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

Sylvia Dress shop windows broken

Sylvia Dress shop at 162 West 125th Street 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, walking west toward Kress' store where the disorder originated. The dress shop is one building from the intersection with 7th Avenue. The reporter noted broken windows in the Regal Shoes store on the corner; that store was looted, according to other sources.

That the reporter recorded another dress store with broken windows just west of the dress shop at 150 West 125th Street, and only one other damaged business further west, the Busch Kredit jewelry store at 128 West 125th Street, suggested that fewer stores suffered damage in this block of West 125th Street than the block to the west. It is possible that some other stores in this block suffered minor damage; the La Prensa reporter concluded his list by noting that 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"). That was likely due to the presence of police. Inspector McAuliffe did order police to establish a perimeter around the main business blocks of the street, from 8th to Lenox Avenues, from 124th to 126th Streets, after 9:00 PM, according to stories in the New York Times, Daily Mirror, and Pittsburgh Courier. Emergency trucks were stationed near the dress shop, at the intersection of West 125th Street and 7th Avenue, according to the New York Times, Daily Mirror, and Pittsburgh Courier. Each truck had a “crew of 40 men and [was] equipped with tear gas and riot guns,” the Daily Mirror reported.



No other sources mention this store, and no one arrested during the disorder is identified as breaking the business' windows. The MCCH business survey taken between June and December 1935 did not record any business at the address, and the storefront appears vacant in the Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941.

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