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

United Cigar store windows broken

The United Cigar store on the northwest corner of West 125th Street and 7th Avenue had its windows broken during the disorder. Businesses on at least two of the other corners had windows broken during the disorder; Regal Shoes on the southeast corner was also reported looted, while Herbert's Blue Diamond Jewelry store only had windows broken. The business on the southwest corner, in the Hotel Theresa building has not been identified, but likely also had windows broken as the stores immediately next to it on West 125th Street, Wise Shoe store and Mylady's shop did. Police trying to clear people from West 125th Street around Kress' store to the west had pushed the crowd toward this intersection, creating large crowds, some of who broke away and threw objects at the windows of stores on 7th Avenue. After 9.00 PM, six emergency trucks were stationed at the intersection, as part of the perimeter Inspector McAuliffe ordered police to establish around the main business blocks of the street, from 8th to Lenox Avenues, from 124th to 126th Streets, according to stories in the New York Times, Daily Mirror and Pittsburgh Courier. The presence of such large numbers of police does appear to have resulted in only isolated looting of stores on the corners even if it came too late to protect store windows.

Across 7th Avenue from the United Cigar store, police officers armed with rifles stood guard in front of Herbert's Blue Diamond Jewelry store after the display windows were smashed. Patrolmen may also have guarded the cigar store; while there is no mention of their presence in newspaper stories, the New York Daily News published a photograph of an officer with a rifle guarding a store on West 125th and 7th Avenue with stock visible in the window that fits a cigar store but not any of the businesses on the other corners. One of the captions refers to the business as a drug store, but none of the business identified on the corners of the intersection are drug stores (although the unidentified store in the Hotel Theresa building could be one). Damage to the store window is visible to the left of the patrolman, two holes in the glass, in the original version of the image in Getty Images. Only a small section of the window is visible, so there may be more damage.

Both the New York Herald Tribune and the New York American included the cigar store among the businesses on West 125th Street between 8th Avenue and 7th Avenue that they identified as having windows broken, without giving the store's address. (Other newspapers who reported damaged stores on that block listed only larger department stores). The store is also 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, up Lenox Avenue and then west on West 125th Street on the day after the disorder. They gave the store's address as 2100 7th Avenue.

No one arrested during the disorder is identified as breaking the business' windows. The MCCH business survey taken between June and December 1935 did record the white-owned store at 2100 7th Avenue, and it is visible in the Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941.

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