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

Seafood restaurant windows broken

The seafood restaurant at 2338 8th Avenue is one of the businesses in a list of those with broken windows made by a reporter for La Prensa who walked along West 116th Street, Lenox Avenue, and West 125th Street on the day after the disorder. After walking north on Lenox Avenue from West 116th Street, the reporter turned left on West 125th Street, and walked west to 8th Avenue and looked a block north and south of that intersection. In La Prensa the business is identified as a fish shop ("pescadería"), likely because the reporter saw the "Sea Food" sign that hung over the pavement visible in the Tax Department photograph. Also visible in that photograph is the "Lunch" sign in the store window. The MCCH business survey taken between June and December 1935 fits with that sign, recording the businesses as a white-owned lunchroom. The La Prensa list included two other businesses on the block to the north with broken windows: the branch of the Liggett's Drug Store chain on the corner; and the Danbury Hat store at 2334 8th Avenue (partially visible on the far right of the Tax Department photograph).



Police pushed the crowds that gathered in front of Kress' store to the intersection of 125th Street and 8th Avenue early in the disorder. Later, after 9:00 PM, Inspector McAuliffe ordered police to establish a perimeter around the main business blocks of the street, from 8th to Lenox Avenues, and from 124th to 126th Streets, according to stories in the New York Times, Daily Mirror, New York Herald Tribune, and Pittsburgh Courier. The presence of such large numbers of police does appear to have resulted in only isolated looting of stores around the corners of 8th Avenue and West 125th Street, even if it came too late to protect store windows. Only the Liggett Drug Store on the northeast corner was reported as being looted. Other isolated reports of looting and arrests on 8th Avenue occurred further north, around 127th and 128th Streets.

No other sources mention the seafood restaurant, and no one arrested during the disorder was identified as having broken the business' window.

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