced: while the barber shops at 107 West 135th Street and 433 Lenox Avenue appear in Tax Department photographs taken between 1939 and 1941, those at 409 and 547 Lenox Avenue do not. By 1943, Donald was once again working in real estate, identified as the broker in the sale of a property on West 131st Street.
Anthony Avitable's grocery store looted Anthony Avitable's grocery store at 381 Lenox Avenue was closed when crowds appeared on Lenox Avenue. That section of Lenox Avenue was one in which businesses suffered extensive damage with looting beginning around 11:30 PM. Around midnight, Avitable got news of the disorder in Harlem and drove back from the Bronx. He told the city comptroller that as he drove over the 138th Street bridge he saw crowds "just breaking into my store," the New York Sun reported. Seeing no police near the store, he drove on to the 28th Precinct Station on West 123rd Street and at 12:30 AM reported the looting, according to the New York Post. Officers there said they "couldn't do anything for me," and that he should contact police headquarters. When Avitable called, "a police officer at headquarters told him over the phone: 'I'll have men there in two minutes.'" They took forty-five minutes to arrive. Avitable's store likely suffered more damage in the violence around 1:00 AM, when Alice Mitchell and Hugh Young were injured by flying glass. No one arrested during the disorder was charged with looting this store.

Avitable joined one hundred and five other white business owners in suing the city for damages suffered by their stores during the disorder. The only mentions of his business are in newspaper stories about those suits. Those stories located his store at 383 Lenox Avenue. A second storeowner who sued the city, Manny Zipp, was also reported as having a grocery store at 383 Lenox Avenue by the New York Sun, New York Post, and New York World-Telegram. Photographs of 383 Lenox Avenue show only one business at that address, the Savoy Food Market, but there was a grocery store next door, with a Krasdale sign, at 381 Lenox Avenue, that appears to be the store that Avitable owned (the Krasdale company were wholesalers in 1935, not store operators). While the New York Sun identified Anthony Avitable as the owner of the Savoy Food Market, the New York Post and New York World-Telegram identified him only as the owner of a separate grocery store. He appeared separately from the Savoy Food Market in the New York Sun and New York Amsterdam News stories about those who brought the first twenty suits.

Zipp had only been in business for three days. Newsreel footage from the day after the disorder shows a banner reading "Grand Opening" hanging over the entrance to the Savoy Food Market (in the Daily News photograph discussed below that a piece of dark fabric has been hung to obscure that banner, or perhaps the banner has simply been reversed). Zipp also reported that his losses, $721 compared to the $537 claimed by Avitable, forced him out of business. It was the Savoy Food Market that went out of business; there was a different store at 383 Lenox Avenue in both the MCCH business survey taken between June and December 1935, and the Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941. The grocery store with the Krasdale sign, Avitable's business, did appear in both the MCCH business survey and the Tax Department photograph. He may have been helped by damages paid by the city. One of the claimants awarded damages in the March 4, 1936, trial in the New York Supreme Court listed in the New York Herald Tribune was a grocer at 381 Lenox Avenue. However, the story identified the owner as Louis Berenson. That could be an error as no one of that name appears in any other source related to the disorder.

An unpublished image taken by a photographer for the Hearst newspapers, and a similar image published in the Daily News, captured the clean-up on the section of Lenox Avenue containing Avitable's store the morning after the disorder. The windows are missing, and both the display and the shelves within the store are empty. Some goods appear to have been thrown on to the street; a man is clearing debris with a shovel. Zipp's Savoy Food Market, and Jacob Saloway's cigar store on the corner, also have no windows and empty displays and shelves. Saloway joined Avitable and Zipp in suing the city.
Manny Zipp's grocery store looted Manny Zipp's grocery store at 383 Lenox Avenue was looted during the disorder. There are no details of those events other than Zipp's statement to the city comptroller that "everything in his store was taken," forcing him out of business, as the New York Post reported it. He had been operating the store for only three days. That section of Lenox Avenue was one in which businesses suffered extensive damage and looting beginning around 11:30 PM; the intersection likely saw particularly extensive violence around 1:00 AM when Alice Mitchell and Hugh Young were injured by flying glass. No one among those arrested for looting was identified as taking goods from this store.

Zipp was one of seven business owners mentioned in stories published in the New York Post, New York Sun, and New York World-Telegram on July 23 that described testimony to the comptroller from white businessmen suing the city for damages based on the failure of police to protect their stores. He was not in the list of those who brought the first twenty suits published earlier in the New York Sun and New York Amsterdam News, but included in that list was the Savoy Food Market. Newsreel footage from the day after the disorder showed a banner reading "Grand Opening" hanging over the entrance to the Savoy Food Market, fitting with Zipp's account of having opened his store only three days earlier (in the photograph discussed below, a piece of dark fabric had been hung to obscure that banner or perhaps the banner had simply been reversed). While the New York Sun identified Anthony Avitable as the owner of the Savoy Food Market, the New York Post and New York World-Telegram identified him only as the owner of a grocery store at 383 Lenox Avenue. Photographs of 383 Lenox Avenue show only one business at that address, but there was a grocery store next door, with a Krasdale sign, at 381 Lenox Avenue. That appeared to be the store that Avitable owned; the Krasdale company were wholesalers in 1935, not store operators. Avitable appeared separately from the Savoy Food Market in the New York Sun and New York Amsterdam News stories about those who brought the first twenty suits. Avitable also ultimately claimed a lesser amount of damage than Zipp, $537 compared to $721, which did not seem enough to have been enough to wipe out a business. It was the Savoy Food Market that went out of business, fitting with Zipp's story. There was a different business than the Savoy Food Market at 383 Lenox Avenue in both the MCCH business survey taken between June and December 1935, and the Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941. The grocery store with the Krasdale sign did appear in both the MCCH business survey and the Tax Department photograph.

Zipp's claim of $721 was close to the median reported claim for damages of $733. An unpublished image taken by a photographer for the Hearst newspapers, and a similar image published in the Daily News, captured the clean-up on the section of Lenox Avenue containing the Savoy Food Market. To its left was the grocery store that must be Avitable's business, with the Krasdale grocery chain sign visible. The market's windows had been smashed and the display emptied. Some goods appear to have been thrown on to the street; a man was clearing debris with a shovel. Another man can be seen through the window inside the store; that may be Avitable cleaning up. The two other businesses visible beyond the market also had no windows and empty displays and shelves. Jacob Saloway, who owned the cigar store on the corner, as well as Avitable, also sued the city for damages.

The three newspaper stories all reported the storeowner's name differently: the New York Sun called him "Manny Zipp," the New York Post reported his name as "Manning Zipp," and the World-Telegram "Manny Vitt." The name used here, Manny Zipp, combines the most frequently repeated elements of those variations.
Jacob Saloway's stationery store looted Jacob Saloway's stationery store at 381 Lenox Avenue was looted during the disorder. There are no details of those events. That section of Lenox Avenue was one in which businesses suffered extensive damage and looting beginning around 11:30 PM; the intersection likely saw particularly extensive violence around 1:00 AM when Alice Mitchell and Hugh Young were injured by flying glass. Saloway appeared among the white business owners who filed the first twenty claims for damages against the city identified in stories in the New York Sun and New York Amsterdam News. The stories included only a name, business address, and the amount of damages sought, $676 in Saloway's case. By the time the city comptroller heard testimony from those bringing suit, 106 owners had sought damages. While Saloway was not among those whose testimony appears in newspaper stories about that proceeding, he was one of seven whose cases went to trial in the New York Supreme Court to test the claims in March 1936. The jury awarded damages in all those cases, but none of the newspaper reports of the proceeding mentioned the amount awarded to Saloway. Only the New York Herald Tribune identified him as one of the claimants, noting only that he was a stationer. No one among those arrested for looting was identified as taking goods from this store.

An unpublished image taken by a photographer for the Hearst newspapers, and a similar image published in the Daily News, captured the clean-up on the section of Lenox Avenue containing Saloway's store the morning after the disorder. Saloway's store can be glimpsed on the far left of the image, with signs visible indicating it sold cigars. The windows appear to be missing and the displays emptied of stock. The angle does not show the interior of the store. The two businesses to the right of the store, in the foreground of the picture, also have no windows and empty displays and shelves. Both Anthony Avitable, who owned the grocery store, and Manny Zipp, who owned the Savoy Food Market, also sued the city for damages.

Whatever the damages awarded him, it is possible Saloway was able to remain in business. The MCCH business survey included a white-owned stationery store (a type of store that sold cigars) at 381 Lenox Avenue in the second half of 1935, but no details to confirm that it was the same store there on the night of the disorder. A business also appeared in the Tax Department photograph from 1939–1941, but the signage is not visible. In 1930, the federal census recorded that Saloway lived at 363 Lenox Avenue, a building anomalous in this area of Harlem as being home to only white residents. The six other households included three headed by men who owned stores in Harlem later looted during the disorder who joined Saloway in suing the city, William Gindin, Irving Stekin, and Michael D'Agostino. There was no evidence of whether Saloway still lived there in 1935; Gindin, at least, had relocated to another building on Lenox Avenue by the time of the disorder.
[Photograph] "Ash can lies inside window of store...," Daily News, March 21, 1935, 30. Full caption: "Ash can lies inside window of store (right) where it was tossed by rioters. All store windows to corner (left) are broken. Street cleaner has big job."

This image can be seen at Getty Images: https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/stores-on-the-corner-of-lenox-avenue-between-129th-and-news-photo/97321443?adppopup=true.

A photographer for the New York American / New York Evening Journal took an image of the same scene from almost the same place. That image did not have the Black man walking in the foreground and showed a crowd gathered on the sidewalk looking at the stores.
In the Daily News