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

Radio store windows broken

The radio store at 136 West 116th Street is one of the businesses with broken windows identified by a reporter for La Prensa who walked along West 116th Street, as well as along West 125th Street, the day after the disorder. All the store's windows were broken. So too were four of those in the Liggett's drug store five buildings west, on the corner of 7th Avenue, and all those in the United Cigar store on the other side of 7th Avenue. The cigar store had also been looted, which the story did not mention. The reporter appears to have identified stores as having been looted only when someone told him goods had been taken, as happened at the San Antonio Market and Mediaville liquor store. Given the scale of damage, it seems likely that the radio store had also been looted. However, police officers appear to have been stationed at 7th Avenue and West 116th Street after midnight, perhaps near enough to the radio store to prevent looting. Police arrested Thomas Jackson and Raymond Easley, and an hour later, Robert Tanner, for allegedly looting the cigar store.



Additional businesses on West 116th Street east of 7th Avenue likely had broken windows as the La Prensa reporter concluded his list by noting he had not included others as they had only suffered minor damage ("y otras mas que por ser los danos ocasionados relativamente pequeños no creimus de interes catalogar entre los establecimientos ya mencionados").

A white-owned radio store is recorded in the MCCH business survey at 136 West 116th Street between June and December 1935. There is no Tax Department photograph of the building.

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