Jan 17
The Professional Golfer Association is formed, in New York City.

Jan 27
Temperatures in New York City rise to 69 degrees F, highest here for this date.

Feb 14
Temperatures in New York City drop to 2 degrees F, lowest here for this date.

Feb 21
Temperatures in New York City drop to 5 degrees F, lowest here for this date.

Mar 17
Temperatures in New York City drop to 9 degrees F, lowest here for this date.

Mar 18
New York temperatures reach 7 degrees F, setting a daily record for the second straight day.

Mar 27
The Genesee River floods at Rochester, the worst there since 1865.

Apr 11
War correspondent and novelist Richard Harding Davis dies, in Mount Kisco.

Apr 16
60,000 members of New York City's International Ladies' Garment Workers Union walk off the job. They will win recognition for the ILGWU, standardized collective bargaining agreements, and binding two-year contracts.

Apr 22
Violinist-conductor Yehudi Menuhin is born in New York City.

Apr 23
The Socialist Party, meeting in New York City, nominates Arthur E. Reimer and Caleb Harrison.

Jun 12
The Ziegfeld Follies of 1916 opens at New York's New Amsterdam Theatre, featuring Will Rogers.

July
New York City's first comprehensive zoning ordinances are passed. ** A fire breaks out in the parsonage of the East Penfield Baptist Church, destroying most of the church. It is rebuilt.

Jul 2
Henrietta (Hetty) Howland Green, the richest woman in the United States, dies, in NewYork City leaving a $100,000,000 estate.

Jul 30
German saboteurs blow up a U. S. ammunition dump at the Lehigh Valley Railroad Terminal on New Jersey's Black Tom Island. Seven people are killed. The force breaks windows in Brooklyn

August
The Hydraulic Canal at Niagara Falls is opened to the public as a park.

Aug 7
3,000 members of New York City's Actors Equity Association (AEA) walk off the job.

Aug 16
New York City's Amalgamated Association of Street and Electric Railway Employees (AASERE) walk off the job.

Sep 6
Actors Equity members return to work, having gained a closed shop and an eight- performance week.

Sep 17
AASERE workers return to their jobs, having gained little.

Oct 6
Mystery writer Stanley Ellin is born in New York City.

Oct 16
Margaret Sanger opens the first birth-control clinic, in Brooklyn.

Nov 7
Jazz composer-pianist-trumpeter Joseph "Joe" Bushkin is born in New York City.

Dec 5
Businessman and 1892 Vice Presidential candidate Whitelaw Reid dies at his home in Tarrytown.

City
The New York Central & Harlem River Railroad switches all passenger traffic to Grand Central Terminal, carrying it through Spuyten Duyvil and along the Harlem River. ** Typhoid outbreaks cause the condemnation of Staten Island oyster beds. ** City resident Toyohiko Takami graduates from Cornell University Medical College. ** Workmen excavating in southern Manhattan for the IRT subway uncover the remains of Adriaen Block's ship the Tyger, destroyed by fire in 1613. Parts of it are retrieved and will end up in the Museum of the City of New York.

State
A barn is built at the Shaker colony in Albany, to replace one recently destroyed by a fire. ** Wyoming, New York, breath mint manufacturer and politician Martin VanBuren Ferris dies. ** Jell-O inventor Pearl Bixby Wait dies at the age of 42. ** Ernest Le Roy Woodward succeeds his mother Cora Woodward as President of Le Roy's Genesee Pure Food Company (Jell-O). ** The Champlain Canal portion of the Barge Canal is opened. ** A fire destroys most of Phoenix. ** Photo-electrical engineer Theodore Willard Case founds the Case Research Laboratory behind his Auburn home.

Batavia
When Grand Rapids, Michigan, railroad executive Daniel McCool dies, his widow Kate Fisher McCool returns to Batavia, her home town, to live with her mother Alice Fisher. ** Anna Dailey, owner of the Dailey Furniture Store and mother of pianist Monica Dailey, dies. Her daughter Anna takes over the business.

Buffalo
Clockmaker Myles Hughes completes the apostolic clock he began in 1881. ** The Buffalo General Electric Company erects the Charles R. Hunley Station steam-electric generating plant.

Rochester
The U. S. government turns down a request by the city for $500,000 to be used for port improvements. ** Residents of Charlotte approve the village's annexation by the city, which also annexes Lake Avenue, increasing its own size to 26.28 square miles. ** Claude Bragdon's Chamber of Commerce building opens. ** Nearly half (983) of those enrolled in the city's citizenship classes, are Italian. ** New York State Railways purchases new cars from the Cincinnati Car Company. These Peter Witt 1220 series cars are nicknamed submarines, due to a vague resemblance to German U-Boats. ** The Maplewood Branch of the Young Men's Christian Association opens. ** Loew's Vaudeville becomes The Avon Theater, then Fay's Theater. ** The German Insurance Building becomes headquarters for the Lincoln National Bank.

Jan 22
The first class of Rochester's Dental Dispensary graduates.

Feb 17
Rochester celebrates the centennial of the birth of black abolitionist Frederick Douglass.

Mar 8
An attempt is made to steal a flock of prize geese from the Rochester jail.

Apr 1
Temperatures in New York City reach 83 degrees F, highest here for this date.

May
An elevated line is completed to New York City's Jackson Heights neighborhood.

May 18
A sentry at Rochester's downtown aqueduct fires at a prowler.

Jun 12
The Ziegfeld Follies of 1917 opens at the New Amsterdam Theatre, features Eddie Cantor.

Jun 30
Singer Lena Horne is born in Brooklyn.

Jul 4
The Centennial Celebration of the Turning of the First Shovelful of Earth in the Construction of the Erie Canal is held at Rome.

Jul 23
NAACP officials including W. E. B. Du Bois and James Weldon Johnson lead a silent Protest Parade down New York's Fifth Avenue as a demonstration against the East St. Louis riots of three weeks ago. Almost 10,000 people march.

Aug 3
Jazz composer, arranger, vocalist and trumpeter Charles James "Charlie" Jefferson is born in New York City.

Aug 16
Rida Johnson Young and Sigmund Romberg's Maytime opens at New York's Shubert Theatre.

Aug 28
Guy Bolton, P. G. Wodehouse and Jerome Kern's Leave It to Jane opens at New York's Longacre Theatre.

Sep 19
New York's Rochester, Syracuse & Eastern Railway interurban is reorganized as the Rochester and Syracuse Railroad.

Sep 24
Jazz vocalist and bass player James H. "Jimmy" Butts is born in New York City.

Sep 30
Jazz drummer-vocalist Bernard "Buddy" Rich is born, in Brooklyn.

October
The U. S. War Department orders New York's 369th Infantry Division, consisting of black soldiers, to France.

Nov 6
Women are given the vote in the state.

Dec 17
The 369th Infantry Regiment disembarks at Brest, France.

City
The city begins drawing its water supply from the Catskill Mountains when the tunnel is completed. ** The co-op at 121 Madison, on 30th Street, is converted to rental apartments. ** Brooklyn politician John Francis Hylan, running on the Democratic ticket, defeats incumbent John Purroy Mitchel and Socialist Morris Hillquit to become mayor; serves 1918-1925. ** Richard F. Walsh starts as an apprentice electrician in Brooklyn's Fifth Avenue Theater. ** Composer W. C. Handy arrives from Memphis, Tennessee. ** The Jerome Avenue (Bronx) branch of the Lexington Avenue IRT subway opens. ** Brooklyn's New York Dock Company now consists of 34 piers, 159 warehouses, 20 manufacturing buildings and a cold storage plant. ** The approximate date Brooklyn's Arbuckle Brothers wholesale grocery firm builds William Higginson's 11-story coffee and sugar warehouse at Jay, Main and Plymouth Streets, with 9 railroad lines running through its first story. Turner Construction erects the building.

State
Amateur archaeologist Max Schrabisch arrives in Woodstock and is suspected of being a German agent. He's vouched for by State Supreme Court judge Alphonso Trumpbour Clearwater in Kingston. ** The former Protestant Reformed Dutch Church building in Geneva is sold by its owner, the Catholic Church, and becomes a Masonic Temple. ** A terminal building is built on the Champlain Canal at Whitehall (Skenesborough). It will become the Skenesborough Museum, site of today's Urban Cultural Park Visitor Center. ** The New York State Barge Canal opens, replacing the Erie. Navigation is shut down on the Cayuga and Seneca Canal. ** A bridge house is built on the Oswego Canal at Phoenix to house the machinery for a nearby drawbridge. ** When local African-American musicians are denied access to the Buffalo chapter of the American Federation of Musicians, they form the Colored Musician's Club. ** William O. Inglis begins interviewing John D. Rockefeller for an hour a day at Kykuit, his Pocantico Hills estate. The result, commissioned by Rockefeller's son, is to be a biography telling the family's view of their history. It is never published. ** Former New York Masonic Grand Master William A. Brodie (Mr. Geneseo) dies.

Batavia
St. Jerome Hospital opens. ** The city's Brisbane Mansion is inspected, with an eye toward future municipal use. ** Troop A of the New York State Police is established.

Long Island
The U. S. Army's Camp Mills is opened at Garden City. Camp Upton is opened at Yaphank.

Rochester
The city annexes the Lake Ontario port village of Charlotte. ** Nearly 1000 of the city's Italian population receive full citizenship. ** Fay's Theater becomes the Club Burlesque. ** A war bond rally is held downtown.

January
John F. Hylan is inaugurated as mayor of New York City.

Jan 1
New York City's temperature plunges to 4 degrees below zero F, lowest here for this date.

Jan 2
Temperatures in New York City drop to 2 degrees F, lowest here for the date.

Jan 4
Temperatures in New York City drop to 4 degrees below 0 F, setting another record for this date.

Jan 30
The Eastman Kodak Company sets up a U. S. Army School of Aerial Photography in Rochester.

Feb 4
Temperatures in New York City drop to 0 degrees F, lowest here for this date.

Feb 5
Batavia's Ellicott Hall, center of the village's government, burns to the ground, probably due to an overheated furnace. The mayor will move into temporary Ferris Street quarters and the superintendent of public works will move to the Municipal Building. ** Temperatures in New York City drop to 6 degrees below 0 F, lowest here for the second day in a row.

Feb 6
Batavia's government records are found to be safe, in a basement vault.

Feb 11
Rochester's Friendly Home residence moves from Alexander Street to East Avenue at Allen's Creek.

Feb 13
George Eastman's gift of the Eastman Theater and School of Music to the city of Rochester is announced.

Feb 20
A 40-foot sign is erected on top of the main Jell-O factory in Le Roy.

Mar 5
The Batavia City Council give contractor Frank Homelius the go-ahead to remodel the Brisbane Mansion for use as a City Hall.

Mar 19
Temperatures in New York City rise to 76 degrees F, highest here for this date.

Mar 23
Builder Frank Homelius is given the contract to convert Batavia's Brisbane Mansion to aCity Hall.

Apr 30
A Liberty Loan rally in Rochester is addressed by two A. E. F. veterans.

May 10
The Barge Canal bypass at Rochester opens.

May 12
A mock battle is filmed in Rochester's Genesee Valley Park to aid the War Chest drive.

Jun 14
Land on the north side of Lewiston's Saunders Settlement Road is purchased from Andrezej Drabczyk, Thomasz Szczesc, Josef Janik, and Jakob Nowacki, for the establishment of St Michael the Archangel Polish National Church's Cemetery #7.

Sep 28
The conversion of Batavia's Brisbane Mansion to a City Hall is completed, and the building is opened for public inspection.

October
Father Victor Fasella, pastor of Batavia's St. Anthony's Church, dies of influenza.

November
The Reverend William Kirby is named to replace Father Fasella.

Nov 11
A massive crowd gathers at Rochester's Main Street and East Avenue to celebrate the armistice.

City
Houses along St. John's Park are demolished during a street-widening project. ** Anarchist Mollie Steimer is arrested for agitating against U. S. troop landings in Russia. ** Dr. Toyohiko Takami steps down as head of the Japanese Mutual Aid Society. ** The city's Board of Coroners is replaced by a Medical Examiner's Office. ** The State of New York begins construction of Brooklyn's Gowanus Grain Terminal as a terminus for the State Barge Canal. ** The New York Times wins a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the war.

State
The New York State Barge Canal is completed. Downtown Utica is bypassed. The Erie Canal dam at Tonawanda is removed so that tug-pulled Barge Canal boats can go from Tonawanda to Buffalo. Periodic flooding in the area is also alleviated. ** The racehorse Man o' War is sold for $5,000, at Saratoga. ** A Student Army Training Corps is established on the campus of Geneva's Hobart and William Smith Colleges. ** Tonawanda's Herschell-Spillman Company builds a carousel that is later a working part of the Allan Herschell Carrousel (sic) Factory Museum permanent exhibit. ** Army-Navy supplier Frank Bannerman dies. ** Al Smith is elected governor.

Batavia
Ely's European Restaurant is sold and the name is simplified to Ely's (later The Metropolitan). ** The Buffalo Cut Glass Company closes. ** George Day and his sister Alice Day Gardner change the name of their late father Harris Day's law firm, which they've run since his 1904 death, to Day and Gardner.

Rochester
Claude Bragdon is chosen to design Peterborough, Canada's Hunter Street Bridge. ** The city buys up resorts at Charlotte and converts the property into a public beach.




© 2002 David Minor / Eagles Byte


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