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

[Photograph] "Not a Single Pane Left," Afro-American, March 30, 1935, 17.

Full caption: "Not a Single Pane Left --- Drug Store on Lenox Avenue which remained both empty and open after the infuriated human tornado wrecked Harlem business section."

Getty Images caption: "This photo shows damage which was caused by a race riot. It shows a view of the damage done to a drug store at 127th Street and Lenox Avenue during yesterday's riot in Harlem." (No place of publication is identified in the Getty Images information on this photograph.)

This copyrighted photograph can be viewed at Getty Images: https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/this-photo-shows-damage-which-was-caused-by-a-race-riot-it-news-photo/541671324

In the Afro-American

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Drug store windows broken (339 Lenox Ave) Sometime during the disorder windows were smashed in the white-owned drug store at 339 Lenox Avenue, on the northwest corner of West 127th Street. A single large hole was visible in the center of the window facing West 127th Street, and another in the adjacent window facing Lenox Avenue, in a photograph taken the next day published in the Afro-American. The extent of the damage indicated the windows had been hit multiple times. (The photograph caption for the Getty Images version of the photograph located the store "at 127th Street and Lenox Avenue," and the Tax Department photograph confirmed the store was on the northwest corner so at the address 339 Lenox Avenue.) The store may have been looted. There was no merchandise in the window displays in the photograph. However, the image appeared to have been taken after the clean-up had begun as a stepladder is visible set up on the street outside the store. The merchandise might have been removed as part of the cleaning debris from the windows.

Attacks on the drug store windows likely began around 11:00 PM, when crowds first appeared on Lenox Avenue. Windows were broken in William Gindin's shoe store a few buildings south of the drug store around that time, with police arriving around 11:20 PM and arresting Julian Rogers for alleging doing some of that damage and attempting to take merchandise. Given the arrival of police nearby, the arrests of Bennett and Bright likely occurred around 11:30 PM. Late in the disorder, police arrested men for looting Frank De Thomas' candy store next to the drug store on West 127th Street and Sol Weit and Isaac Popiel's grocery store two buildings north on Lenox Avenue. Many other stores in the surrounding blocks of Lenox Avenue had windows broken and goods taken.11:30 PM.

A story in the Home News was the only evidence that connected Arthur Bennett and James Bright to the drug store. Bennett and Bright appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20 charged with disorderly conduct. Detective Perretti of the 6th Division was recorded in the docket book as having arrested both men. They had allegedly thrown "stores through the window of the store at 339 Lenox Ave.," according to the Home News story on those proceedings. Neither man lived close to the store. Bennett gave his address as 48 West 119th Street, eight blocks south, and Bright's address was recorded as 43 West 133rd Street, five blocks north. Magistrate Renaud convicted both men and sentenced them to one month in the Workhouse.

A white-owned drug store was recorded at 339 Lenox Avenue in the MCCH business survey taken in the second half of 1935. The Tax Department photograph from sometime between 1939 and 1941 showed a drug store at the address; there was no information available to establish if it was the same business as operated there in 1935.