Riverdale is hit by salon fire and burglaries

1962

Bad hair day

Women with their hair pinned up in curlers ran out of a beauty salon on West 235th Street after a fire broke out in the shop's basement on April 5.

Firemen rapidly attempted to control the blaze amid exploding hairspray cans.

"Twenty women were standing in public with towels around their heads, wondering how they would face their husbands, only half done," The Press reported.

Later in the year, Riverdale was hit with a series of burglaries, with police reporting approximately 20 over a single weekend in June. Three of the incidents were reported in the same building on Blackstone Avenue.