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

Michael D'Agostino's store looted

The store at 361 Lenox Avenue owned by forty-three-year-old Italian immigrant Michael D'Agostino was looted during the disorder. There are no details of those events other than the amount of the owner's claim for losses: $196.25. No one among those arrested for looting was identified as taking goods from this store. The store next door at 363 Lenox Avenue was also looted, as was another further up the block at 371 Lenox Avenue, both owned by Irving Stekin. The South Harlem Rotisserie at 365 Lenox Avenue and the laundry at 367 Lenox Avenue had windows broken. Those attacks likely began around 11:30 PM.

In 1930, a federal census enumerator recorded that D'Agostino lived at 363 Lenox Avenue, a building anomalous in this area of Harlem at that time 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, William Gindin, Jacob Saloway, and Irving Stekin. All three men joined D'Agostino in claiming damages from the city. There was no evidence of whether D'Agostino still lived at the address in 1935; Gindin at least had relocated to another building on Lenox Avenue by the time of the disorder.



D'Agostino appeared twice in a list of the first twenty white business owners suing the city for damages based on the failure of police to protect their stores published in the New York Sun and New York Amsterdam News, with a second business at 348 Lenox Avenue. 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 $196.25 in losses was one of the smaller claims reported in the press, well below the median claim of $733. However, it is not clear if D'Agostino was able to remain in business. The New York Times identified D'Agostino as a fruit dealer, and the MCCH business survey recorded a white-owned grocery store at 361 Lenox Avenue in the second half of 1935. The Tax Department photograph of the address in 1939–1941 did show a vegetable market at the address.

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