Jan 20
Jacqueline Lee Bouvier becomes engaged to Wall Street broker John G. W. Husted, Jr.

Jan 21
William Shawn succeeds Harold Ross as editor of The New Yorker.

Feb 29
New York City erects its first "Don't Walk" signs, in Times Square.

Mar 3
The U. S. Supreme Court, upholding a New York State law, bars political subversives from teaching in public schools.

Apr 1
Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnar dies in New York City at the age of 74.

Apr 4
The United Nations Security Council meets in its new New York City headquarters for the first time.

May 26
The Supreme Court lifts New York State's ban on the film The Miracle.

June
The Genesee storage dam at Mount Morris is dedicated.

Jun 1
Philosopher-educator John Dewey, 92, dies in New York City.

Aug 17
Soprano Gianna Rolandi is born in New York City.

Aug 30
The Museum of Modern Art displays a model of R. Buckminster Fuller's Geodesic Dome House.

Sep 30
The new Cinerama film projection process debuts in New York City.

Oct 7
The New York Yankees win their third World Series in a row, defeating the Brooklyn Dodgers, 4-2.

Oct 22
Andre de Toth's film Springfield Rifle debuts in New York City.

December
Black Buffalo minister the Reverend Willie B. Seals photographs the Gospel Choir of St. John Baptist Church.

Dec 30
Temperatures in New York City rise to 62 degrees F, highest here for this date.

City
Gordon Bunshaft's Lever House is completed. ** The garden of the London Terrace apartments is paved over and interrupted by architect Philip Birnbaum's walkway. ** Art and architectural historian Richard Krautheimer becomes a full professor of art history at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts. ** Forest Hills developer Morton Pickman purchases Queens' Oakland Golf Club, intending to erect high-rise apartments on the site. The plan is blocked. ** The Knoedler Gallery sells its Charles M. Russell collection to Amon G. Carter. ** The diaries of 19th century New York City lawyer and music lover George Templeton Strong are published. ** Various batteries of the 52nd Artillery Brigade are assigned to protect the city area. ** City native George Jorgensen, Jr. travels to Denmark to become the world's first sex change patient. ** The Packard auto show is held at Grand Central Palace. ** Joseph Mitchell's story about the Fulton Ferry Hotel, Up in the Old Hotel , later the title story of a collection, is published in the New Yorker . ** The Bay Terrace apartment complex is built on 200 acres in Bayside, Queens. ** Columbia University inaugurates the annual Speranza Lectures, devoted to American ideals and their historical background. ** Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Don Newcombe is drafted into the Army. ** The city suffers a summer heat wave, with temperatures in the high nineties. ** Yul Brynner wins a Tony as Best Supporting Actor for The King and I. ** New York Times copy editor William D. Evans, "the Judge", retires at the age of 90. ** Joseph Wood Krutch leaves Columbia University, moves to Arizona. Eric Bentley takes over the Brander Matthews Chair, and begins reviewing for The New Republic.

State
The Star Headlight & Lantern Company locates its electronics division in Honeoye Falls. ** Troy's Rensselaer County Historical Society moves into new quarters at the Hart Cluett Mansion, given to the organization by Albert E. Cluett. ** Saratoga's Grand Union Hotel is torn down. ** Ground is broken at Geneva for a new chemistry building (Lansing Hall) for Hobart and William Smith colleges. Land is reclaimed by the colleges for development of the Odell's Pond and William Smith playing fields. ** The production A Night in Venice plays at Jones Beach, with a cast of 300 - Metropolitan Opera singers, a fifty-piece orchestra, precision swimmers. gondoliers and high divers. ** Tonawanda's Bell Airport, owned by Bell Aircraft, closes. ** Cecilia B. Jackson, Newark correspondent for Rochester's Gannett papers, writes "The Story of the Stained Glass Windows of St. Mark's Church". ** The Dutch government designs a coat of arms for Rotterdam, New York.

Rochester
Orator Francis Woodward, Jr., son of the founder of the Genesee Pure Food Company (Jell-O), dies in a fall from a window at the Hotel Sheraton. ** Henry Clune's By His Own Hand, a fictionalized account of photographic industrialist George Eastman. ** The city's subway system eliminates Sunday and holiday service and cuts back on evening and Saturday service. ** Bausch and Lomb introduces the Wayfarer line of sunglasses. ** Jack Herrema opens his White City Grocery Market at 720 Washington Avenue, in Irondequoit. ** A center wing is added to the Genesee Hospital complex. ** Rochester Transit Corporation ridership reaches 180,000 daily riders. Monroe County has 168,000 passenger and commercial vehicles. ** An infirmary is added to the Jewish Home complex.

Apr 10
House of Wax, the first feature-length 3-D movie in color, premieres in New York City.

Apr 19
Mickey Mantle hits the longest recorded major league home run - 565 feet.

Jun 19
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are executed as spies at Ossining's Sing Sing Prison.

Sep 17
Entertainer Sophie Tucker becomes the first woman "roasted" by New York City's Friar's Club.

October
Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Carl Erskine strikes out 14 New York Yankees, breaking the World Series record set by Howard Ehmke in 1929.

Nov 17
The temperature in New York City reaches 71 degrees F, highest temperature here for this date.

Dec 25
Broadway producer Lee Shubert dies at the age of 78.

Dec 29
Temperatures in New York City rise to 62 degrees F, highest here for this date.


City
New York State assemblyman for Harlem Hulan E Jack is elected borough president of Manhattan, the first black to hold the post. ** Pace College moves into its new headquarters in the former New York Times building on Park Row. The school is authorized to grant BAs. ** Manhattan borough president Robert F. Wagner, running on the Democratic ticket, defeats Republican Harold Riegelman and Liberal- Independent Rudolph Halley to become mayor, serving through 1965. ** The Museum of Modern Art holds a major exhibition of contemporary automobile design. ** Mad Bomber George Metesky plants a bomb in Loew's Lexington Theatre. The bomb fails to go off and is not discovered until 1957, nine months after Metesky's arrest. ** Thomas Mitchell wins a Tony as best actor in a musical for Hazel Flagg, in a non-singing role.

State
Saratoga Springs' Grand Union Hotel is torn down. ** A new cutoff for Route 5 reroutes traffic past Silver Creek. ** The approximate date East Avon's White Horse Tavern is destroyed by fire.

Niagara Falls
The Hooker Chemicals and Plastics Corporation sells it's land by the Love Canal to the Niagara School Board for $1.00. The deed includes a disclaimer for chemical damage. The board will build a school on the property.

Rochester
Port of Rochester exports 868,000 tons of coal. ** The Wegmans food store chain creates a program of benefits for their full-time (more than 350) employees.

Jan 5
Temperatures in New York City reach 64 degrees F, highest here for this date.

Jan 15
The New York Times carries a photograph of Marilyn Monroe about to kiss Joe DiMaggio before their marriage ceremony. Monroe's mouth is slightly open and publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger, considering the photo in poor taste, demotes photo editor John Randolph to the national copy desk and then to the sports department, as a field-and-stream columnist.

Jan 16
The final Broadway performance of South Pacific is given, ending a four-and-a-half year run.

Feb 1
Edwin H. Armstrong, the inventor of FM radio, leaps to his death from his New York City apartment.

Feb 6
The New York City Ballet performs George Ballanchine's production of Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker.

Feb 7
Poet Maxwell Bodenheim, 64, and his wife Ruth, 33, are found murdered in New York City's Greenwich Village, in the apartment of acquaintance Harold Weinberg. Weinberg is convicted of their deaths and committed to an asylum.

Feb 11
A 750,000-watt electric bulb is lit at Rockefeller Center, to celebrate the 75th anniversary of Edison's first bulb.

Feb 16
Temperatures in New York City rise to 71 degree F, highest here for this date.

Mar 14
The low-budget, pro-labor film Salt of the Earth premieres at New York's 86 St. Grande theater, the only one that will show it.

Apr 3
Italian-born conductor Arturo Toscanini gives his farewell performance as leader of the NBC Symphony Orchestra. ** Temperatures in New York City drop to 24 degrees F, lowest here for this date.

Apr 12
Bill Haley and the Comets record "Thirteen Women" and "(We're Gonna) Rock Around The Clock" for Decca Records at New York City's Pythian Temple Studio.

Apr 17
3,000 U. S. troops, out of Korea, land in New York City.

Apr 29
Comedian Jerry Seinfeld is born in Brooklyn.

May 10
Automatic coffee makers are introduced, in New York City.

May 13
George Abbott's production of The Pajama Game opens on Broadway.

May 19
Composer Charles Ives dies in New York City at the age of 79.

May 28
Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder premieres, in New York City.

June
Mario M. Cuomo graduates from St. John's University.

Jun 5
Cuomo marries Matilda Raffa.

July
The Royal Canadian Yacht Club's Venture II defeats the Rochester Yacht Club's Iskareen.

Jul 16
New York City police begin the use of a "drunkometer" to detect intoxicated drivers.

Aug 10
Ground is broken for the Saint Lawrence Seaway, at Cornwall, Ontario, and Massena, New York.

Aug 27
The New York State Thruway is completed.

September
World War II and Korean War fighter pilot Vinny Marzello of Albany is killed when a plane he's test piloting fails to clear some trees at Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Sep 3
The New York State Historical Association holds its annual meeting in Stony Brook, Long Island. Guest speaker Bruce Catton talks on America's Heritage.

Sep 6
Vic Seixas and Doris Hart win the U. S. singles tennis titles, at Forest Hills.

Sep 8
Alan Freed begins a rock and roll program on New York City's radio station WINS.

Sep 9
Marilyn Bell becomes the first person to swim across Lake Ontario.

Sep 27
The New York Giants' Willie Mays leads his team to the National League pennant.

Sep 30
English musical comedy actress Julie Andrews makes her New York City debut in The Boy Friend.

Oct 2
Leo Durocher's New York Giants defeat the Cleveland Indians to take the World Series, a four game shutout.

Oct 20
Mary Martin opens in Peter Pan at Broadway's Winter Garden Theater.

Nov 4
Harold Rome, S. N. Behrman and Joshua Logan's Fanny, based on stories by Marcel Pagnol, opens at Broadway's Majestic Theater.

Nov 12
Ellis Island, the U. S. immigration station in New York City harbor, closes.

Nov 14
Charlotte's Church of the Master opens it's church at 3495 Lake Avenue.

Nov 22
Russia's United Nations spokesman Andrei Vishinsky dies in New York City of an acute stenocardiac attack while preparing an address to the General Assembly.

December
Batavia's St. Anthony's parish moves from the basement of the temporary building erected in 1919 into their new church. ** Batavia's Wiard Plow Company, the oldest plow factory in the country, declares bankruptcy and closes.

Dec 16
Giants baseball star Willie Mays is named Most Valuable Player.

Dec 18
An Italian Airways airliner crashes at New York City's Idlewild Airport, killing 26 people.

Dec 28
Temperatures in New York City reach 62 degrees F, the highest here for this date.

City
The city begins a slum clearance project around Manhattan's Columbus Circle. Construction is begun on the Coliseum. ** Gordon Bunshaft's Manufacturers Hanover Bank on Fifth Avenue at 43rd Street is completed. ** Former child film star Freddie Bartholomew goes to work for the Benton & Bowles advertising agency. ** New Yorker cartoonist Charles Addams marries Barbara Barb. His cartoon collection Home Bodies is published. ** Elia Kazan and Budd Schulberg's film On the Waterfront . ** The 52nd Artillery Brigade begins receiving Nike Ajax missiles. ** Gian Carlo Menotti's opera The Saint of Bleecker Street . ** Navy reserve officer Commander Thomas J. Keane completes a four-year project, walking every street of Manhattan Island-502 miles. ** The approximate date New York Italian-American actor Guglielmo Ricciardi, 83, writes his memoirs - Ricciardiana: Collection of writings, stories, memories, etc. of the veteran actor and writer. ** Herman Badillo earns his LL.B. from Brooklyn Law School. ** The Broadway musical Carnival in Flanders runs for six performances. Dolores Gray wins a Tony for best musical actress, setting a record for shortest run for an award winner. ** Robert F. Wagner, Jr. is inaugurated as mayor. ** A small version of the 1951 carousel building in Central Park is built as a shelter for playing checkers and chess. ** The 1,890-bed Bird S. Coler Hospital at the northern end of Roosevelt Island is built. ** Author and alumni (1954) Joseph Wood Krutch is awarded an honorary degree by Columbia University. ** The James McCreery & Co. department store, on 34th Street closes.

State
W. Averell Harriman is elected governor. ** Minneapolis wins the National Basketball Association (NBA) title, defeating Syracuse 4 games to 3. ** Niagara Falls' Prospect Point collapses. ** Canandaigua's McKechnie Bank on Main Street is destroyed by fire. ** The federal government makes an unsuccessful attempt to buy out Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) treaty rights. ** A U.S. Senate report, signed by vice president Richard Nixon, declares that the Federal government has never laid claim to any Iroquois land. ** Willie B. Seals of Buffalo is ordained. His son Willie P. Seals, a National Guardsman, joins the Air Force. ** Newspaperman and historian Roger Whitman dies in Manhasset, Long Island, in his late forties or early fifties. ** Historian W. David Lewis joins the faculty of Hamilton College. ** Onondaga's 1833 Whig Hill mansion is bought by Mr. and Ms. Uhl T. Mann.

Rochester
A total eclipse of the sun is seen. ** A Committee on Italian Migration is formed in an attempt to draw craftsmen to the city from Italy. ** The city annexes Chili's Fire and Police Academy, Greece's School No. 38, and Brighton's School No. 48, increasing its own size to 36.29 square miles. ** Andrew Meloni joins the Monroe County Sheriff's Office. ** Plymouth Congregational Church, the Spiritualist Church, at Troup Street and Plymouth Avenue, is demolished to make way for the Inner Loop roadway. ** The Bittner farm in Brighton is electrified.

Copyright 2002 David Minor / Eagles Byte


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