Harlem in Disorder: A Spatial History of How Racial Violence Changed in 1935Main MenuREAD ME: Help Navigating This BookIntroductionOn the StreetsIn the CourtsUnder InvestigationThe Mayor's Commission on Conditions in HarlemOver TimeEventsSourcesStephen Robertsona1bf8804093bc01e94a0485d9f3510bb8508e3bfStanford University Press
R. J. McBride, Visit to Young's Hats, May 15, 1935," Harlem Survey: Part III, Chapter V, Box 131-124, Folder 18, E. Franklin Frazier Papers (Moorland Spingarn Research Center, Howard University)
12022-06-25T19:14:34+00:00AnonymousE. Franklin Frazier PapersAnonymous3plain2022-06-25T20:10:16+00:00Anonymous
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12021-05-03T22:28:26+00:00Young's Hat store looted13plain2022-07-12T18:59:35+00:00Around 9.00 PM, rocks thrown from the crowd at 125th Street and 7th Avenue broke the windows of Young's Hat Store at 201 West 125th Street. That was the time of a crowd reportedly broke through the cordon police had established at the intersection on to 125th Street. All the other stores in the building on the northwest corner of West 125th Street and 7th Avenue that housed Young's Hat store also had their windows broken sometime during the disorder; to the east, Minks Haberdashery and the United Cigar store on the corner; and to the west, the Savon Clothes store, the General Stationery & Supplies store and the Willow Cafeteria. While the New York Herald Tribune,New York American, and Daily Mirror included the store as among those whose windows were broken around this time, a reporter from the New York Evening Journal, Joseph Mickler interviewed a clerk, Harry Krantz, who also described looting:
About 9 o'clock last night the first gang began throwing ricks at my place and they broke the windows right out. Then they helped themselves to a new hat all around. They laughed when they did it and were having a great time--but they meant business.
Mickler's story mistakenly gave the address as 201 West 126th Street, but the MCCH business survey located the store on 125th Street. The looting was later confirmed by a manager at the offices of the hat store chain, who told a MCCH investigator who visited on May 15, 1935 "that some stock was stolen from the window display." While numerous stores at this intersection, and all those in the building along 125th Street towards 8th Avenue had their windows broken during the disorder, only those on 7th Avenue were also looted -- except Herbert's Blue Diamond jewelry store across 7th Avenue from Young's Hat store, which police guardedt. Police made only one arrest for looting in this area, at a shoe store on the southeast corner of the intersection diagonally across from the hat store. That arrest came around 11.00 PM, several hours after Krantz reported being attacked; in the interval more police had arrived and crowds had moved away from the area, providing an opportunity to make arrests lacking earlier.
Krantz did not put a value on the stock taken during the disorder, but losses the store suffered did not cause it to go out of business, perhaps because only goods from the window display were stolen. The white-owned store appears in the MCCH business survey (although the location cannot be clearly seen in the Tax Department photographs of the corner from 1939-1941).
