This page was created by Anonymous.
Temple Grill & Restaurant windows broken
Located in the block between 125th and 126th Streets, the restaurant was in an area where multiple stores were reported as looted or damaged, with particularly extensive damage to both George Chronis' restaurant a building further north on the southwest corner of West 126th Street and Harry Piskin's laundry next to it on West 126th Street. Across the street, ten minutes before Tait observed the attack on the restaurant, another officer had arrested two other men who, like Smith, had allegedly urged another group to attack a drug store. By the time Chronis arrived at his restaurant at 1 AM it had been "completely demolished," according to a story in the New York World-Telegram.
Bernard Smith was the last person to appear in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, where he was charged with both malicious mischief, for allegedly breaking the window, and inciting a riot, for his alleged call for the group to break other windows. Held in custody by Magistrate Renaud, Smith returned to court on March 25, when bail was set at $500 for the first charge and $1000 for the second, and then again on March 26, when Magistrate Ford sent him to grand jury on the charge of riot. Prosecutors reduced the charge of malicious mischief to disorderly conduct, of which Magistrate Ford found him guilty and sentenced him to five days in the Workhouse. A week later Smith appeared before the grand jury, which dismissed the riot charge.
Although the business Smith allegedly attacked is not named in the Magistrates Court affidavit or the Home News story on Smith's first appearance in the Harlem Magistrates Court, an advertisement for the "Temple Grill Bar and Restaurant" at 317 Lenox Avenue appeared in the New York Age on March 9, 1935, just ten days before the disorder. It was still in business when the MCCH business survey was taken in the second half of 1935, identified as a white-owned business (the advertisement in 1935 identified Phillip Portoghese as the proprietor). A storefront of the kind that would fit a bar and restaurant is visible in the Tax Department photograph but the signage is not legible, so whether the business survived until 1939-1941 is unknown.
This page has tags:
This page references:
- New York Penal Law, § 2090-2092: Riot
- "106 Suits Filed Under Mob Law in Harlem Riot," New York World-Telegram, July 23, 1935 [clipping]
- Harlem Magistrates Court docket book
- New York Penal Law, § 1433: Malicious Mischief
- "Police Guard Against New Uprising as Mayor Acts to Probe Race Riot," Home News, March 21, 1935 [clipping]
- District Attorney's Closed Case Files, 204075 (1935) (New York City Muncipal Archives).
- [Advertisment] "Temple Grill Bar and Restaurant," New York Age, March 9, 1935, 5.