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

Michael D'Agostino's market looted

Michael D'Agostino's food market at 348 Lenox Avenue was looted during the disorder. There are no details of those events other than the amount of the owner's claim for losses: $146.75. No one among those arrested for looting was identified as taking goods from this store. However, two unidentified men arrested for looting are both carrying full shopping bags labelled Rex Food Market, 348 Lenox Avenue, in the photograph below published in the New York Evening Journal. Those bags suggest that two of the sixteen men arrested for looting unidentified locations had taken merchandise from D'Agostino's market. Two other businesses at the same address were also looted and appear among those whose owners made claims for losses, stores owned by Sam Apuzzo and Jack Stern. The business in the neighboring building to the south, Young's Hardware at 346 Lenox Avenue was also looted, although Young was not among those identified as suing for damages.
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D'Agostino appeared twice in a list of the first twenty white business-owners who filed claims for damages published in the New York Sun and New York Amsterdam News with a second business at 361 Lenox Avenue. In 1930, the federal census records that D'Agostino lived at 363 Lenox Avenue, a building anomalous in this area of Harlem in 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 D'Agostino in claiming damages from the city, William Gindin, Jacob Saloway, and Irving Stekin. There was no evidence of whether D'Agostino still lived there in 1935; Gindin at least had relocated to another building on Lenox Avenue by the time of the disorder. By the time the city Comptroller heard testimony from those bringing suit, 106 owners had sought damages. D'Agostino was not among those whose testimony appeared in newspaper stories about that proceeding. However, he was one of seven store owners in the case before the Supreme Court in March 1936, identified as having received the lowest award. The two newspaper stories on those decisions differed on the details of the award; the New York Amsterdam News reported D'Agostino received $24 for the losses he claimed at 348 Lenox Avenue, whereas the New York Times reported he received $70, for claims at "248-261 Lenox Avenue," likely a misrecording of 348 and 361 Lenox Avenue, for which he had claimed a total of $343 in losses.



The claim for $146.75 in losses was one of the smaller claims reported in the press, well below the median claim of $733. However, D'Agostino did appear to have been able to remain in business. The New York Times identified D'Agostino as a fruit dealer, so he was likely the owner of the white-owned food market at 348 Lenox Avenue identified in the MCCH business survey in the second half of 1935. The Tax Department photograph of the address in 1939–1941 also showed the Rex Food Market.

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