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

Vacant store windows broken (2324 8th Avenue)

A vacant store "on 125th Street and Eighth Avenue" ("esquina norte de la Octava y 125") 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, and walked west to 8th Avenue and looked a block north and south of that intersection. The vacant store was not located on any of the corners themselves: a branch of the Liggett drug store chain on the northeast corner and Andy's Florist on the southeast corner appear in the reporter's list; an Optima cigar store on the northwest corner, and the Lazar department store on the southwest corner appear in the MCCH business survey and Tax Department photographs. The La Prensa reporter listed damaged buildings on the east side of 8th Avenue both north and south of 125th Street, but this vacant store appears with those on the south, so is likely 2324 8th Avenue, which is recorded in the MCCH business survey as an "Empty store." (Police arrested Viola Woods for allegedly smashing the windows of a vacant store at 2314 8th Avenue, but that address is closer to 124th Street than 125th Street).



In the first hours of the disorder, crowds around Kress' store on West 125th Street moved down 8th Avenue to 124th Street, to the rear of the store. Later, after 9:00 PM, Inspector McAuliffe ordered police to establish a perimeter 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, New York Herald Tribune, and Pittsburgh Courier. The presence of such large numbers of police does appear to have resulted in only isolated looting of stores around the corners of 8th Avenue and West 125th Street, even if it came too late to protect store windows. Only the Danbury Hat store north of 125th Street was reported as being looted.

No other sources mention the vacant store at this address, and no one arrested during the disorder is identified as breaking the business' windows. The Tax Department photograph shows a one-story building constructed after 1935.

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