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

Estelle Cohen's clothing store (Norman Toggery) looted

The windows of the Norman Toggery store at 437 Lenox Avenue, near 132nd Street, were smashed during the disorder, and the goods on display stolen. The only information on the attack on the store is a letter the store's white owner, Mrs Estelle Cohen wrote to Mayor La Guardia on March 21, 1935. While there are reports of attacks on other businesses in the area around 1.00 AM, this store may have been attacked earlier, as a Black salesman was present in the store when the windows were broken. He could do nothing to prevent the looting, but did telephone Cohen at her home in Washington Heights, 605 West 170th Street. She then called the police precinct and police headquarters, writing with clear frustration that "all the satisfaction I got was that all the men were out and that all windows were being smashed." What Cohen wanted, she wrote La Guardia was "police protection at all times. I have my sons in that store, and am a widow; business is very hard besides and I don't wish them to lose their lives."  Lacking that protection during the disorder, Cohen had the storefront boarded up, perhaps sending her sons.

However, the boarded-up window failed to protect the inside of the store, Cohen wrote:

...they came back and broke through the windows again and smashed the cases and took the goods out. The shirts were taken off the forms, which showed that they had ample time to work. The floors were scattered with glass and goods all trampled up.

She estimated her losses as at least $800. A little over a month later, when the New York Sun [and other papers] reported that Cohen had joined nineteen other merchants in filing suit against the city government, she claimed $1219.77 in damages. Unlike some other storeowners, Cohen did not have burglary insurance, "on account of not being able to get it up in that section." Given that the city lost the civil actions reported in the press, it is likely that Mrs Cohen received some compensation for the losses. While the store is not recorded in the MCCH business survey, it does appear in the Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941, suggesting that she was able to stay in business after the disorder.

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