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

Moskowitz's tailor shop windows broken

Sometime during the disorder the windows of Moskowitz's tailor shop at 2310 7th Avenue were broken. Located between 135th and 136th Streets, the shop was one of the northernmost businesses damaged during the disorder. A shoe repair shop two blocks north, on the northwest corner of West 138th Street, also had windows broken. Although the blocks of 7th Avenue north of West 135th Street had few of the white-owned businesses that made up almost all those damaged during the disorder, there were may have been more stores damaged in this area, as the Monterey Luncheonette at 2341 7th Avenue felt the need to post signs identifying it as a Black-owned business. The luncheonette's windows were not broken

Patrolman Carter of the 32nd Precinct arrested Julius Hightower, an eighteen-year-old Black man, for allegedly throwing a brick through the window of the store, according to a story in the New York Herald Tribune. He appeared among those charged with disorderly conduct in the lists published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal. However, when Hightower appeared in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court on March 20 the charge recorded in the docket book was malicious mischief, an offense involving the destruction of property used in cases of individuals who allegedly broke windows during the disorder. During his arraignment, that charge was reduced to disorderly conduct, an offense that a Magistrate could adjudicate. Magistrate Ford convicted Hightower, and sentenced him to five days in the workhouse or a fine of $25. He served the time. That sentence was reported in the New York Herald Tribune, and the New York Age.

The Moskowitz's tailor shop was operated by a father and son who had had businesses in Harlem for eighteen years, according to a note by a investigator conducting the MCCH business survey in the second half of 1935. The store's sign read "Full dress and Tuxedos to rent."

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