January
East Pembroke's school is temporarily closed due to scarlet fever.
Jan 7
The New York Stock Exchange trades over 2,000,000 shares in a
single day for the first time.
Jan 8
A fire at Rochester's Hubbell Park Orphan Asylum kills 28 children
and three staff members.
Jan 21
Clyde Fitch's The Climbers, directed by the playwright,
opens at New York's Bijou Theatre, runs for 163 performances.
February
AFL president Samuel Gompers addresses clothing workers at Rochester's
Shoemakers Hall, presses for an eight-hour day and urges the unionization
of workers at the Eastman and Brownell Kodak plants.
Feb 4
Giaccomo Puccini's Tosca makes its U. S. debut at the Metropolitan
Opera.
Feb 22
Governor Theodore Roosevelt visits Buffalo to attend the dedication
at the Sixty-Fifth Regiment Armory of a memorial to those who
died of malaria during the Spanish American War. He then speaks
to the local Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR).
April
Scribner's publishes Critical Instances, Edith Wharton's
second volume of stories. ** Doubleday publishes Frank Norris'
The Octopus.
Apr 1
The Rochester & Sodus Bay interurban railroad leases the Irondequoit
Park Railroad.
Apr 14
Actors in New York City's Academy of Music are arrested for wearing
costumes on Sunday.
Apr 15
The Eastman Building at Rochester's Mechanics Institute opens.
Apr 25
New York State begins requiring license plates on automobiles,
the first state to do so.
May
Alice Day (Gardner) graduates from the Law School of the University
of Buffalo, the only woman in the class, with the highest marks,
becoming the first female lawyer in Genesee County. ** Workers
at New York's United Traction Company walk off the job, halt trolley
service in five cities. Albany is put under martial law, with
soldiers riding on every car. E. Leroy Smith and William M. Walsh
are shot to death, Smith while watching a riot.
May 9
A Wall Street panic is caused by the battle between J. J. Hill
and Edward Henry Harriman over control of the Chicago, Burlington
& Quincy Railroad.
May 11
The New York State Reformatory for Women at Bedford Hills is officially
opened.
May 18
The New York State Militia forces striking Albany railroad workers
back to work.
May 20
Vice-president Theodore Roosevelt visits Buffalo to open the Pan-American
Exposition.
May 21
Five West Point Military Academy cadets are dismissed for hazing
and insubordination; six others are suspended.
May 30
The Hall of Fame for Great Americans is dedicated, at New York
University.
Jun 2
Benjamin Adams of the Yonkers Board of Education is arrested for
playing golf on Sunday.
Jun 10
Broadway composer Frederick Lowe is born in Vienna.
Jun 13
A Staten Island ferry collides with another ship and sinks in
New York City's harbor.
Jun 22
Golfer Genevieve Hecker successfully defends her Women's Metropolitan
Golf Championship title, in New York City.
July
After quarreling with friends at their summer cabin on Dumpling
Island, off Noank, Connecticut, Theodore Dreiser returns to New
York City earlier than planned.
Jul 14
Carlisle Graham makes a run through the Niagara River's Whirlpool
Rapids in a barrel, his fifth and final time. He narrowly escapes
suffocation.
Aug 7
West Point graduate Francisco Alcantara is elected president of
the Venezuelan state of Aragua.
Aug 15
The horse Cresceus wins the trotting championship at Brighton
Beach.
Aug 26
Bicyclist Robert Walthour defeats John Nelson in a fifteen-mile
race in Madison Square Garden.
Sep 1
Reformer Carrie Nation is arrested in New York City when her appearance
attracts a crowd of unruly supporters.
Sep 5
President William McKinley arrives in Buffalo to give an address
at the Pan-American Exposition.
Sep 6
McKinley is shot during a reception at the Temple of Music by
anarchist Leon Czolgosz. Plaza Hotel waiter James F. Parker grabs
Czolgosz, prevents him from firing a third shot. Abraham Lincoln's
son Robert Todd Lincoln, who had witnessed his father's death
and Garfield's assassination, is present as an invited guest.
Vice-president Theodore Roosevelt hears the news while vacationing
in the Adirondacks and starts for Buffalo. ** Michael Francis
Aloysius Kearns, father of historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, is
born in Brooklyn. ** Martha Wagenfurther makes a run through
the Niagara River's Whirlpool Rapids in a barrel.
Sep 7
Czolgosz confesses. ** Roosevelt arrives in Buffalo.
** Maud Willard attempts to make a run through the Whirlpool
Rapids in a barrel along with her fox terrier. The dog lays across
her face and she suffocates. Carlisle Graham, her confederate,
under a dual-obligation with her to a motion picture company,
completes the swim to Lewiston.
Sep 10
Activist Emma Goldman is arrested in New York City after Czolgosz
mentions her name to investigators. ** Roosevelt decides
to return to the Adirondacks to project the optimism felt for
McKinley's recovery.
Sep 14
William McKinley dies in Buffalo, mouthing the lyrics to Nearer
My God to Thee. Roosevelt takes the oath of office forty-five
minutes later. He asks McKinley's Cabinet to retain their positions.
Sep 26
Czolgosz is sentenced to death.
Oct 8
The first Vanderbilt Cup auto race is held, on Long Island.
Oct 12
Peter Nissen shoots the Whirlpool Rapids in his boat Fool Killer.
Oct 20
The New York Times celebrates its 50th anniversary.
Oct 24
Michigan schoolteacher Anna Edson Taylor becomes the first person
to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel and survive.
Oct 29
Leon Czolgosz is executed.
Oct 30
A New York Central freight train breaks apart east of Grimesville
then smashes back together; the wreckage blocks the track and
several switches. The West Shore Continental Limited passenger
train, headed for the Exposition at Buffalo, crashes into the
wreckage. Limited engineer George Garrison of Rochester suffers
a fractured wrist and one of the passengers, Mrs. Dickinson, is
injured. Most passengers continue on to Buffalo.
Nov 16
Racing in New York City, French driver Henri Fournier sets an
automobile speed record of one mile in 52 seconds.
Nov 26
The Hope Diamond arrives in New York City.
December
Heavy snows and zero-degree weather strike Ontario County early
in the month, closing Naples' Flats road. ** A water-powred
motor is installed in the Naples Methodist Church to power a new
organ awaiting installation. ** The Ontario Prospecting
Company is founded in Naples, to develop natural gas on leased
property in East Bloomfield and Vine Valley. ** Fire destroys
a Naples barn owned by O. M. Lyon and rented to Fred Prouty. Two
buggies, a democrat wagon and a pair of hens are lost in the blaze.
Dec 2
The Naples stage leaves for Bristol, is held up by the snow for
several days.
City
Architect Henry Anderson designs the Semiramis apartment on Central
Park North. ** William Wallace, superintendent of buildings
at the Museum of Natural History, is forced to resign when he's
caught misappropriating funds and accepting kickbacks. **
The Astor family builds Harlem's Graham Court apartment building,
designed by Clinton & Russell. ** Educator Seth Low,
running on the Fusion ticket, defeats Democrat Edward M. Shephard
to become mayor, serving 1902-1903. ** Maurice Prendergast
paints Central Park. ** Sculptor Gutzon Borglum moves from
London to New York City. ** Writer James Branch Cabell leaves
New York City to join the staff of Virginia's Richmond News.
** William Randolph Hearst hires advice columnist Elizabeth
Meriwether Gilmer (Dorothy Dix), away from the New Orleans Daily
Picayune, to write for his New York Journal. **
Close to 70% of the city's population is living in tenements.
A Tenement Law is passed requiring all new buildings to provide
more air and light. The New Law permits enforcement of housing
standards. ** The approximate date the Brooklyn Wharf and
Warehouse company becomes the New York Dock Company. **
Benefit performances are held for San Gioacchino Church (later
St. James) in the church's hall, presented by La Compagnia Filodrammatica
(Amateur Dramatic Company) Dante Algieri. ** Antonio Mongillo's
music business on Mulberry Street publishes and imports sheet
music and instructional materials, as well as postcards and tobacco.
** The approximate date Gianni Giafora draws a sketch of
Italian-born actor Gugleilmo Ricciardi. ** Construction
begins on D. H. Burnham and Company's Flatiron Building.
State
Bannerman's Island Arsenal is established on Pollepel Island in
the Hudson River. ** Ellsworth Milton Statler operates a
hotel at Buffalo's Pan-American Exposition. The Cardiff Giant
is displayed at the fair. ** Lewis Henry Morgan publishes
League of the Iroquois. ** Depew's Kalina Singing
Society is organized under the Polish Singing Circle, as a women's
chorus. ** John Starin's Glen Island resort features a Sioux
Indian Village. ** Tonawanda's Palace Park trolley company
amusement park closes. ** To meet a rising demand for power
the Niagara Falls Hydraulic Power & Manufacturing Company
begins an expansion program, building a second powerhouse and
enlarging the Hydraulic Canal. ** The Reverend Peter McKenzie,
a native of Scotland, is installed as pastor of Naples' First
Presbyterian Church.
Albany
The John Van Schaick Lansing Pruyn branch library on North Pearl
Street is dedicated.
Batavia
E. E. Kellogg builds the Pan American Farmer's Sheds, for parking
shoppers' horses, on State Street. ** Additions are begun
to the Johnston Harvester Company building. ** The village
purchases property at the corner of Main Street and Porter Avenue
for the site of a new jail.
Rochester
The congregation of Temple B'rith Kodesh opens the Baden Street
settlement house, the city's first, to aid poor Germans and Poles.
** The Italian Democratic Club is formed in the city's 5th
Ward. ** The port of Charlotte's export revenue reaches
$1,279,000. ** The city annexes additional lands of the
State Hospital, increasing its own size to 18.86 square miles.
** The city ships close to 1,500,000 barrels of flour this
year. ** A Health Bureau under the Department of Public
Safety is formed to replace the Board of Health Commissioners.
** The 9-hole Oak Hill golf course opens along the Genesee
River on the city's southeast side.
January
The draining of Tonawanda and Oak Orchard swamps is begun, which
will result in the creation of the rich soils of the Elba mucklands.
Jan 8
A train collision beneath New York City's Grand Central Station,
caused by poor visibility due to steam in the tunnels, results
in a ban on steam engines on Manhattan commuter trains.
Jan 9
Metropolitan Opera director Rudolf Bing is born in Vienna.
Jan 13
Columnist Roscoe Drummond is born in Theresa.
Jan 25
The Broadway musical Floradora plays its 505th performance,
setting a record for length of run.
Jan 27
Five construction workers on New York's IRT subway are killed
in an explosion.
Jan 28
Museum of Modern Art founder-director Alfred H. Barr, Jr., is
born in Detroit.
Jan 30
Transatlantic shippers in New York City double their rates.
February
Edith Wharton's historical novel The Valley of Decision
is published by Scribner's.
Feb 6
The Young Women's Hebrew Association is organized, in New York
City.
Feb 9
Daughter Jeanette Norris, Jr., is born to novelist Frank Norris
and his wife, in New York City.
Feb 10
Acting teacher Stella Adler is born in New York City to Yiddish
actor Jacob Adler.
Feb 21
Trolley and interurban companies in the Buffalo area unite to
create the International Railway Company.
Feb 27
Golfer Eugene Saraceni (Gene Sarazen) is born in Harrison.
Mar 21
A subway tunnel under New York City's Park Avenue near 38th Street
collapses, destroying three mansions.
Mar 24
Politician Thomas Edmund Dewey is born in Owosso, Michigan.
Apr 2
The fishing boat Alice M. Jacobs brings her first catch
to New York City's Fulton Fish Market.
May 1
Guglielmo Riccardi and his company continue performing at New
York's Grand Eden Theatre under new owner M. K. Reussen.
May 5
Author Bret Harte dies, in Albany.
Jun 8
The Erie Canal boat Anson P. Hart, out of Phoenix, New
York, Captain George Pease commanding, caught in strong winds,
is nearly swept over the dam at Baldwinsville. A line is run out
from shore and the coal-laden vessel is pulled to safety.
Jun 9
West Point Military Academy celebrates its first 100 years.
Jun 16
Two super trains begin New York-to-Chicago service - the Pennsylvania
Railroad's Pennsylvania Special and the New York Central's Broadway
Limited.
Jun 28
Composer Richard Rodgers is born in Hammels Station, New York.
July
Frank Norris moves from New York City to San Francisco. ** The
twelve-bed Batavia Hospital opens. ** Landscape architect Alling
Stephen Deforest goes to work for George Eastman on the grounds
of his new property on Rochester, New York's East Avenue. The
inventor also hires J. Foster Warner to design a house.
Jul 12
The Twentieth Century Limited sets the train speed record on a
run between New York City and Chicago.
Jul 24
The Irondequoit Park Railroad interurban merges with the Rochester
and Sodus Bay Railway company, permitting through transit from
Sodus Bay to downtown Rochester.
Jul 25
Longshoreman-social philosopher Eric Hoffer is born in New York
City. ** Guglielmo Riccardi, becoming more involved with traditional
American theater, makes his last appearance at the immigrants'
Grand Eden Theatre in East Harlem.
Jul 26
Historian and former president of Cornell Charles Kendall Adams
dies in Redlands, California, at the age of 67.
Jul 31
The Rochester and Sodus Bay Railway interurban company is leased
to the Rochester Railway Company.
Aug 6
Gangster Arthur Flegenheimer (Dutch Schulz) is born in the Bronx.
Aug 19
Poet-humorist Frederic Ogden Nash is born in Rye.
Aug 25
Harry de Windt arrives in New York City, having traversed the
Arctic across the Bering Strait, from Paris.
Sep 7
C. A. Percy, accompanied by a keg of beer, shoots the Whirlpool
Rapids of the Niagara River.
Sep 11
Philanthropist Alice Tully is born in Corning. ** Joseph M. Weber
and Lew M. Fields' Twirly Whirly opens at their New York
music hall.
Sep 28
Journalist-television host Ed Sullivan is born in New York City.
Oct 17
New York's Rochester & Eastern Rapid Railway interurban goes
into service, providing occasional passenger service between Canandaigua
and Victor.
Oct 18
Captain William Quinlan and his crew, of the Lake Erie steamer
Swallow abandon the ship when it springs a leak. The tug
Pallister is soon sent to look for wreckage, but none is ever
found.
Oct 26
Suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton dies in New York City.
Nov 3
Clyde Fitch's The Stubbornness of Geraldine opens at Broadway's
Garrick Theatre.
Nov 4
An explosion at Madison Square Garden kills fifteen people and
injures seventy others.
Nov 11
Roland B. Molineux is acquitted in New York City after a second
trial, for the 1889 murder of elderly widow Margaret Adams.
Nov 17
A U. S. production of The Eternal City opens at New York's
Victoria Theatre.
Nov 22
A fire destroys the span of New York City's uncompleted Williamsburg
Bridge.
Nov 29
Jazz drummer Danny Viniello (Alvin) is born in New York City.
December
Edgar Smith's The Stickiness of Gelatine, a musical comedy
spoof of The Stubbornness of Geraldine, opens on the second
half of the bill at New York City's Weber and Fields Music Hall,
with the comedy team in the cast.
Dec 3
David Belasco and John Luther Long's The Darling of the Gods
opens at New York's Belasco Theatre, with English actor George
Arliss in the cast.
Dec 10
Politician Vito Anthony Marcantonio is born in New York City.
Dec 16
Stanislaus Stange and Julian Edwards' When Johnny Comes Marching
Home opens at New York's New York Theatre.
Dec 17
Gus Hinckley captains his Great Lakes ship the Hinckley
from Cape Vincent, in the St. Lawrence River, to Oswego, sailing
blind during a snowstorm.
Dec 20
Philosopher Sidney Hook is born in New York City.
Dec 28
Professor Mortimer Jerome Adler is born in New York City.
City
Daniel Burnham's Flatiron Building is completed. ** Builder Joseph
Oussani moves into his newly completed Semiramis apartment house.
** Gustav Lindenthal becomes Commissioner of Bridges. ** Cass
Gilbert's U. S. Customs House opens. ** James & Leo's Dorilton
apartment house at Broadway and 71st Street, built for Hamilton
M. Weed, is completed at a cost of $750,000. Critic Montgomery
Schuyler disparages the building in the Architectural Record.
The building is fully rented. ** An explosion on a subway construction
job at Park Avenue and Forty-first Street kills six people, injures
over a hundred. ** Andrew Carnegie's East 91st Street neo Georgian
mansion is completed. ** Lawman Bat Masterson arrives to become
a sportswriter for the Morning Telegraph. ** The R. H.
Macy Company opens a department store on 34th Street. ** Nearly
500,000 immigrants land at Ellis Island. ** The American Female
Guardian Society and Home for the Friendless opens Woodycrest,
in the Bronx, a children's home designed by William Burnett Tuthill.
** The city takes title to Broad Channel Island in Jamaica Bay
and leases the island to the Broad Channel Corporation, which
develops the property and rents lots, to people building summer
homes, charging $116 a year. ** Fausto D. Malzone's bank on Mulberry
Street closes when he becomes ill with malaria. The Italian-American
Amateur Theatre Club which is housed there ceases to exist. **
Fernando's Music Hall, an Italian caffe concerto, opens at 184
Sullivan Street.
State
McKim, Mead and White's house for Clarence H. Mackay of Roslyn,
Long Island - Harbor Hill - is built. ** Ralph Whitehead founds
the Byrdcliff art colony in Woodstock. ** The Wyoming Village
Hall, donated by Lydia Avery Cooley Ward, is dedicated. Among
the speakers are the Reverend Anna Shaw and the Reverend William
C. Gannett. ** Newspaper publisher Levi A. Cass arrives in Warsaw.
** The Watervliet Arsenal begins producing 16-inch guns. ** Long
Island historian, Peter Ross publishes a multi-volume history
of the island, repeating the standard incorrect names for the
13 native tribes. Unlike previous writers, he argues that Long
Island's Indians were cheated out of their lands and nearly exterminated.
** John Starin features Mexican vaqueros at his Glen Island resort.
** Le Roy plans for a new bridge over Oatka Creek. ** Hammondsport
gets its first three automobiles, Orient Buckboards belonging
to Linn D. Masson, J. Seymour Hubbs and O. H. Younglove. ** The
Ontario County Historical Society is founded. ** The Niagara Silver
Company of Niagara Falls merges with William A. Rogers, Ltd. **
The approximate date the Alexander McKechnie home (later the Canandaigua
Female Seminary) is demolished to build the first F. F. Thompson
Hospital.
Batavia
Doctor Annie Cheyney marries Doctor Henry M. Spofford and they
go into a joint practice. ** Novelties manufacturer K. B. Mathes
builds a factory. ** The Walnut Street bridge is built. ** Construction
begins on the Genesee County Sheriff's Office in Batavia, at 14
West Main Street.
Food
The first national advertisement for Jell-O is published in the
Ladies Home Journal. The ad costs $336.
Rochester
The city is struck by a smallpox epidemic lasting through the
following year. ** Floods threaten the downtown area. ** Architect
Claude Bragdon marries Charlotte Coffyn Wilkinson of Syracuse.
** Salvatore M. Vella becomes the first Italian to graduate from
a city high school. ** The Italian Mission moves to the First
Methodist Episcopal Church. An Italian Sunday school is established.
** Landscape architect Alling Stephen Deforest goes to work for
George Eastman. ** The Masonic Temple at Mortimer and North Clinton
is built.
Rye
The 17th-century Mead Farm House is refurbished. ** Arthur Abbott's
frozen custard recipe is introduced at Rye Beach.
Jan 9
The Baltimore Orioles American League baseball team is bought
for $18,000 by Bill Devery and Frank Farrrell, and moved
to New York City, to be renamed the Highlanders and eventually
(in 1913) the Yankees.
Jan 18
New York City politician-businessman Abram Stevens Hewitt, 80,
dies.
Jan 20
Frank L. Baum, Paul Tietjens and A. Baldwin Sloane's The Wizard
of Oz opens at New York's Majestic Theater, with a spectacular
opening cyclone on stage.
February
Having sent his wife Sara to her parents', Theodore Dreiser moves
to cheaper lodgings in Brooklyn.
Feb 5
New York Mets baseball team owner Joan Whitney Payson is born.
Feb 18
The first all-black major Broadway musical, Paul Laurence Dunbar
and Will Marion Cook's In Dahomey opens at the New York
Theater.
Feb 22
The Cunard liner Etruria lands in New York City, carrying
the first newspaper printed in mid-ocean, using wireless. The
system's inventor Guglielmo Marconi is aboard.
Feb 25
A New York City tenement at 32nd Street and Eleventh Avenue is
torn down - the beginning of demolition for the new Pennsylvania
Station. ** Rapid-fire weapon inventor Richard J. Gatling, 84,
dies in New York City.
Mar 2
New York City's Martha Washington Hotel, for women only, opens
for business.
Mar 4
Painter Adolph Gottlieb is born in New York City.
Mar 10
The ship Karmania is quarantined in New York City, with
six aboard dead from cholera.
Mar 16
Montana senator Mike Mansfield is born in New York City.
Mar 17
Gustave Luder's The Prince of Pilsen opens at New York's
Broadway Theatre.
Mar 23
The Village of Tonawanda becomes a city.
Mar 29
Regular wireless news service begins between New York City and
London.
Mar 31
The post office in Wheatville closes.
April
The Elba Phone Company opens for business.
Apr 10
Journalist-playwright Clare Booth Luce is born in New York City.
Apr 24
George B. Post's building for the New York Stock Exchange opens.
Apr 27
The Jamaica Race Track opens, on Long Island, attended by Lillian
Russell, 'Diamond Jim' Brady and John F. 'Bet-a-million' Gates.
May
Hammondsport machine shop owner Glenn Curtiss sets a motorcycle
speed record of a mile in 56 2/5 second.
May 1
Invited to New York by S. S. McClure, Willa Cather meets with
him and is promised publication of her stories in McClure's
Magazine, as well as in book form.
May 16
George A. Wyman sets out from San Francisco in a successful attempt
to become the first man to cross the U. S. by motorcycle.
May 18
Rochester's National Theatre opens.
May 21
Eight loaded freight cars of the New York Central Railroad run
off the tracks on a curve just west of Byron, New York, scattering
oil, corn, coal, and assorted nails from the Cleveland Wire Company
along the tracks. There are no injuries.
May 22
U. S. diplomat Philip Wilson Bonsal is born in New York City to
journalist Stephen Bonsal and Henrietta Bonsal. He will serve
as ambassador to Cuba.
May 30
A 30-ton rock, donated by Dr. Dwight Burrell, is installed on
the lawn of Canandaigua's court house, to commemorate the November
11, 1794, Pickering Treaty between the Seneca Indians and the
U. S.
June
Theodore Dreiser gets a job on the railroad at Spuyten Duyvil,
soon moves to Kingsbridge.
Jun 19
New York Yankees baseball star Lou Gehrig is born.
Jul 6
Motorcyclist George Wyman achieves his goal, arriving in New York
City.
August
Sara Dreiser joins her husband at Kingsbridge.
Aug 15
Publisher Joseph Pulitzer donates $2,000,000 to establish a school
of journalism at Columbia University.
Aug 19
Trotter Dan Patch sets the one-mile record in Brighton Beach -
one minute and 59 seconds.
Aug 31
Entertainer-broadcast host Arthur Godfrey is born in New York
City.
Sep 23
Prince Alert beats the record of Dan Patch at Yonkers Race Track,
doing the mile in one minute and 57 seconds. ** Columbia University
celebrates its 150th anniversary.
October
Scribner's publishes Edith Wharton's novella Sanctuary.
Oct 4
Computer pioneer John Vincent Atanasoff (the Atanasoff-Berry Computer)
is born in Hamilton, New York.
Oct 13
Victor Herbert's operetta Babes in Toyland opens at New
York's Majestic Theater.
Oct 17
Novelist Nathan Wallenstein Weinstein (Nathanael West) is born
in New York City to builder Max Weinstein and Anna Wallenstein
Weinstein.
Nov 15
Interurban service between Rochester and Canandaigua, on the Rochester
& Eastern Rapid Railway is inaugurated.
Nov 16
Victor Herbert & Harry B. Smith's musical Babette premieres
in New York.
Nov 30
The Brooklyn Academy of Music is destroyed by a fire.
Dec 16
New York City's Majestic Theater uses the first female ushers.
Dec 24
Theodore Dreiser resigns from his job on the railroad.
City
Coney Island's Luna Park opens. ** The Williamsburg Bridge, connecting
Manhattan and Brooklyn, is opened. ** Henry J. Hardenbergh's Whitehall
Building, housing government offices and corporations, is completed.
** Hill and Turner's Euclid Hall apartment building, at the planned
86th Street exit of the Broadway subway currently under construction,
is completed. ** Russian immigrant Jacob Starr becomes an engineer
with Ben Strauss' New York sign company. ** Democrat George B.
McClellan, son of the Civil War general, defeats incumbent Fusion
Party mayor Seth Low. He serves 1904-1909. ** Race track tipster
George Graham Rice founds the New York Daily America. It
will not survive for long. ** Western painter Charles M. Russell
and his wife wife Nancy make their first trip to the city. **
Eugene O'Neill's mother attempts suicide and he learns she is
a morphine addict. He begins chasing around the city with his
older brother Jamie. ** Future public relations pioneer Lee Ivy
leaves the New York World to begin representing political
interests. ** William Sidney Porter (O. Henry) moves to New York.
** Italian tenor Enrico Caruso makes his Metropolitan Opera debut,
singing the Duke in Rigoletto. ** Ivy Ledbetter founds
the first public relations firm. ** Former Comptroller Andrew
H. Green is murdered outside his Park Avenue home by an insane
man. ** Joseph Pulitzer establishes a prize for journalism. **
Henry P. Davison and J. P. Morgan form the Bankers Trust Company,
in response to tightening trust regulation. ** A tablet bearing
Emma Lazarus's 1883 poem The New Colossus is affixed to
the base of the Statue of Liberty.
State
Lake Placid's Adirondack Lodge burns in a forest fire. Fires destroy
close to 25% of the timber in the Adirondacks. ** Paleontologist
Clifton James Sarle names a shale dolomite mixture Pittsford Shale,
for the town where the formation was uncovered as the Erie Canal
was deepened, in 1897-8. ** The toll booth on Dutchess County's
Salt Point Turnpike is demolished. ** Warsaw celebrates its centennial,
formally dedicates its 1876 Soldiers' Monument. ** The State legislature
passes a bond issue to construct a Barge Canal to replace the
old Erie Canal. ** Charles Davenport becomes director of the Station
for Experimental Evolution of the Carnegie Institute, at Cold
Harbor, for the next 32 years. ** A senior honor society, the
Druids, is formed at Geneva's Hobart College. ** Real estate promoter
Clifford B. Harmon sells a right of way at Croton-on-Hudson to
the New York Central Railroad, provided the station always bear
his name. ** John Starin features Indian "fakirs" at
his Glen Island resort. ** The Hammondsport Herald has
a circulation of 2,250, making it the third largest weekly in
Steuben County. ** The approximate date Canandaigua's Sonnenberg
Playground opens, donated by local philanthropist Mary Thompson.
Batavia
Watts L. Richmond becomes assistant superintendent of the Johnston
Harvester Works. ** Trolley service begins.
Buffalo
Frank Lloyd Wright's Larkin Building is built.
Rochester
The Bond Clothing Company is founded. ** Floods threaten downtown
for the second year in a row. ** The Association of Licensed Automobile
Manufacturers begins lawsuits against the Ford Motor Company and
other manufacturers, to protect the automobile patent of local
inventor George B. Selden. ** Smith's Arcade is razed to make
way for the new building of the Rochester Trust and Safe Deposit
Company, formed from the Powers Bank. ** Sibley's Department Store,
currently in the Granite Building, begins planning for larger
quarters.
© 2002 David Minor / Eagles Byte