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

Mediaville Liquor store looted

Around 2:25 AM, stones were thrown through the front windows of the Mediaville Liquor store at 1 West 116th Street, on the northwest corner of 5th Avenue. There was no entrance visible on West 116th Street, so the front window likely faced 5th Avenue. Some bottles of spirits in the window were taken, according to an employee who spoke with a reporter from La Prensa, the Spanish-language daily newspaper. Although the employee somehow knew when the attack took place, they did not know who was responsible. No one was arrested for attacking or looting the store.

A reporter for the paper walked around the Puerto Rican areas of West 116th and Lenox Avenue the day after the disorder looking for damaged businesses. Most of those identified in the story were west of the liquor store on Lenox Avenue and on West 116th Street between Lenox and 7th Avenues and most had broken windows without reported looting. La Prensa provided the only evidence of the looting of the liquor store and those other attacks, as both the white and Black press and the MCCH gave no attention to events in the Hispanic section of Harlem.

The Mediaville Liquor Store did not appear in the MCCH business survey, nor did any other businesses located on that corner. However the store was visible in the Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941, which showed that it continued to operate after the disorder.

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