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

Nicholas Peet's tailor's store looted

Around 1:30 AM, Detective George Booker allegedly saw Horace Fowler, a thirty-two-year-old Black laborer, break the window of Nicholas Peet's tailor's shop at 2063 7th Avenue, reach inside, and take several articles of clothing. In the Magistrate's Court affidavit, Booker described Fowler breaking the window with a club. Booker told a Probation Department officer that he saw Fowler break the window "by throwing a missile through it." Fowler denied "breaking the window or knowing how it was broken," according to the probation officer. However, Fowler did admit stealing the clothing in his possession when Booker arrested him, a man's suit and a lady's coat, valued at $8.25 in the affidavit, but at $25 by Peet in the Probation Department investigation.

Peet put his total losses during the disorder at $452.25 in secondhand suits, coats, and pants, and an addition $133 worth of suits, overcoats, women's coats, and dresses belonging to customers, according to the Probation Department investigation. It was not clear how much of that stock was stolen before Fowler's arrest. It could not all have been in the display windows, so people must have entered the store through broken windows. Peet's store was located only two blocks south of West 125th Street so crowds would have moved there long before 1:30 AM, making it unlikely that the windows remained intact until the time of Fowler's arrest. It was more likely that windows were broken beginning around 11:00 PM and that Fowler was following in the wake of other looters.



Peet was not identified as having joined other white merchants in suing the city for failing to protect his business. None of those identified came from the area in which his store was located, but around eighty of those who brought suits were not identified. Peet did have insurance for his store windows, which paid $30 for their replacement, according to the Probation Department investigation; there was no mention of other insurance. Regardless, Peet was able to remain in business. The MCCH survey found a white tailor's store at 2063 7th Avenue in the second half of 1935, and Peet identified himself as still in business at that address when he registered for the draft in 1942. Born in Cyprus, he had arrived in New York City in 1929, from England. When he started the process to become a US citizen in November 1934, he lived at 12 West 123rd Street, two blocks east of his store, with his German-born wife Martha, whom he had married in 1933. By 1937, when he filed his naturalization petition, the couple had moved two blocks south, to 9 Mt Morris Park, remaining in the enclave of white residences that bordered the park. By the time of the 1940 census, Peet had moved out of Harlem, to 425 West 125th Street. He and his wife stayed on the west side when they moved again. In 1942 they lived at 435 West 123rd Street when Peet registered for the draft.

Fowler appeared in the Harlem Magistrate's Court on March 20. Magistrate Renaud held him for the grand jury, which indicted him for burglary. Fowler agreed to plead guilty to petit larceny. He was sentenced him to three months in the Workhouse.

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