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

Vacant store windows broken (2314 8th Avenue)

The windows of a vacant store at 2314 8th Avenue were broken sometime during the disorder, perhaps in the first hours of the disorder, when crowds around Kress' store on West 125th Street moved down 8th Avenue to 124th Street, to the rear of the store. The vacant store was in the block between 125th and 124th Streets, where four other stores had windows broken, including two other empty stores at 2320 8th Avenue and 2324 8th Avenue, the Arrow Sales 5 & 10c store at 2318 8th Avenue and Andy's Florist on the southeast corner of 125th Street. Those other damaged stores were all included in a list of those with broken windows made by a reporter for La Prensa who walked west along 125th Street and and up and down 8th Avenue a block north and south of the intersection on the day after the disorder. It is possible this store was not on that list because it suffered only minor damage; the La Prensa reporter concluded their list by noting they 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").

Officer St. Louis of the 28th Precinct arrested Viola Woods, a twenty-eight-year-old Black woman, for allegedly smashing the store window with an umbrella. There is no information on when during the disorder the arrest took place. Only a New York Amsterdam News story identified the store as vacant; a list in the New York American and stories in the Home News and New York Times provided only the address. After being charged with disorderly conduct in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, Woods was ordered held on bail of $100 by Magistrate Renaud. When she was returned to the court on March 28, Magistrate Ford discharged her, the New York Amsterdam News reporting that she "was freed for lack of evidence."

By the second half of 1935, when the MCCH business survey was conducted, a white-owned restaurant was located at 2314 8th Avenue. The Tax Department photograph shows a one-story building constructed after 1935.

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