William Gindin's shoe store, 333 Lenox Avenue, c. 1939-1941.
1 media/nynyma_rec0040_1_01911_0033_thumb.jpg 2024-05-29T17:37:00+00:00 Stephen Robertson a1bf8804093bc01e94a0485d9f3510bb8508e3bf 1 2 Gindin's store is the three-story building on the right of the image, above the assistants outstretched arm. Source: DOF: Manhattan 1940s Tax Photos (New York City Municipal Archives). plain 2024-05-29T17:37:36+00:00 nynyma_rec0040_1_01911_0033 20180308 112532+0000 Stephen Robertson a1bf8804093bc01e94a0485d9f3510bb8508e3bfThis page has tags:
- 1 2023-12-13T11:08:36+00:00 Anonymous Department of Finance, Manhattan 1940s Tax Photos: Lenox Avenue Anonymous 4 plain 2023-12-13T16:17:17+00:00 Anonymous
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By 12:30 AM, it was on the blocks of 7th Avenue immediately south of 125th Street that large amounts of police gunfire could be heard as significant numbers of police sought to disperse groups breaking windows and taking merchandise from stores. Captain Conrad Rothengast, who had been in Harlem since around 8:30 PM leading the police in front of Kress’ store, was one of the officers in the area by this time. His presence suggested both that he was no longer needed on 125th Street and that a large number of officers had been deployed on 7th Avenue. Fred Campbell first noticed large numbers of patrolmen and officers carrying riot guns when he stopped his car at the traffic light at West 121st Street. The thirty-one-year-old Black businessmen was on his way to pick up the day's receipts from the two barber’s shops he owned at 2213 7th Avenue and 2259 7th Avenue. As he drove toward West 122nd Street, the noise of shots being fired and glass breaking drew his attention to store windows shattering and police trying to disperse crowds. A brick then hit the rear window of his car, shattering it. Looking around as he continued north, he noticed other cars with damaged windows and realized that the cars with white drivers were being targeted. Even though Black drivers like Campbell were evidently not the intended targets, another brick hit Campbell’s car as he passed 123rd Street but did not damage any of the windows. Neither brick injured Campbell himself. Two other men not in cars but on the sidewalk near the intersection of 7th Avenue and 122nd Street were hurt.
John Eigler, a forty-five-year-old white man, was hit by an object only a few feet from his home at 163 West 122nd Street sometime after 12:30 AM. He had been targeted by a group of Black men who likely were also among those throwing bricks at the passing cars, continuing the attacks on white men and women on the streets, which had marked the disorder since groups left 125th Street. A second white man, B. Z. Kondoul, claimed he was attacked by a crowd of "40–50" Black men and women at the same corner. The thirty-five-year-old Kondoul fled down West 122nd Street, as William Burkhard had fled down West 118th Street when attacked earlier. However, Kondoul's assailants pursued him. When he reached Lenox Avenue, Kondoul saw a uniformed patrolman guarding a grocery store on the corner of West 123rd Street and sought his protection. Patrolman Clements fired his pistol to deter and disperse the group chasing the white man, first in the air, and when that did not have the desired effect, at the crowd reportedly without hitting anyone. That was not dramatic enough for the sensational white newspapers who reported the incident; their stories portrayed an extended clash between a crowd threatening death and the patrolman that ended only when a radio car arrived to rescue them. Later, shortly before 1:00 AM, Clarence London, a thirty-four-year-old Black man, was shot in the leg. London was further from his home than Eigler. A resident of 676 St Nicholas Avenue in Harlem’s north, he was likely among those who had come to 125th Street to investigate the rumors about events at the Kress store. The bullet was almost certainly fired by one of the armed patrolmen observed by Campbell as part of the increasingly violent police response that saw officers fire their guns more often and indiscriminately. Channing Tobias, in his apartment in the building on the corner of Lenox Avenue and West 123rd Street, reported that he heard the “firing of guns” from midnight until he went to sleep around 1:00 AM.
The gunshots Tobias heard were accompanied by the noise of glass shattering. Among the stores being looted at this time would have been the business on the street level of his building, the Lafayette Market at 2044 7th Avenue. While it suffered sustained attacks that left all the glass in its windows gone, next door the windows of the Black-owned stationery store were intact. Groups on the street in this area were evidently distinguishing between white-owned and Black-owned businesses even this late in the disorder. Police officers trying to stop the attacks on white business continued to show a contrasting lack of discrimination in making arrests. Officer Ferry of the 28th Precinct arrested Albert Bass, a twenty-seven-year-old Black man, for allegedly being one of those taking merchandise from the Lafayette Market. However, the charge against Bass was changed to disorderly conduct when he appeared in the Magistrates Court, making him another of those Harlem residents for whom police lacked evidence that they had participated in the violence of the disorder. Bass lived only a half block west of the market at 238 West 122nd Street, so had likely come to the corner of 7th Avenue nearest to his home to see what was happening as many of Harlem’s residents did.
A block further north across 7th Avenue another local resident, a thirty-six-year-old Black janitor named Hezekiah Wright, was arrested in front of Sarah Refkin’s delicatessen. He had encountered a crowd in front of the store when he was returning home to the building where he lived and worked having gone out to buy cigarettes. Gunshots drew Captain Conrad Rothengast’s attention to the group of men, shots likely fired by another officer trying to disperse them. As Rothengast, likely with other officers, approached the delicatessen, he allegedly saw Wright kick in the store window, reach in, and take out four lamps and two jars of food. While the other men ran when they saw police officers approaching, Wright dropped those items and raised his hands. Rothengast responded by hitting Wright with his baton, unnecessary violence that the senior officer treated as unremarkable. Wright claimed he had not run with the others as he was a passerby not involved in attacks on the store or taking merchandise from it. Unlike Bass, he was prosecuted and convicted for burglary. Given the assessment of both the probation officer and the psychiatrist from the Court clinic that Wright was a “quiet, inoffensive” and “cooperative” individual, and that he was one of the small number of residents with stable work and housing, it seems likely that he was a passerby, perhaps mistaken for the man who kicked in the store window as police tried to apprehend those attacking the delicatessen.
Even as violence intensified in the blocks of 7th Avenue south of 125th Street, the disorder apparently had yet to reach as far south as West 116th Street. Around 12:30 AM, Jack Garmise, a twenty-two-year-old white clerk, locked the cigar store his father Emmanuel owned at 1916 7th Avenue, in the Regent Theatre building, on the corner of West 116th Street and likely went across town to the family home at 1274 5th Avenue. Most businesses were already closed by that time; the cigar store may have remained open to cater to movie-goers leaving the theater. It had not yet suffered any damage. Theater shows ending would have added new groups, including white men and women, to those on the street who were unaware of the violence of the last several hours.
On Lenox Avenue north of 125th Street, the other area where the disorder was concentrated at this time, fewer details of the ongoing violence were reported. Businesses around West 126th continued to be targeted despite the presence of police officers around the intersection. A large group of people gathered in front of William Gindin’s shoe store just north of the intersection at 333 Lenox Avenue around 12:30 AM. The display windows had been broken several times already and some merchandise taken from them. Gindin lived nearby at 346 Lenox, one of few white business owners with residences in Harlem, but there were no reports he came back to try to protect his store. As Patrolman James Lamattina watched, John Kennedy Jones, a twenty-four-year-old-Black laborer, motioned to others in the crowd, called “Come on," and threw a rock that broke some of the remaining glass. More bricks and stones then struck the glass as others in the group followed Jones’ lead. Whether their goal was to do more damage to white-owned property or to gain access to merchandise in the window was left uncertain as Lamattina moved to arrest Kennedy. He must have come from the intersection as he did not arrive in time to prevent the attack or apprehend any other members of the group. Jones was not a local resident; he lived on West 119th Street midway between Lenox and 7th Avenues, and must have joined crowds moving through the streets earlier in the evening.
A similar scenario likely played out around this time across Lenox Avenue from the shoe store. Detective Phillips must have seen a crowd in front of the grocery store on the corner of West 127th Street, some of whom were reaching through glass broken earlier in the disorder to take merchandise from the display. When he reached the store to stop the looting, he arrested Elizabeth Tai, a twenty-eight-year-old Black woman, Arthur Davis, a thirty-six-year-old Black man, and probably another Black man, eighteen-year-old Herbert Hunter. He must have had the help of other officers to make multiple arrests. However, evidently none of those he arrested had actually been among those taking merchandise as the charge they faced in court was disorderly conduct, not burglary. Again, police officers had arrested those they could apprehend, not those participating in the looting. The group highlighted the diverse origins of those on the streets during the disorder. While Davis and Hunter lived on West 126th Street, Tai's home was on the Upper East Side.
By this time, when more police officers would have been patrolling further north on Lenox Avenue, similar arrests were likely being made around West 135th Street. Patrolmen Archbold and Conn arrested three Black men in a branch of the A & P grocery store chain at 510 Lenox Avenue, perhaps after noticing a group in front of the store or hearing breaking glass while driving by in a radio car. Forty-two-year-old Preston White, they alleged, had smashed holes in the store window and taken food; the other two men, twenty-eight-year-old Raymond Taylor and fifty-year-old Joseph Payne, had had taken advantage of already broken windows to take groceries. While the store had clearly been damaged and looted, police ultimately lacked evidence that the three men were among those responsible rather than part of the crowds on the street. They too would only be charged with disorderly conduct.
With the police presence increasing and violence intensifying, some of those on the street may have moved east to 5th Avenue. Around 12:40 AM, Patrolman Rock saw six men run out of Jacob Solomon’s grocery store at 2100 5th Avenue on the corner of West 129th Street. Solomon had closed the business at 9:00 PM. By the time Rock arrived, the windows had been broken and the door broken. He chased the men and caught a thirty-five-year-old Black laborer named Lawrence Humphrey, perhaps because he was carrying a fifty-pound bag of rice. In all, $150 of groceries were missing when Solomon returned to the store just over six hours later. The six men Rock pursued could not have been carrying all that merchandise; the bag of rice had a value of only $2.50. Others in the area must also have taken food without interference from police. Humphrey lived only three blocks away on West 132nd Street in the overcrowded section between Lenox and 5th Avenues. The blocks around the grocery store contained very few businesses. Only the block north of 125th Street, and the blocks from 131st Street to 138th Street, were lined with stores. The stores targeted were businesses that contained food and clothing that residents of the area lacked.
Those stores on 5th Avenue would be attacked with little interference from police. An unclaimed laundry store on the corner of West 131st Street and another grocery store on the corner of West 137th Street already had broken windows and missing merchandise by the time patrolling police made arrests there at some time during the disorder. Patrolman Adamie found Elva Jacobs, an eighteen-year-old Black woman, in the grocery store. However, he had no evidence she was responsible for either the broken windows or the items missing from the store, so Jacobs was charged only with unlawful entry for being inside the damaged business. Patrolman Jackson found Lamter Jackson, a twenty-four-year-old Black man, taking a bag of laundry, evidence for a charge of larceny but not that he had broken the windows of the store from which he was taking the bag. Both Jacobs and Jackson lived east of Lenox Avenue on streets several blocks north of where they were arrested. A fire was lit on the roof of the building containing the store selling unclaimed laundry. Unlike those set in stores on Lenox Avenue, the purpose of the rooftop fire was not to destroy white-owned property. Instead, it was intended to produce a reaction from those on the street: “to stir up excitement” in spectators, according to the Home News, and to draw police officers attacking people on the street away from Lenox Avenue, according to the probably better-informed Daily Worker.
The attacks on businesses on Lenox Avenue around West 116th Street that had begun after midnight likely continued. On the block between West 116th and West 117th Streets, Nathaniel Powell suffered injuries that suggested that glass was being shattered. The nineteen-year-old Black man, who lived nearby on West 118th Street, suffered cuts to his nose and left wrist in circumstances that he did not reveal to the hospital staff who treated him. While Powell could have been watching as others broke the windows, the severity of his wounds suggested he was closer than that and involved in breaking the glass. Julia Cureti’s restaurant on that block had windows broken sometime during the disorder. Two days later, Cureti would identify a homeless twenty-eight-year-old Black man named Jackie Ford as one of those responsible, indicating that she was still in her business when some of its windows were broken. Several businesses a block to the north also had windows broken. Some of the people who attacked the branch of the Wohlmuth Clothing store, a billiard parlor, and a saloon around West 118th Street may have come along the street from 7th Avenue to avoid the increasing police violence on that street. The billiard hall and saloon both responded to being targeted by displaying signs identifying them as “colored” businesses.
In contrast to the continuing disorder on the avenues, West 125th Street had become relatively quiet by the time sixteen-year-old Lloyd Hobbs and his fifteen-year-old brother Russell came out of the Apollo Theater when the show ended at 12:30 AM. They had seen broken windows in some stores and unusually large numbers of people and police on 125th Street west of 8th Avenue on their way to the theater. Leaving four hours later, they and the other audience members encountered “general disorder.” A crowd on the corner of 7th Avenue drew the boys’ attention, and they went to find out what was happening. As they walked toward 7th Avenue, Fred Campbell drove through the intersection. Before the boys could see anything at the corner, police pushed the group up 7th Avenue, moving people away from 125th Street as they had been doing throughout the disorder. As the Hobbs brothers were carried along the sidewalk up 7th Avenue by the crowd and Campbell drove up the avenue in his car, they saw businesses with broken windows as far north as 128th Street.
While Campbell collected the receipts from his barber’s shop at 131st street around 12:35 AM, he watched as a group of Black men and women broke the display windows of a butcher shop on the other side of 7th Avenue. They took hams from the window without interference before police arrived. It was likely a radio car containing Patrolman McInerney and Watterson that Campbell saw. Around this time those officers encountered “quite a crowd breaking windows” around 130th Street. After the crowd scattered uptown, the patrolmen drove south on 7th Avenue. As they came to 128th Street around 12:45 AM, the patrolmen crossed paths with the Hobbs brothers at 2150 7th Avenue, Louis Eisenberg’s auto parts store. The boys had encountered a group of people milling about in front of the store talking. The patrolmen decided to disperse the crowd. Although they would later claim that the noise of breaking glass drew their attention to the store where they saw Lloyd Hobbs in the window display passing out merchandise, seven witnesses said the boy was among the group standing on the street when the radio car pulled up. Marshall Pfifer and Samuel Pitts were still on opposite sides of that intersection watching events on 7th Avenue. By this time other local residents had joined them. Howard Malloy and Arthur Moore were out on the street to get ice-cream for their wives, who were in the Moore's apartment in 213 West 128th Street, drawn into the disorder like Charles Saunders and Hezekiah Wright had been while getting cigarettes. As they arrived at the northwest corner of 128th and 7th Avenue, they saw a "commotion" on the block of 7th Avenue to the south. So too did John Bennett, who lived at 2154 7th Avenue, and was likely on the corner with Malloy, Moore and Pitts. Joseph Hughes was watching from his apartment in 201 West 128th Street. Warren Wright was standing in the entrance to the apartments above 2150 7th Avenue on the other side of the group in front of the auto parts store.
As the police radio car came to a stop, Patrolman John McInerney jumped out with his pistol in his hands. Fearing a beating from the police, the boys and the others in front of the store ran up 7th Avenue. McInerney chased after them; Waterson remained in the car, reversing it back up 7th Avenue behind his partner. When the fleeing group got to West 128th Street, Lloyd Hobbs turned left on to West 128th Street, breaking from the others including his brother Russell, who crossed the street and continued running up 7th Avenue. He may have decided to head back towards his family’s home on St. Nicholas Avenue. When McInerney reached the corner, he raised his pistol and shot the boy. He later claimed that he saw that Hobbs had items from the store in his hands and called out to him to stop. The Black men watching saw nothing in the boy’s hands and heard no call from the patrolman. They did see Hobbs fall to the ground after the bullet hit his right side, went through his abdomen, and lodged in his right wrist. The gunshot would not have been the only one echoing around Harlem at this time, noise that signaled that McInerney’s action was part of the intensifying violence of the police response.
Waterson reversed the radio car into 128th Street, grabbed a rifle, and went to McInerney’s aid. As the residents on the street looked on, the two patrolman loaded Lloyd Hobbs into their car and drove him to Harlem Hospital. Russell Hobbs had not seen the shooting. When he returned to 128th Street after the police car left, he learned from the crowd at the scene that it was his brother who had been shot. He immediately ran home to tell his parents, Lawyer and Mary Hobbs.
Around the same time that McInerney shot Lloyd Hobbs, James Wrigley was struck on the head by a stone thrown at him at 7th Avenue and 126th Street. The forty-nine-year-old white manager of a security guard service had come to Harlem when he heard of the disorder to supervise staff protecting stores in the area. He suffered a head injury and cuts about both eyes and may have been knocked unconscious. Police found Wrigley lying on the street. He, like Hobbs, was loaded into a radio car and transported to Harlem Hospital.
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William Gindin's shoe store looted
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Around 9:45 PM William Gindin locked up his business, William's Shoe Store, at 333 Lenox Avenue, according to the Magistrates Court affidavit, and presumably went home. Unusually for a white business owner, he lived in an apartment at 346 Lenox Avenue a block to the north. Crowds gathered on Lenox Avenue north of West 125th Street and began to smash store windows around 10:30 PM, when a group of men looted Towbin's Haberdashery at Lenox Avenue and West 125th Street. Gindin's store was targeted sometime soon after as one display window was already smashed and a large quantity of merchandise stolen by 11:20 PM, according to Patrolman Nador Herrman. At that time he allegedly saw Julian Rogers, a thirty-seven-year-old Black auto washer, kick in the other display window, take three odd women's shoes worth $1 each, and put them under his jacket. Herrman arrested Rogers about 100 feet from the store and recovered the shoes, according to the Magistrates Court affidavit.
Just over an hour later, at 12.30 AM, a crowd gathered in front of the shoe store and threw stones and other objects at the windows, breaking more of the glass, after which a police officer arrested John Kennedy Jones for allegedly both inciting the group and throwing stones. The multiple attacks combined to do significant damage to the shoe store. Both display windows were smashed and emptied of their contents in a photograph of the store published in the New York World Telegram. Merchandise scattered on the street is also visible. Gindin told a Probation Department investigator that shoes valued at $1,200 were stolen during the disorder.
Gindin was one of the twenty white business owners that the New York Sun, New York World-Telegram, and New York Amsterdam News identified as filing claims against the city for failing to protect their stores. He claimed $1,273.89 in damages, well above the median reported claim of $733. By the time the city comptroller heard testimony from those bringing suit, 106 owners had sought damages. Gindin was not among those whose testimony appeared in newspaper stories about that proceeding. Nor was he one of those whose cases went to trial. The city lost those cases, so Gindin likely was awarded some amount of damages. Whatever the award, Gindin was able to remain in business. His store appeared in the MCCH business survey from the second half of 1935, and Gindin still owned and operated the store when he registered for the draft in 1942.
Born in Russia in 1894, Gindin was resident in New York City at least by 1917 when he registered for the draft. He owned the shoe store by 1930, when he was one of a small number of white business owners who resided in Harlem. According to the federal census schedule, he lived a block north of his store, at 363 Lenox Avenue. Unusually, all six of the other apartments in that building had white residents, including three households headed by men who owned stores in Harlem later looted during the disorder who joined Gindin in suing the city, Irving Stekin, Jacob Saloway, and Michael D'Agostino. In 1935, Gindin lived at 346 Lenox Avenue, where he would have been a neighbor of Herman Young, who lived above a hardware he owned at that address that was also looted during the disorder. While Young and his wife went to his store when they heard glass smashing and witnessed the looting, Gindin apparently did not go to his store during the disorder. The Magistrates Court affidavit specified that no one was in the store when Rogers stole the shoes. By 1942, while still in business in Harlem, Gindin had moved to the Upper West Side, according to his draft registration.
Rogers was arraigned in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, charged with burglary. Magistrate Renaud held him for the grand jury. After they indicted him, Rogers agreed to plead guilty to petit larceny. Judge Allen gave Rogers a suspended sentence. -
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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.
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2021-12-08T21:40:57+00:00
William Gindin's shoe store windows broken
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2024-05-29T17:41:26+00:00
At 12:30 AM Patrolman James Lamattina saw a "large number" of people gathered in front of William's Shoe store at at 333 Lenox Avenue. Then John Kennedy Jones "motioning with his hand, said to the others 'come on,' and threw a rock that broke the plate glass window" of the store, Lamattina alleged in his Magistrates Court affidavit. Other people in the crowd also threw "stones and sticks" at the window. Lamattina arrested Jones, a twenty-four-year-old Black laborer, likely after having to pursue him. No other members of the crowd were arrested. Groups of people broke windows in at least two other nearby stores in the preceding half hour. About fifteen minutes before this alleged attack on the shoe store, a group of about thirty people had broken windows in a restaurant at 317 Lenox Avenue, a block to the south, where a police officer arrested one man. Ten minutes before that arrest, about 12:05 AM, another group had broken windows in the store across the street at 318 Lenox Avenue, where a police officer arrested two men.
Just over an hour earlier, at 11:20 PM, Patrolman Nador Herrman allegedly saw Julian Rogers, a thirty-seven-year-old Black auto washer, kick in one of the store's display windows, take three odd women's shoes worth $1 each, and put them under his jacket. Herrman arrested Rogers about 100 feet from the store. William's Shoe store had been a target before Roger's arrest. One display window was already smashed and a large quantity of merchandise stolen, according to Patrolman Herrman. The multiple attacks combined to do significant damage. Both display windows were smashed and emptied of their contents in the photograph of the store published in the New York World Telegram. Merchandise scattered on the street is also visible. Gindin told a Probation Department investigator that shoes valued at $1,200 were stolen during the disorder.
Gindin was one of the twenty white business owners that the New York Sun identified as suing the city for failing to protect their stores; he claimed $1,273.89 in damages, well above the median reported claim of $733. By the time the city comptroller heard testimony from those bringing suit, 106 owners had sought damages. Gindin is not among those whose testimony appears in newspaper stories about that proceeding, and he is not one of those whose cases went to trial to test the claims. The city lost the test cases, so Gindin likely was awarded some amount of damages. Whatever the award, Gindin was able to remain in business. William's Shoe Store appears in the MCCH business survey from the second half of 1935, and Gindin still owned and operated the store when he registered for the draft in 1942.
Born in Russia in 1894, Gindin was resident in New York City at least by 1917, when he registered for the draft. By 1930, Gindin owned the shoe store, and was one of a small number of white business owners who resided in Harlem. According to the federal census schedule, he lived a block north of his store, at 363 Lenox Avenue. Unusually, all six of the other apartments in that building had white residents, including three households headed by men who owned stores in Harlem later looted during the disorder who joined Gindin in suing the city, Irving Stekin, Jacob Saloway, and Michael D'Agostino. In 1935, Gindin lived at 346 Lenox Avenue, where he would have been a neighbor of Herman Young, who lived above a hardware he owned at that address that was also looted during the disorder. While Young and his wife went to his store when they heard glass smashing and witnessed the looting, Gindin apparently did not head to his store during the disorder. The Magistrates Court affidavit specified that no one was in the store when Rogers stole the shoes. By 1942, while still in business in Harlem, Gindin had moved to the Upper West Side, according to his draft registration.
Jones was also arraigned in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, charged with riot according to the docket book, for leading others in the crowd to attack the store. Crossed out is an additional charge of malicious mischief, for damage to the store window; that charge does appear on the Magistrate Court affidavit, in a handwritten note that also lists the forms of riot being charged. Magistrate Renaud held Jones for the grand jury and set bail at $1,000. On March 27, when he appeared before the grand jury, they transferred him to the Court of Special Sessions for trial on misdemeanor forms of the charges. The judges convicted Jones on April 1 and gave him a suspended sentence, recorded in the 28th Precinct police blotter.