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

[Photograph] "Fire Blamed on Rioters," Home News, March 20, 1935, 5.

Caption: "Not content with smashing windows, attacking pedestrians and creating disorders in the streets of Harlem, some of last night's rioters turned their talents to the setting of fires. They piled papers on some of the rooftops and set them ablaze. Some fires were set in stores. This kept the firemen almost as busy as the police. Here the fire-fighters can be seen entering a tailor's shop at 429 Lenox Ave. after a fire had been started. The damage was not great, and firemen also succeeded in subduing the roof-top fires without much difficulty."

In the Home News

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Fires (4) Fires broke out in three stores during the disorder, all located on the two blocks of Lenox Avenue between West 130th Street and West 132nd Street. Two of those stores were adjacent, Anna Rosenberg’s notion shop at 429 Lenox Avenue and a hardware store at 431 Lenox Avenue. The third store, Lash's 5 & 10c store, was a block to the south at 400 Lenox Avenue. That area of Lenox Avenue saw extensive looting, attacks on stores, and violence. An additional fire was allegedly set on the roof of 5 West 131st Street, a block to the east in an area that saw few reported events during the disorder.

The fires broke out within a period of around an hour, beginning with the notion and hardware stores after 11:00 PM followed soon after midnight by Lash's store. All three stores were also looted. Only photograph captions in the Daily News linked the fires to looting: "Fire was set by rioters after they looted place" in the case of Lash's store; and a more elaborate account for the image of the other stores: "It is but a step from looting to incendiarism. Here's a fireman tacking a blazing tailor shop at 420 Lexington Ave., fired after it was looted." Looting and damaging a business by setting it on fire were not necessarily as continuous as the caption presented: alleged looters generally took items they needed, such as food and clothing; setting fire to a store offered no similar benefit. Instead fires fitted with breaking windows and other attacks that targeted white-owned businesses.

The New York Evening Journal reported fires in two buildings (it is likely that its story treated the fires in the adjacent stores as a single fire, but as two different businesses were affected, it is treated here as two fires), the New York Herald Tribune and Daily Worker a fire in one building, and the Home News, Daily News, New York Times, and New York World-Telegram referred generally to fires in several stores without offering details. The Black-owned Philadelphia Tribune appeared to have repackaged the New York Evening Journal account, and the Afro-American published photographs of fire-damaged stores not referred to in its stories about the disorder. Other Black newspapers made no reference to fires. Nor did the MCCH report. The roof-top fire was mentioned only in the Home News and the Daily Worker, perhaps because it occurred on the margins of the disorder. Those stories attributed the fires to members of the crowds on the street during the disorder, but only the New York Herald Tribune described how one of the fires started.

Firefighters attended the fires, likely from Fire Engine 59 located at 180 West 137th Street, near the intersection with 7th Avenue. Their efforts to extinguish the fires were captured by press photographers. A Daily News photograph showed smoke coming out of the hardware store window and doors at 431 Lenox Avenue, and firefighters on the scene fighting the fire. One is swinging an axe at the display window, while a second firefighter stands behind him. A third firefighter is just inside the store, his boots visible beneath the smoke. In the original photograph, cropped out of the published version, a hose runs across the photograph to the left, in the direction of Rosenberg's notion store at 429 Lenox Avenue. A photograph of the same scene published in the Home News had that hose running to the left in the foreground and another hose going into the hardware store, and three firefighters in the doorway with their backs to the camera. An ACME agency photograph also published in the Daily News and in the New York Herald Tribune showed flames in the last section of Harry Lash’s 5 & 10c store window on West 130th Street. Firefighters can be seen crouched in front of the window (they were cropped out of the version published in the Daily News). No other people are visible in the photographs, which are focused on the burning stores.

Fighting the fires was not straightforward, according to the New York Herald Tribune, New York Evening Journal, and Afro-American, which described clashes between crowds and police and firefighters. “A gang of thirty-five Negroes” set fire to Lash's 5 & 10c store in the New York Herald Tribune story. A crowd then “tried to prevent a policeman from sounding an alarm. 'Let it burn!' they shouted. When the firemen came, they hindered them, too, bustling about the hydrants and shoving hose lines about. At last the firemen threatened to turn the water on them instead of the fire and they dispersed.” Some of those details also appeared in the New York Evening Journal, but its story collapsed the two fires together: “As detectives and uniformed men closed in on crowds surrounding the burning buildings, they met with resistance. 'Let them burn. Let them burn.' The shout was taken up by hundreds, and it was not until firemen threatened to turn hoselines on the rioting men and women that they dispersed.” An entire block separated the two locations, too far for a single crowd to be involved. Both the number of police and the size of the crowd are larger in the New York Evening Journal story, which repeats the crowd's alleged chant, “Let them burn," giving it more prominence. Where the New York Herald Tribune characterized the crowd as having "hindered" firefighters with actions that seem to involve individuals pressing forward to see the fire getting in their way, the New York Evening Journal characterized the crowd's behavior as "resistance." Those differences and characterizations are in keeping with how that publication sensationalized and exaggerated the actions of Black crowds. The brief photograph caption in the Afro-American mixed elements of the two stories: it followed the New York Herald Tribune in characterizing the crowd as having "hindered" firefighters, but coupled it with the struggle presented by the New York Evening Journal in claiming that "rioters" "fought them away.”

The New York Evening Journal story went on to link the fires to increased police violence, with the decision to fire bullets at crowds being made in response to fires being set: "The police, working under directions of their highest commanders, were under orders to withhold fire unless necessary, but when the two incendiary fires were started, one at 429 Lenox Ave. and the other at Lenox Ave. and 130th St., bullets flew." The Black-owned Philadelphia Tribune repeated that claim as part of its repackaging of the information in the New York Evening Journal. Multiple other reports instead linked police beginning to shoot at crowds rather than in the air to the outbreak of looting rather than to the fires.

Photographs taken the next day showed the damage resulting from the fire. The exteriors of Anna Rosenberg’s notion store and the hardware appeared in an Associated Press photograph and a photograph published in the Daily Mirror. No glass remained in its display window, partially visible in the left side of the photograph, which had been emptied of merchandise. Damage to the exterior wall below the window could be the result of the fire. Inside the store was an L-shaped counter on which a range of different goods are stacked; there may be some damaged items on the ground but neither the ceiling nor the shelves and counter show the fire damage visible in the hardware store to the right. A fire adjuster for Rosenberg’s insurance company, Royal Insurance, put the damage to her store at $980.13, according to the New York Herald Tribune. As the insurance policy did not cover losses from riots, Rosenberg was among the business owners who sued the city to recover their losses. A jury in the Municipal Court awarded Rosenberg $804, confirming the extent of the damage done by the fire.

No such details exist regarding damage to the hardware store, only the images of its exterior and three photographs of its interior, one in the Afro-American mistakenly identified as the notion store, a second also in the Afro-American identified as the hardware store, and the third in the Daily News. All three images featured the table in the center of the store visible in photographs of the exterior, which distinguished it from the notion store, and show damaged merchandise strewn throughout the store, material hanging from the ceiling visible in the foreground that is likely damage produced by the fire, as well as the burned out display window visible in the photograph of the firefighters at work. Burned shelves and merchandise and fire damage to the table in the center of the store were visible on the left of the photograph in the Afro-American that identified the business as a hardware store. A pile of debris in front of the store visible in the Associated Press photograph appeared to be a combination of material from the ceiling and the display windows. The second exterior image showed a white man boarding up the damaged display window.

Fire damage to Lash’s store appeared less extensive, in keeping with the Home News reporter’s assessment that “damage from the fires was not great.” Only one small section at the rear of the store, on West 130th Street furthest from Lenox Avenue, looked to be burned in an Associated Press photograph. However, the rest of the store appeared significantly damaged. Display windows that ran the length of the side of the store on West 130th Street, as well as those facing Lenox Avenue, appeared smashed. In addition to the damage, Lash reported the loss of $1,000 of merchandise. His insurers too refused to pay, he told a Probation Department investigator. He was not among the twenty-five business owners named as suing the city seeking damages for what their insurance did not cover but may have been one of the eighty-nine not named.

The fire on the roof of 5 West 131st Street received less mention in the press with no reference to any damage it did. A Home News reporter explained that fire as “one method by which the mobs stirred up excitement." It was produced, the story claimed, by stacking "great heaps of newspapers on the roofs of buildings," which, "when ignited, led those in the streets to believe spectacular fires were in progress and many fire alarms were sounded.” An eyewitness offered a different explanation that the fire was a distraction, not an incitement, in the story in the Daily Worker: “This was done, I suppose, to draw the attention of the police force and riot squads from Lenox Avenue where they had concentrated their forces and were attacking the Negroes.” False alarms and the sounds of fire engines are mentioned in several newspapers which might indicate that other roof fires were lit, or simply that calls were made to the fire department.

Fire-damaged stores attracted press attention out of proportion with their numbers given that only three of approximately 300 buildings damaged in the disorder caught fire. A mention in the New York World-Telegram highlighted the impact of that emphasis: “The charred interiors of several shops in which fires broke out added to the appearance of a war-ravaged town.” Burned buildings offered a dramatic, ultimately atypical, picture of damage resulting from the disorder. Fires became more prominent in subsequent racial disorders. More were set in Harlem in 1943, but not the dramatic fires given prominence in coverage of the disorder in Watts in 1965. Harlem’s built environment ultimately meant setting fires could harm residents as much, if not more, than white business owners. Beyond West 125th Street, multiple floors of apartments sat above businesses. Fatalities reported in four fires in Harlem at other times in 1935 made clear the risks of setting fires in stores in such buildings.
Events
Hardware store looted and set on fire Sometime during the disorder, the hardware store at 431 Lenox Avenue was looted. Between 11:00 PM and midnight the store was set on fire. So too was the business to the store's left, Anna Rosenberg's notion store at 429 Lenox Avenue. Herbert Canter, who owned the pharmacy several stores to the south, at 419 Lenox Avenue on the corner of West 131st Street, arrived at 11:00 PM to try and protect his business. He remained until 5:00 AM, and testified in the Municipal Court in the trial of Rosenberg's suit for damages from the city that he saw the fire but not who started it. What Canter did report seeing was "a "mob" carrying bricks, stones, and bottles, as well as canned goods, march down the street shouting, "Down with the whites! Let's get what we can," and hurling missiles through store windows. A block north, David Schmoockler, the manager of William Feinstein’s liquor store at 452 Lenox Avenue, also saw a crowd of around thirty people. Between 11:00 PM and midnight he watched as they "created disturbances, hurled various missiles, broke store windows, set fire to some stores, pillaged others, and in general damaged property of various merchants in the locality," according to Justice Shalleck's summary of his testimony in the Municipal Court. A similar narrative of how the store was looted and set on fire was provided in the caption to a photograph from the International News Photo agency taken the next day: "A store at 431 Lenox Avenue was put to the torch after rioters had smashed its windows with missiles and had helped themselves to stock in the windows and the store itself. The interior of the shop was a shambles after rioters had passed, and firemen had extinguished the fire." The photograph was not taken at the time of those events, so the source or reliability of the narrative was uncertain. Another fire reported during the disorder was set just after midnight a block to the south at 400 Lenox Avenue. Firefighters would have been able to get to the stores relatively quickly from the firehouse at 180 West 137th Street. No one arrested for looting was identified as having stolen goods from the store.

A Daily News photograph showed smoke coming out of the store window and doors, and firefighters on the scene fighting the fire. One was swinging an axe at the display window, while a second firefighter stood behind him. A third firefighter was just inside the store, his boots visible beneath the smoke. In the original photograph, cropped from the published version, a hose ran across the photograph to the right in the direction of Rosenberg's notion store. A photograph of the same scene published in the Home News had that hose running to the left in the foreground and another hose going into the hardware store, and three firefighters in the doorway with their backs to the camera. The caption on that photograph misidentified it as a tailor's shop at 429 Lenox Avenue. Two different captions for the Daily News photograph also misidentified the location. The published image is reported as a "tailor shop at 420 Lexington Ave," an address well outside Harlem. The original version from the newspaper's photo morgue (which can be viewed at Getty Images) located the store at 420 Lenox Avenue. The Tax Department photographs of that building make clear that the address was incorrect: those storefronts sit above or below street level accessed by stairs (those buildings also featured in one of Berenice Abbott's 1936 photographs of New York City, which can be viewed in the New York Public Library Digital Collections). Across the street, however, the stores had street level entrances. The Tax Department photograph cataloged as 429 Lenox Avenue showed a six-story building with four store fronts, two either side of the door leading to the apartments on the upper floors. In the MCCH business survey, the beauty salon to the left was listed as 425 Lenox Avenue and the jewelers as 427 Lenox Avenue. The store to the right of the door would therefore be 429; the Hoisery sign visible in the Tax Department photograph confirms that it was Rosenberg's notion store, as hoisery was a name often used for notion stores. The photograph of the store on fire included a portion of the building to the right that matches the windows that would be 431 Lenox Avenue in the Tax Department photograph. (The MCCH business survey, as it did on occasion, jumbled the addresses of the stores next to the jeweler, putting the hardware store at 429 not 431 Lenox Avenue and the stationary store next to it at 431 not 433 Lenox Avenue, and left out Rosenberg's store).

Burned shelves in the window and further inside the store and damaged merchandise were visible in the photograph of the fire. Another Daily News photograph showed the damaged interior of the store the morning after the disorder, and a white man and woman, presumably the owner and his wife, assessing the damage. Boards covering the destroyed windows and the missing glass in the door are visible behind them, together with a white man who appeared to be boarding up the store. Material hanging from the ceiling highlights the damage from the fire. Damaged merchandise covered the floor and the display table in the middle of the store, while the shelves to the right of the couple were still full of stock. Again, the address was misidentified in the caption, this time as 429 Lenox Avenue. However, in the background, the store window can be seen to the left of the door, so on the right from the street side. The Tax Department photograph showed that the doors to the two storefronts are side-by-side, so the store with the window to the right is 431 Lenox Avenue, not 429 Lenox Avenue. The same smashed goods and shelves still full of merchandise were visible, with boarded-up windows and fire damage in the background, in a similar photograph of the damaged store interior published in the Afro-American. The caption to that image identified the business as a hardware store. Two white men stood in the store, the same man in a coat and hat as in the New York Daily News photograph, and a man in a suit and tie. More of the store to the left of the men was visible, showing that the shelves on the wall and the left side of the table in the center have been burned. The fire apparently did not reach much further than the front of the table. A third photograph of the interior, also published in the Afro-American, provided the opposite view, from the door into the store, and showed shelves without any apparent fire damage (the caption gives the store address as 431 Lenox Avenue but misidentified the business as a notion store). The clashes between firefighters and the crowd on the street mentioned in the caption to that photograph were reported by stories in other newspapers as happening at Lash's store a block to the south, not the hardware store.

Two other photographs showed the damaged exterior of the store and the adjacent notion store at 429 Lenox Avenue after the disorder. In an Associated Press photograph, published in the New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, and Afro-American, smashed display windows and doors could be seen in both stores, together with debris piled in front of the hardware store, likely a combination of material from the ceiling and the display window. Notwithstanding the damage to the windows, both stores appeared to still contain significant amounts of merchandise. A police officer and a Black man stood to one side, in front of the distinctive sign of the business to the right of the hardware store seen in other photographs. Patrolmen were stationed outside a number of damaged businesses the day after the disorder so featured in photographs of other locations. The Black man seemed to be posing for the camera, likely at the request of the photographer. A second photograph, published in the Daily Mirror, showed a man on a ladder boarding up the hardware store windows, matching the man and repairs seen in the background of the photograph of the interior damage. (None of the captions to these photographs gave a precise location for the business beyond it being on Lenox Avenue.)

Notwithstanding the damage evident in the photographs, the presence of a hardware store at this address in the MCCH business survey suggested that the store continued to operate in the months after the disorder. The name of the business operating when the Tax Department photograph was taken, between 1939 and 1941, was not visible; the sign did appear to be the one visible in the photograph of the firefighters taken in 1935.
Anna Rosenberg's notion store looted and set on fire Anna Rosenberg closed her notion store at 429 Lenox Avenue before the disorder reached it. When she returned the next morning, she found the store "in ruins," according to testimony she gave in the Municipal Court reported by the New York Herald Tribune: "most of the merchandise was either destroyed or stolen and the plate glass window had been shattered." As well as being looted, the store had been set on fire. So too was the hardware store to the store's right, at 431 Lenox Avenue. While fires set in stores often accompanied looting, particularly in later racial disorders, only one more was reported, at 400 Lenox Avenue, a block to the south. No one arrested for looting was identified as having stolen goods from Rosenberg's store.

The fire was started sometime between 11:00 PM and midnight. Herbert Canter, who owned the pharmacy five doors down from the notion store, at 419 Lenox Avenue, arrived at 11:00 PM to try and protect his business. He remained until 5:00 AM, and saw the fire but not who started it, according to the reports of his testimony in the Home News and New York Herald Tribune. What Canter did report seeing was "a mob" carrying bricks, stones, and bottles, as well as canned goods march down the street shouting, "Down with the whites! Let's get what we can," and hurling missiles through windows. A block north, David Schmoockler, the manager of William Feinstein’s liquor store at 452 Lenox Avenue, also saw a crowd of around thirty people. Between 11:00 PM and midnight, he watched as the crowd "created disturbances, hurled various missiles, broke store windows, set fire to some stores, pillaged others, and in general damaged property of various merchants in the locality," according to Justice Shalleck's summary of his testimony in the Municipal Court. The fire a block south at 400 Lenox Avenue was started just after midnight. A little over an hour later, Feinstein's liquor store was attacked by a crowd of thirty to forty people.

Photographs of firefighters attempting to put out the fire in the hardware store next door to the notion store offered further evidence of the fire at the notion store. Cropped from the version published in the Daily News, but visible in the original photograph, a hose runs in the direction of Rosenberg's notion store to the left, indicating a fire in that direction. (The captions to both versions provided an incorrect address for the location. Details in the image identified it as 431 Lenox Avenue.) A photograph of the same scene published in the Home News also included that hose running to the left in the foreground. In addition, two photographs taken the next day focused on the hardware store captured glimpses of the damage to the exterior of the notion store. Part of the storefront appeared on the left of an Associated Press photograph, with no glass and merchandise in its display window. Damage to the exterior wall below the window could be the result of the fire. Inside the store is an L-shaped counter on which a range of different goods are stacked (which distinguished the notion store from the hardware store next to it, which had a central display table). There may be some damaged items on the ground, but neither the ceiling nor the shelves and counter showed the fire damage visible in the store to the right. The whole storefront appeared in a second photograph, published in the Daily Mirror, to the left of a man on a ladder boarding up the hardware store windows. Unfortunately, details are not visible in the microfilm copy of the image.

Rosenberg had a policy covering her store with Royal Insurance. Their fire adjuster's appraisal put the cost of the damage at $980.13. However, the insurance policy did not cover damage resulting from a riot. As a result, Rosenberg joined other white merchants in suing the city for damages on the basis of the failure of police to protect their businesses. The New York Herald Tribune reported Royal Insurance was "a co-defendant with the city in the case," although the basis for the claim against the city was that a riot had taken place, at odds with the basis for an insurance claim. Defending the city, Aaron Arnold, an assistant corporation counsel, denied that a riot had taken place and maintained that the fire was unrelated to the disorder. The jury did not agree; they awarded Rosenberg $804.

The attacks on Rosenberg's store were mentioned only in stories about the Municipal Court trial in the New York Herald Tribune, Home News, New York American, and Times Union, with the later two stories not reporting any testimony, and obliquely in captions to the photographs.

Given that the court award covered the bulk of her losses, Rosenberg likely was able to remain in business after the disorder. The MCCH business survey did not include a notion store at 429 Lenox Avenue in the second half of 1935, but instead white-owned hardware and grocery stores. However, based on the Tax department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941, the investigator appeared to have mixed up addresses, as happened for other blocks in the survey, locating the hardware store at number 429, not 431 Lenox Avenue and the stationary store next to it at number 431, not 433 Lenox Avenue. Visible in the photograph was a hoisery store — a name often used for notion stores — that seems likely to be Rosenberg's business, still operating, at 429 Lenox Avenue.