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Wohlmuth Tailors clothing store looted
The store must have been closed at the time it was attacked, as the iron gate in front of the store was torn away, and can be seen lying on the street in the photo. The caption referred only to the store front being demolished, and the windows can be seen broken and empty, with the door appearing intact. It was possible that means that the interior of the store was not looted. The image appeared to have been one of a number taken of damaged buildings, primarily on Lenox Avenue, the day after the disorder.
The only other mention of this store being looted was a vignette that Adam Clayton Powell included in an article the New York Post published to "present the Negro's point of view on the recent disturbances in Harlem."
"Witness a young man step through the window of Wohlmuth's Tailoring Establishment at 134th and Lenox Avenue dressed on that cold, rainy night in nothing but a blouse, pants and an excuse for shoes. He comes out a moment later wearing a velvet collar Chesterfield and a smile upon his face - first overcoat this winter."
This was the most specific of Powell's three vignettes of looters in the article and the only one to give a specific location. The others featured an adult man carrying two pieces of salt pork taken from a butcher's window and two "young lads" lugging two sacks of rice and sugar. The account did not clarify if the interior of the store was looted. In stepping through the window, the unnamed man may only have entered the display, not the store itself.
No one arrested for looting was identified as having stolen goods from the store, although there are no details of the circumstances that led to the arrest of twenty-nine of those charged with burglary.
This branch of Wohlmuth Tailors remained in business after the disorder. It appeared both in the MCCH business survey from the second half of 1935, and in the Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941.
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This page references:
- [Photograph] "Steel Fence Smashed," Afro-American, March 39, 1935, 17.
- "Harlem: Survey - Census Tracts #225-226 (30)," 1935, Roll 81, Subject Files, Office of the Mayor, Fiorello H. La Guardia records (New York City Municipal Archives).
- A. Clayton Powell, Jr, "Harlem Negroes' View on Problems," New York Post, March 27, 1935, 1, 4.