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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
2. 1 2023-12-13T11:09:46+00:00 Anonymous Department of Finance, Manhattan 1940s Tax Photos: 125th Street Anonymous 3 plain 2023-12-13T16:18:31+00:00 Anonymous

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• 1 2022-07-14T17:07:00+00:00 10:30 PM to 11:00 PM 57 plain 2024-05-29T16:30:06+00:00
  
  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.
   
• 1 2022-07-14T17:07:33+00:00 11:00 PM to 11:30 PM 47 plain 2024-05-29T17:46:16+00:00 As the disorder continued to spread, the violence became a more complex mix. As the attacks on businesses and on white men and women on the street continued, increasing incidents of looting occurred.
  
  
  
  The multiple windows broken by repeated attacks on the stores around the intersection of 7th Avenue and 125th Street by 11:00 PM provided an opportunity for looting. Officers in the area, particularly the plainclothes detectives among the crowds, were watching for anyone tempted by that chance. At 11:00 PM, Detective Peter Naton, only recently returned after arresting John King, allegedly saw John Vivien, a twenty-seven-year-old Black laborer, reach through the holes in the windows of Regal Shoes and take a pair of shoes. With a previous arrest for robbery, Vivien may have been more willing to take merchandise than many of the other residents on the streets. He was some distance from his home, so had ventured into the disorder rather than remained a spectator on its margins. Individuals may also have begun to take merchandise from at least one other damaged business near the intersection that would also be reported as having been looted, Maurice Gilden’s optician’s shop.
  
  Looting, however, was not yet the goal of most of those in the blocks of 7th Avenue below 125th Street. Fifteen minutes after Vivien’s arrest, a crowd of twenty-five to thirty people, the typical size of the groups observed during the disorder, gathered two blocks to the south at the intersection with 123rd Street. Already back on the street, Detective Naton was close enough to allegedly hear James Pringle, a twenty-eight-year-old Black laborer, call out to the group, “Let's go cross the way and scale rocks at the cops, they are coming down our side of the street.” As the group moved away, Naton arrested Pringle. He might have singled out him out as a leader or Pringle might have been the only member of the group the detective could apprehend. Either way, Naton claimed to have found a rock concealed in the right hip pocket of Pringle’s trousers that he treated as evidence of his involvement in the violence on the streets.
  
  As with the appeals to attack police reported by the officers who had arrested William Ford and Claude Jones on 125th Street around thirty minutes earlier, what Naton claimed was the crowd’s target was by his own account not what they actually went on to attack. They “smashed windows” and attacked several people. Among the businesses damaged at that time was likely Ben Salcfas’ grocery store on the northeast corner of 7th Avenue and 123rd Street. Patrolman Leahy arrested one of those who allegedly threw a rock that broke one of the store’s windows, David Bragg, a thirty-three-year-old Black man. A resident of West 135th Street, Bragg may have come to 125th Street earlier in the evening and moved south on 7th Avenue as the disorder intensified. Other members of the group eluded police. Among the targets of their rocks would have been windows in nearby businesses looted later in the evening: the Lafayette Market at 2044 7th Avenue; Nicholas Peet's tailors store at 2063 7th Avenue; Sarah Refkin's delicatessen at 2067 7th Avenue; and the shoe repair store directly across 7th Avenue from the grocery store.
  
  As they attacked white businesses, groups on the street continued to attack white men and women they encountered on the streets. After Michael Krim-Shamhal, a fifty-four-year-old white man, arrived on 7th Avenue from West 122nd Street around 11:00 PM he reported being assaulted by a group of people. Several blocks further south, around 11:15 PM, a thirty-four-year-old white woman named Alice Gordon alleged she had been attacked by several Black men. Shamhal and Gordon reflected the variety of white men and women still in Harlem. He lived close to where the alleged assault took place, on West 119th Street between 7th Avenue and Lenox Avenue. She lived well outside Harlem, in Rye, so either worked in or was visiting the neighborhood, and may have going to the subway or elevated railroad stations on 116th Street to return home. It was staff of the ambulances called to help Gordon and Krim Shamhal who recorded their accounts and treated the lacerations to the head each had suffered. Although police had been as far south as 121st Street about thirty minutes earlier shooting at groups of people, they were not in the vicinity of the assaults. The alleged assault on Alice Gordon was the first reported violence below 120th Street.
  
  Crowds remained on 7th Avenue north of 125th Street, but there were few reported incidents at this time. Police patrols may have reduced the intensity of the violence, but they did not protect businesses whose windows had been repeatedly damaged earlier in the night from being looted. Sam Lefkowitz’s store windows had been broken since 9:45 PM, when a group of people went up the block between 127th and 128th Streets; some of the substantial amount of merchandise he would report losing was likely being taken at this time. Businesses a block to the south owned by Abe Mohr and Joseph Cohen that lost merchandise could also have been targeted. So too could Max Greenwald’s tailor’s store. There were certainly people at the intersection between those two blocks as some threw rocks at a Fifth Avenue Coach Company bus passing at 11:00 PM. The bus route ran the length of 7th Avenue from Central Park to 155th Street. Despite traveling through the heart of Harlem, the buses had only white drivers and conductors. The company refused to employ Black staff, a sore point with the neighborhood’s residents that might have led some of those on the street to extend their attacks on white businesses to the bus. As the bus was almost certainly carrying Black passengers, it was unlikely that it was targeted as a substitute for the white men and women whom groups had encountered and attacked earlier. The same could not be said of the cars that would soon have rocks thrown at them south of 125th Street.
  
  Violence may have continued to spread further north on 7th Avenue. There would be looting near 131st Street around an hour later, so the attacks on windows in at least two white-owned businesses north of West 135th Street could have happened around this time. Most of the businesses in the area had Black owners. Nonetheless, enough windows were broken for the owners of one of Harlem’s best-known Black-owned businesses, the Monterey Luncheonette, to write “This is a Store Owned by Colored” on their windows to spare them from attack. Residents from the area rather than groups who had come from 125th Street could have been responsible for the broken windows. It was around 11:00 PM that groups began to come down Lenox Avenue from around 135th Street. Police were nearby when at least some of the windows were broken as they arrested two men allegedly responsible. Robert Porter was charged with throwing an ashcan through the window of a shoe repair store at 2360 7th Avenue, the northernmost business reporting damaged during the disorder. Julius Hightower allegedly threw a brick that broke windows in Moskowitz's tailor shop at 2310 7th Avenue. However, both men appeared to simply have been nearby when those attacks took place as those charges were later reduced to disorderly conduct. Police may have mistakenly grabbed them from among a crowd around the businesses, or they could have begun to arrest whomever they could apprehend around outbreaks of violence to get people off the street. Footwear and clothing were particular needs of residents suffering the effects of the depression, so those businesses may have been targeted as part of a shift toward looting later in the disorder when more police were deployed.
  
  On 8th Avenue too, violence seemingly was spreading further north. A meat market at 2422 8th Avenue, on the block between 130th and 131st Streets, had a bottle thrown through its window, the furthest north damage was reported on this street. Officer Libman of the 32nd Precinct arrested Henry Stewart, a thirty-three-year-old Black man, for throwing the bottle. The same officer had arrested Rose Murrell and perhaps Warren Johnson and Louise Brown at 127th Street, but he was unlikely to have been as far north as the meat market earlier in the evening. He may have remained in the area to attempt to control the crowds and protect the damaged businesses. Like Murrell, Stewart lived near 8th Avenue, so likely had come to the street in response to the rumors and noise of the disorder. However, he, like Hightower and Porter, was only nearby when those attacks took place, not responsible for them, as the charge was later dismissed. If Libman arrested Warren Johnson and Louise Brown around this time, charging them with breaking windows when they proved to simply have been in the crowds in the vicinity of an attack, the similar outcome of the concurrent arrests on 7th Avenue makes it more likely that police had begun ti arrest crowd members to get them off the streets. Stewart, Johnson, and Brown all lived on blocks adjacent to 8th Avenue so likely were among the residents who had come to the avenue in response to the news and noise of the disorder.
  
  With most businesses now closed and many having suffered attacks for several hours, the lack of staff and the access available through broken windows provided the opportunity for those on 8th Avenue to take merchandise. While observers did not notice extensive looting for another hour, some of the businesses in these blocks may have begun to be targeted at this time. Just how extensive the thefts were is not clear as the only reported incidents involved arrests. However, the businesses involved in those later arrests were spread over the three blocks north of 125th Street: the Danbury Hat store on the block above 125th Street; Frendel’s meat market on the block between 126th and 127th Streets; and the Thomas Cut Rate Drug store on the block between 127th and 128th Streets.
  
  
  
  As violence continued on 8th and 7th Avenues, the disorder and the police response spread to Lenox Avenue for the first time. While many businesses on the avenue were closed by 11:00 PM, William Feinstein’s liquor store at 452 Lenox Avenue was open. David Schmoockler, the manager, watched as a crowd of around thirty people gathered near Lenox Avenue and 132nd Street. In the next hour, they proceeded to attack white-owned businesses, throwing objects, breaking windows, taking merchandise from some, and setting fire to others. Herbert Canter observed the same group on the block south of 132nd Street. He had arrived back at the pharmacy he owned on the northwest corner of West 131st Street at 11:00 PM to try to protect his business. Where white crowds had converged on Black neighborhoods in response to reports of racial violence in the race riots earlier in the twentieth century, in 1935 the only whites who came to Harlem when they learned of the disorder were business owners like Cantor. He described the group as breaking windows as they proceeded down the street and as chanting "Down with the whites! Let's get what we can." Those shouts signaled that this group differed from those who had called out around 125th Street. They had urged windows be broken, and perhaps attacks on police. It was “whites” that those arriving on Lenox Avenue targeted, with threats against the power and property they had in Harlem — not to kill them, as a sensationalized account the New York Evening Journal would later claim. Setting fire to stores, which would happen only in this area, fitted with those threats, going beyond breaking windows in protest at the behavior of white store staff. Taking merchandise was also the expressed aim of the group, a departure from the attacks on businesses that had occupied most of those on the streets up until now. Gathering around West 132nd Street, north of where any violence had been reported up to this time, the members of the group likely came from the surrounding residences, not from the crowds initially drawn to 125th Street. The streets east of Lenox Avenue were the most densely populated in Harlem, their residents among the hardest hit by the economic depression.
  
  Several businesses on Lenox Avenue between 132nd and 131st Streets with broken windows were likely attacked around this time. A Black staff member in Estelle Cohen’s clothing store at 437 Lenox Avenue did not prevent objects from being throw at the windows. He telephoned Cohen at her home in Washington Heights to tell her of the attack. She then called the police precinct and police headquarters, later writing to Mayor La Guardia with clear frustration that "all the satisfaction I got was that all the men were out and that all windows were being smashed." She must also have sent someone, likely her sons, to board up the damaged and emptied windows in an effort to secure the merchandise inside the store. It would prove to be a wasted effort. No one was in the hardware store at 431 Lenox Avenue, Anna Rosenberg’s notion store at 429 Lenox Avenue, and the Gonzales jewelry store at 427 Lenox Avenue when their windows were broken. Nor were there yet police in the area.
  
  Two blocks to the south, white businesses were not yet being attacked and their owners were closing with no sign they felt threatened. Louis Levy closed his dry goods store at 374 Lenox, between 128th and 129th Streets, and left for home. So too did thirty-seven-year-old Russian immigrant Harry Lash fifteen minutes later after closing his 5c & 10c store at 400 Lenox Avenue on the corner of 130th Street.
  
  Further south, however, attacks on businesses had started where at least some of those on the street would have come from breaking windows on the block of 125th Street between 7th and Lenox Avenues. By 11:20 PM, when Patrolman Nador Herrman arrived at William Gindin’s shoe store on the block between 126th and 127th Streets, windows had already been broken and merchandise taken from the display. Gindin had closed the business he had operated since at least 1930 around 9:45 PM, so those attacks would have come as crowds from 125th Street began to make their way up Lenox Avenue around 10:30 PM. Patrolman Herrman made the first arrest on Lenox Avenue after allegedly seeing Julian Rogers, a thirty-seven-year-old Black auto washer, kick in an undamaged display window and take three odd women's shoes worth $1 each and put them under his jacket. He caught up with Rogers about 100 feet from the store. Given the damage to Gindin’s store, some other businesses between it and 125th Street likely also suffered some damage at this time. Harry Piskin was still in his laundry just off Lenox Avenue at 100 West 126th Street when stones were thrown at its windows. They were the first of escalating attacks that would later cause Piskin to leave and fruitlessly seek help from police. George’s Lunch, a restaurant at 319 Lenox Avenue, on the southwest corner of West 126th Street, was also open when crowds appeared on the street. The three staff responded differently to the disorder. Two Black workers left the restaurant when the attacks began. The white worker called the police station for help and then locked himself in a washroom at the rear of the business. No police responded. Attacks on the Radio City Meat Market in the block between 125th and 126th Street and the Sav-on Drug Store two buildings south of Gindin’s shoe store likely also began about this time. The arriving disorder would also have drawn the attention of Leo and Winifred Richards, the Black owners of Winnette’s Dresses on the corner of West 127th Street. The store may have still been open for business or the couple could have rushed from their home just a block east at 1 West 126th Street when they learned of the disorder. As crowds appeared, they hung at least seven signs reading “Colored Store” on the inside and outside of their windows. While neighboring white-owned stores suffered significant damage and looting, Winnette’s Dresses remained untouched.
  
  Some of those arriving on Lenox Avenue went south of 125th Street rather than north. Windows were broken in the branch of the Liggett’s Pharmacy on the southeast corner of 125th Street, in the Empire Grill and Victoria Pharmacy on the block between 125th and 124th Streets and in the Eleanor Laundry in the block between 124th and 123rd Streets. Mrs. Salefas described a sustained attack on her delicatessen at West 123rd Street and Lenox Avenue. A series of bricks hit the window, sending glass flying into the store and Salefas to take shelter in the rear storeroom. “It broke my heart to abandon my store,” she would tell a journalist the next day, “but what could I do all alone? Every time I peeked out from in back a shower of bricks greeted me.” Over time $100 worth of food and some dishes were taken from the damaged store. That was as far south as groups appear to have gone. There were no reported incidents in the disorder in the blocks below 123rd Street to 119th Street, where there were few businesses. Violence in the blocks around West 116th Street would come later in the evening, from groups moving along 116th Street not coming from 125th Street.
  
  
  
  The arrival of crowds at Lenox Avenue and 125th Street also saw some groups continue to attack white men they encountered on the street. An alleged assault by a group of Black men on an unnamed white man at the intersection occurred sometime after 11:00 PM, when police arrived in the area. Detective Doyle of the 5th Division intervened, arresting Rivers Wright, a twenty-one-year-old Black man. However, Wright proved not to have been involved in the assault as the charge against him when he later appeared in court was disorderly conduct. As other officers had on 8th and 7th Avenues, Doyle either mistook Wright for one of the assailants or could only apprehend him among those on the street around the assault. The men who actually committed the assault remained on the streets and may have been involved in other assaults that would occur on Lenox Avenue in the coming hours.
   
• 1 2020-10-22T01:45:42+00:00 Regal Shoes looted 41 plain 2024-05-29T16:21:37+00:00 Edward Wittleder, the assistant manager, closed Regal Shoes, on the southeast corner of West 125th Street and 7th Avenue, at 10:00 PM, according to his Magistrate's Court affidavit. By that time store windows had been smashed the length of the block of 125th Street to the west, between 7th and 8th Avenues. Police trying to clear people from the street had pushed them toward the intersection on which Regal Shoes sat, creating large crowds, as well as concentrating the officers and riot control trucks there. After 10:00 PM, small groups had begun to attack businesses north and south of the intersection on 7th Avenue and further east on 125th Street. By 11:00 PM the store window had been smashed (a reporter from La Prensa included Regal Shoes among the businesses he saw with broken windows the next day). So too had the windows of the businesses on the other three corners of the intersection. Two of those stores, Herbert's Blue Diamond jewelry store and the United Cigar store had police guarding the storefronts that appear to have protected them from being looted. Police do not appear to have taken up positions in front of the shoe store, but were close enough to watch the store. Around 11:00 PM, Officer Peter Naton of the 28th Precinct claimed he saw John Vivien, a twenty-seven-year-old Black laborer, reach through the window and take a pair of shoes from the display. Naton then arrested Vivien, who he said still had the shoes in his possession. Wittleder identified them as coming from the store and being worth $5.50.
  
  
  
  Vivien lived at 483 Manhattan Avenue, two blocks west of Regal Shoes, near the corner of West 120th Street. He appeared in the Harlem Magistrate's Court on March 20, where Magistrate Renaud held him for the grand jury on bail of $1,000. The Home News reported those proceedings; the remainder of his prosecution is recorded only in legal records and police records. Vivien appeared before the grand jury on April 4, according to his district attorney's case file. They sent him to the Court of Special Sessions rather than indicting him, indicating a lack of the evidence that he had broken into the store required for a charge of burglary. A charge of larceny was likely the alternative, with the items valued well below the $100 required for a felony offense. The judges in that court then convicted Vivien and suspended his sentence, an outcome recorded in the 28th Precinct police blotter.
  
  Regal Shoes continued in business after the disorder. The MCCH business survey from the second half of 1935 included the store, whose address it gave as 2097 7th Avenue rather than 166 West 125th Street, the address used in the reports of the looting. The store also appeared in a building labeled 2901 7th Avenue in the Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941.
• 1 2022-01-12T21:03:49+00:00 Regal Shoe store windows broken 19 plain 2024-05-29T16:22:53+00:00 Sometime between 10 PM and 11 PM, windows were broken in the Regal Shoes store on the southeast corner of West 125th Street and 7th Avenue. Edward Wittleder, the assistant manager, closed the store at 10 PM, according to his Magistrate's Court affidavit. By 11 PM, the store window had been broken. Around that time, Officer Peter Naton of the 28th Precinct claimed he saw John Vivien, a twenty-seven-year-old Black laborer, reach through the window and take a pair of shoes from the display. In the interim, crowds had filled the intersection of West 125th Street and 7th Avenue, pushed there by police trying to clear people from around Kress' store in the block to the west. After Wittleder left, groups from that crowd attacked businesses north and south of the intersection on 7th Avenue and further east on 125th Street, breaking the windows of the businesses on the other three corners of the intersection, Herbert's Blue Diamond jewelry store, a United Cigar store, and a branch of the Chock Full O'Nuts restaurant chain. No one arrested in the disorder was charged with breaking the windows of the shoe store.
  
  
  
  The only mention of damage to Regal Shoes other than the report of Vivien's arrest was the store's inclusion in a list of businesses with broken windows compiled by a reporter from La Prensa the next day. Regal Shoes continued in business after the disorder. The MCCH business survey from the second half of 1935 includes the store, whose address it gives as 2097 7th Avenue, rather than 166 West 125th Street as in the reports of the looting. The store also appears in the Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941, of the building labeled 2901 7th Avenue.