Harlem Civil Rights Virtual Tour

7. Blumstein Department Store and MLK

New York, NY

Book Now

Blumstein’s Department Store located, at 230 West 125th Street, has been involved in several critical events pertaining to the civil rights movement. The owner Louis Blumstein, arrived from Germany in 1885 and started working as a street peddler in lower Manhattan. By 1894 he opened his first store on Hudson Street and was the owner of Mohawk Silk Fabric Company. In 1898 he moved uptown to Harlem where other Jewish business owners were opening stores. Louis died unexpectedly on January 25, 1920, at the age of 56. Over the next three years, the family built the present-day Blumstein’s on 125th Street. The late Art Nouveau and early Art Deco design by Robert D. Kohn and Charles Butler boasted five passenger elevators and a cafeteria in the basement. The exterior façade was simple limestone surrounded by three bays of intricately worked copper ornament with delicate top floor balconies and slim marquees. On the roof were installed two flagpoles on bases, reminiscent of the work of the Secession movement in Germany and Austria around 1910. While African-Americans outnumbered White customers at the store, they did not make up most of the workforce. African-Americans were only hired for menial jobs and elevator operators at Blumstein’s, and other businesses along 125th Street outright refused to hire African-Americans. In 1934, there was a major protest on 125th Street coordinated by the Citizens’ League for Fair Play (CLEP). The organization was founded in June and its members were Fred Moore, editor and publisher of the New York Age, Arthur Schomburg, curator of the Negro Division of the New York Public Library on 135th Street in Harlem, Reverend John Henry Johnson, Rev. of St. Martin’s Episcopal Church, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., of Abyssinian Baptist Church, and Effa Manley of the Harlem Housewives League. Their slogans were “Buy Where You Can Work” and “Don’t Buy Where Can’t Work”. Louis’s widow Fannie and brother William saw their profits dwindle daily because African-Americans stopped shopping at the store. On July 26, they promised to hire 35 African-Americans for clerical and sales positions by the end of September. Not soon after their victory Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. organized the Greater New York Coordinating Committee for employment and in 1938 won an agreement from Woolworth’s, Kress, A.S. Beck, and other major businesses not to discriminate against Blacks. In 1943, Blumstein hired the first Black Santa Claus in New York City, placed Black models, and mannequins in the windows of the store. They also developed a cosmetic line for non-White skin tones. September 20, 1958, Martin Luther King, Jr. was at the store signing copies of his book Stride Toward Freedom when Mrs. Izola Ware Curry stabbed him with a 7-inch letter opener. He was taken to Harlem Hospital where Italian-American Dr. Emil Naclerio and African-American Dr. John Cordice, performed delicate emergency surgery on Dr. King for more than two hours. Mrs. Curry was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and spent the rest of her life in a series of psychiatric hospitals, residential care facilities, and nursing homes. The building was sold in 1976 and is now owned by Parkseen Realty Associates. The bottom floor of the building was subdivided into small storefronts and Touro College took over the upper floors and is using it even today. In 2002, the last president of Blumstein’s Department Store, Kyver Blumstein, died at the age of 95.