1913

January
Willa Cather returns to New York City from Pittsburgh, moves into an apartment at 5 Bank Street with Edith Lewis.

Jan 11
The 13th Auto Show opens in New York City, featuring the Hudson, the first sedan type car. ** The state signs a contract with the Larkin & Sangster Company to construct a dam and locks for the Seneca and Cayuga Canal at Seneca Falls, for $1,171,914.

February
George W. Ely and W. W. Batty open Ely's European Restaurant in Batavia.

Feb 17
New York City's Armory Show introduces the modern art movement to the U. S.

Mar 10
Abolitionist and former slave Harriet Tubman dies in Auburn at the approximate age of 93.

Mar 15
Rochester's Hotel Berkeley at 8 Franklin Street opens, replacing the Hotel Rexford. Nightly room prices start at 75¢.

Mar 28
Genesee River floods occur in downtown Rochester, including at the Main Street offices of the Democrat and Chronicle.

May 6
The Smithsonian Institution awards aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss its Langley Medal.

May 14
John D. Rockefeller donates $100,000,000 to begin the Rockefeller Foundation, in New York City. ** Dance critic Walter Terry is born in Brooklyn.

Jun 11
Operatic mezzo-soprano Risë Steenberg (Stevens) is born in New York City.

Jun 16
The Ziegfeld Follies of 1913 opens at New York City's New Amsterdam Theatre.

Jul 22
Metropolitan Opera star Licia Albanese is born in Italy.

August
Two Rochester all-Italian bands, one lead by Biagio Antinarelli (the Little Creatore) compete in Exposition Park.

Aug 28
New York City Ballet conductor and music director Robert Irving is born in Winchester, England.

Sep 8
Victor Herbert's Sweethearts opens at New York's New Amsterdam Theatre.

Sep 10
The New York-to-San Francisco Lincoln Highway opens. A Lincoln Highway Association is founded.

Sep 12
New York City mayor William Jay Gaynor dies at the age of 65. Ardolph L. Kline becomes Acting Mayor, serves the rest of the year.

Oct 26
Bandleader, vocalist and saxophone player Charles Daly "Charlie" Barnet is born in New York City.

Oct 30
Jerome Kern's Oh, I Say! opens at New York's Casino Theatre.

Oct 31
Historians Will and Ariel Durant are married in New York City.

November
Willa Cather returns to New York from a trip to Pittsburgh. ** Storms lash Lake Erie. Lightship 82 is sunk.

Nov 11
Justin Huntly McCarthy and Victor Herbert's The Madcap Duchess opens at New York's Globe Theatre.

Nov 23
Novelist-biographer Maurice Zolotow is born in New York City.

Nov 25
Physician-author Lewis Thomas is born in Flushing.

Dec 10
Composer Morton Gould is born in Richmond Hill.

Dec 21
Word-cross, the prototype of the crossword puzzle, makes its debut, in the New York World.

City
Warren and Wetmore's Seaman's Church Institute (now demolished) is completed, on Church Street. ** Trowbridge & Livingston's Wall Street offices of J. P. Morgan and Company are completed. ** The Chambers Street subway station is completed. ** Harlem's Apollo Theatre is built. ** The women's Zionist organization Hadassah sends two nurses to Palestine to start a maternity center in Jerusalem. ** The College of St. Francis Xavier transfers its charter to Brooklyn College, leaving Xavier High School as a separate entity. ** George Abbott begins his theatrical career, as an actor. ** Recently appointed Collector of the Port of New York John Purroy Mitchel, running on the Fusion Party ticket, defeats Democrat Edward E. Call to become mayor, serving 1914-1917. ** Thomas Nash's Chapel of All Saints is added to Trinity Church. ** Willa Cather interviews Wagnerian soprano Olive Fremstad for McClure's. They become friends. ** The American Society for the Control of Cancer is founded, to educate people about the need for early detection. It later becomes the American Cancer Society. ** Baseball's Ebbetts Field is completed, in Brooklyn.The Dodgers play the Philadelphia Phillies in the opener. ** The Museum of Natural History sends the Crocker Land Expedition in a vain attempt to explore lands described by Robert Peary. One of the native guides is Minik, once a ward of the museum's in New York. ** Two factory loft buildings are completed at Brooklyn's Atlantic Basin. ** When the Frederick Beckmann house on Staten Island, where Giusepe Garibaldi had once lived, goes on the auction block due to a $5,000 lien on the property, the Giornale Italiane opens a public subscription and purchases the house. It's transferred to the corner of Tompkins Avenue and Chestnut Street; the Order of the Sons of Italy in America is appointed custodian.

State
The first Caledonia County Fair is held. ** Furniture designer Gustav Stickley moves his offices from Binghamton to New York City. ** Syracuse architect Joseph Lyman Silsbee dies. ** Ecker's gift shop opens in Corning. ** Le Roy's Genesee Pure Food Company (Jell-O) posts profits of $2,000,000. ** The Canandaigua Lake steamboat Onnalinda is dismantled.

Batavia
Influenced by a vocal minority, governor William Sulzer vetoes a measure to revise the Batavia village charter. ** Pianist Monica Dailey quits the concert stage at the age of 32, returns home to retire.

Rochester
Main Street West is extended to Chili Street and today's West Avenue. ** The city's first Protestant Italian church opens on North Street. ** The Ridge Road Transit Company bus line goes out of business. ** The Rochester & Eastern Rapid Railway interurban installs automatic block signals manufactured by General Railway Signal, resulting in speedier service. ** George Eastman contributes $250,000 toward the building of the Maplewood Branch of the Young Men's Christian Association, the largest donation a YMCA had received. ** The Bijou Dream theater closes.

1914

Jan 10
Sigmund Romberg's first Broadway musical The Whirl of the World opens at New York's Winter Garden Theatre.

Jan 13
Temperatures in New York City drop to -3 degrees F, lowest here for this date.

Jan 14
New York temperatures drop to -5 degrees F, setting another record.

Feb 12
Temperatures in New York City drop to 3 degrees below 0 F, lowest here for this date.

Feb 13
The American Society of Composers Author's and Publishers (ASCAP) is formed in New York City. ** Temperatures in New York City drop to 1 degree below 0 F, lowest here for this date.

Feb 24
The state contracts with the Sherman-Stalter Company to dredge the Seneca River between Demont's bridge and Waterloo, at a cost of $948,530, as part of the Cayuga and Seneca Canal project.

Feb 25
Temperatures in New York City drop to 1 degree F, lowest here for this date.

Mar 12
Inventor-tycoon George Westinghouse dies in New York City.

Mar 13
Blues bass player Robert Sherwood "Bob" Haggart is born in New York City.

April
Governor Martin H. Glynn signs legislation that allows Batavia to revise its village charter, and third class cities to adopt modern forms of charters.

Apr 26
Novelist Bernard Malamud is born in Brooklyn.

May 20
Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and the U. S. meet in Niagara Falls to seek a solution of the Mexico-U. S. crisis.

Jun 1
The Ziegfeld Follies of 1914 opens at the New Amsterdam Theatre, features comedian Ed Wynn.

Jun 9
Batavia voters approve a new charter.

Jun 30
The Niagara Falls Conference breaks up, having achieved nothing.

Jul 31
The New York Stock Exchange closes, to prevent panic over the Balkan situation (the Sarajevo assassination).

Aug 10
A German-American weekly, The Fatherland, begins publication in New York City.

Aug 21
Over 1500 glove cutters in Gloversville and Johnstown walk off the job in a wage dispute.

Aug 28
Operatic tenor Reuben Ticker (Robert Tucker) is born in Brooklyn.

October
Columbia professor Joel Elias Spingarn writes to his friend, NAACP editor W. E. B. Du Bois, spelling out the latter's faults. Uncharacteristically, Du Bois accepts the criticism.

Oct 20
Dave Montgomery and Fred Stone's Chin-Chin musical opens at New York's Globe Theatre.

Oct 28
Dr. Jonas Edward Salk is born in New York City.

Nov 14
A "Christmas ship", the Jason, sails from New York with $3,000,000 worth of gifts for European war victims.

Dec 31
Batavia officials attend a "watch service" at the Methodist Church to celebrate their village becoming a city the following day. They move on to Ellicott Hall where the council will sit, and join a crowd of close to 2,000 people gathered to celebrate.

City
Louis Balducci arrives from Italy, starts a grocery store in Brooklyn. ** Henry Clay Frick's mansion is completed. ** The Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) of New York is founded. ** A storm batters New Jersey's Sandy Hook, leading to the building of a seawall between Sea Bright and the Hook, using materials taken from the Holland and Lincoln Tunnel excavations. ** Poet Carl Van Vechten and his wife, actress Fania Marinoff, move to Gramercy Park. ** Bronx County secedes from New York County.

State
Macedon's Erie Canal Lock 60 is abandoned to make way for the Barge Canal. ** Geneva's Nester House (Geneva-on-the-Lake) is completed. ** Lydia Avery Coonley Ward opens a summer school at Hillside, her Wyoming home. It lasts three seasons. ** An patent appeals court finds against Glenn Curtiss and for the Wright Brothers. Curtiss begins building the Curtiss JN-4 (Jenny). ** The Hudson River steamer Orange is launched.

Batavia
A clock is installed in the 15-foot tower of the Bank of the Genesee. ** Box manufacturer E. N. Rowell builds a mansion at the top of Ellicott Avenue.

Rochester
The Federation of American Zionists meets here. ** Claude Bragdon's New York Central Railroad Station opens. ** Crosswalks are first painted at the city's intersections. ** The People's Rescue Mission moves to new quarters in the Richmond Hotel at Front and Market. ** The city annexes parts of the towns of Brighton, Chili, Gates and Irondequoit, increasing its own size to 24.87 square miles. ** The New York State Railways interurban's wooden car No. 157 is destroyed by fire, then replaced by a steel car purchased from the Niles Company. The car's number is retained. ** Bausch and Lomb becomes the first U. S. company to manufacture optical glass. ** The city's Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) has members from 24 different nations and 20 different religious denominations.

1915

( Updated 6 / /27 / /2004 )

Jan 1
Batavia becomes a city. Dr. Harvey J. Burkhart is the city's first mayor.

Jan 8
Musicologist John Denison Champlin dies in New York City.

Jan 25
Alexander Graham Bell makes the first transcontinental telephone call, from New York City to his assistant Thomas Watson in San Francisco, California.

Feb 12
Rochester begins permitting privately-owned autos - jitney (coin) buses - to carry passengers for a 5-cent fare. They soon disappear.

Feb 26
Tenor sax jazzman Joseph Edward Filipelli "Flip Phillips" is born in Brooklyn.

Feb 28
Musical-comedy actor Zero Mostel is born in Brooklyn.

Mar 3
D. W. Griffith's feature-length film The Birth of a Nation opens at New York City's Liberty Theater, on 42nd Street.

Apr 15
The Barge Canal's Lower Aqueduct at Crescent is demolished, in preparation for the opening of the new section between Waterford and Rexford, set for next month.

Apr 16
Conservative U. S. senator Nelson Wilmarth Aldrich, 74, dies in New York City.

Apr 20
President Woodrow Wilson makes a speech at New York City's Waldorf Astoria Hotel, urges strict U. S. neutrality.

Apr 23
The annual St. George's Day picnic given by Rochester immigrant John A. Roncone draws over 2,000 people.

Apr 25
Temperatures in New York City climb to 91 degrees F, highest here for this date.

Apr 27
Temperatures in New York City climb to 92 degrees F, highest here for the date.

May
Rochester Italian consul Cesare Sconfietti reports that nearly 2,000 recent Italian immigrants in his 12-county area have volunteered to return to Italy for military service.

May 1
Germany publishes a warning in a New York newspaper to travelers on British ships in war zones.

May 7
The British liner Lusitania is sunk by a German submarine, off the coast of Kinsale, Ireland. 1,198 people are killed, including 124 U. S. passengers. Among the casualties is New York theatrical producer Charles Frohman, 54.

May 16
The 127th General Assembly of Presbyterian Church opens in Rochester.

Jun 8
Glenn Curtiss receives a U. S. patent for his Flying Boat.

Jun 17
61 Italian young men leave Rochester to fight for Italy. A total of 866 from Monroe County will go, over the next two months.

Jun 21
The Ziegfeld Follies of 1915 opens at the New Amsterdam Theatre, features comedian W. C. Fields.

July
Jell-O inventor Pearl B. Wait dies of appendicitis in Le Roy at the age of 41.

Jul 3
Cornell University German instructor Erich Muenter, alias Frank Holt, shoots at J. P. Morgan, misses. Caught, he also admits setting off yesterday's bomb in the U. S. Senate.

Jul 6
Muenter kills himself in jail.

Jul 16
A New York State Justice frees Harry K. Thaw, killer of architect Stanford White, from a hospital for the insane.

Jul 24
Dr. Heinrich Albert, German director of propaganda in the U. S., leaves a briefcase containing documents detailing U. S. sabotage plans on a New York City subway train, where they are recovered by a U. S. Secret Service man.

Jul 30
Ex-police lieutenant Charles Becker is executed for the 1912 New York City murder of gambler Herman Rosenthal.

August
The portion of the New York State Barge Canal between Mosquito Point, on the Seneca River, and Oneida Lake is completed, including Lock 23.

Aug 10
U. S. Army general Leonard Wood opens a camp for volunteer civilians at Plattsburgh.

Aug 15
The New York World begins publishing the German documents recovered on the subway train.

Sep 18
A Peugot sets a speed record of 108 mph at Sheepshead Bay Speedway.

Oct 15
A New York City syndicate, lead by J. P. Morgan, agrees to loan the Allies up to $500,000,000.

Oct 17
Playwright Arthur Asher Miller is born in New York City.

Oct 23
25,000 people demonstrate for female suffrage in New York City.

Oct 24
Several Germans in New York City are arrested and charged with plotting to blow up departing war supply ships.

Nov 14
Jazz guitarist William Henry "Billy" Bauer is born in New York City.

Nov 20
Joseph Greentanner's State Street livery stable in Batavia, New York, being prepared for an auction to sell off its equipment, catches fire and burns to the ground. A previous day's rain keeps the rest of the business district from destruction.

December
Father Joseph Laguzzi, pastor of Batavia's St. Anthony's Church, retires. Bishop Charles H. Colton appoints the Reverend Victor Fasella to succeed Father Laguzzi.

Dec 23
Guy Bolton, Philip Bartholomae and Jerome Kern's Very Good Eddie opens at New York's Princess Theatre.

City
James Gamble Rogers' 44th Street building for the Yale Club is completed. ** The father of outdoorsman Lee Wulff moves his family from Alaska to Brooklyn. ** The New York Yankees begin wearing pinstripe uniforms. ** The Dow Jones averages rise by 81%. ** Mount Sinai Hospital perfects a method of storing blood, for transfusion, with citrate as a preservative. ** The Marx Brothers play New York City's Palace Theater in the vaudeville revue Home Again . ** Willie Hammerstein's Victoria theater on Times Square closes. ** The W. H. Sweeney Manufacturing Company builds a ten-story factory on Brooklyn's waterfront between Plymouth and Water streets, to make metal cooking utensils. ** The Turner Construction Company completes five additional reinforced concrete buildings, designed by William Higginson, at the Brooklyn waterfront complex of the Gair paper manufacturing complex. ** The subway fare is set at 5¢. ** Singers Rosa Ponzillo (Ponselle) and her sister Carmela try out for vaudeville at Mrs. Mary Marino's Nickelodeon at 2157 First Avenue. ** Ernest Poole's novel The Harbor, set in Brooklyn. ** The Russell Sage Foundation publishes Charles B. Barnes's ground-breaking study of the U. S. dockworker, The Longshoremen. ** Macmillian publishes Jack London's The Scarlet Plague andThe Star Rover. ** Ernest R. Graham and Associates' Equitable Building at 120 Broadway is built.

State
The Buffalo station of the Lehigh Valley Railroad is completed. ** The Cohoes Company transfers its water and property rights to the Cohoes Power and Light Corporation. ** The Corning Glass Works creates pyrex. ** B. F. Bartlett purchases the former home of the Fox Sisters and moves it from Hydeville to Lily Dale. ** Dwight David Eisenhower, Omar Bradley and James A. Van Fleet graduate from West Point. ** Jell-O executive Ellsworth Bradbury marries Nellie Beadle in Le Roy. They will give their names to the village's Bradnell Avenue. ** The Barge Canal's Waterford Flight is completed. ** The General Motors plant in North Tarrytown begins manufacturing Chevrolets. ** The U. S. Supreme Court hears the case of People v. Schweinler Press, upholds night work legislation. ** Rochester newspaperman Lyman J. Seely takes over the Hammondsport Herald, brings on Arthur Baggerly as editor. ** Camp Chenango for boys moves to the east shore of Otsego Lake. ** Frank H. Severance's Peace Episodes on the Niagara. ** The Chenango County town of Preston loses its U. S. Post Office. ** The city of Saratoga Springs is incorporated. ** Cranberry Mansion, the former Binghamton residence of the late Joshua Whitney, is demolished.

Batavia
Manufacturer E. N. Rowell marries Martha May Emka, his second wife. ** The approximate year John Mayer sells his Main Street restaurant. ** Solomon Lyman sells his State Street livery stable to ** Businessman Fred B. Parker is named to the New York State Fair commission, where he serves to 1931.

Canandaigua
A fire on Main Street destroys Woolworth's Fair Store, J. W. Dale's second-hand furniture and Burke Brothers Wine and Liquors. ** The approximate date Louis Shenkman opens a clothing store at 139 South Main.

Rochester
Spring floods nearly inundate Front Street but are halted by a cold spell which slows the snowpack melting. ** Architect Claude Bragdon and his wife Eugenie produce the first of their Festivals of Song and Light environmental performance pieces in Highland Park. ** Clement Lanni becomes the first Italian to graduate from the University of Rochester. ** Professor Vannuccini is hired by East High School. ** The city's Italians produce their first winning candidate for public office, for constable. ** Walter E. Wegman begins working in his parents' grocery store. His brother, John, peddles produce from a pushcart. ** A carousel is built that will one day be installed at Seabreeze Amusement Park. ** George P. Humphrey has the 1809 journal of Thomas Cooper's visit, from Philadelphia's Port Folio for 1810, reprinted. ** The Sam S. Shubert Theatre becomes Loew's Vaudeville. ** The Ontario Car Ferry Co. Ltd. adds the Ontario II to its Rochester-to-Coburg, Ontario, route across Lake Ontario, joining the Ontario I.. ** The Chenango County town of Preston loses its U. S. Post Office. ** The city of Saratoga Springs is incorporated. ** Cranberry Mansion, the former Binghamton residence of the late Joshua Whitney, is demolished.

Rochester
Spring floods nearly inundate Front Street but are halted by a cold spell which slows the snowpack melting. ** Architect Claude Bragdon and his wife Eugenie produce the first of their Festivals of Song and Light environmental performance pieces in Highland Park. ** Clement Lanni becomes the first Italian to graduate from the University of Rochester. ** Professor Vannuccini is hired by East High School. ** The city's Italians produce their first winning candidate for public office, for constable. ** Walter E. Wegman begins working in his parents' grocery store. His brother, John, peddles produce from a pushcart. ** A carousel is built that will one day be installed at Seabreeze Amusement Park. ** George P. Humphrey has the 1809 journal of Thomas Cooper's visit, from Philadelphia's Port Folio for 1810, reprinted. ** The Sam S. Shubert Theatre becomes Loew's Vaudeville. ** The Ontario Car Ferry Co. Ltd. adds the Ontario II to its Rochester-to-Coburg, Ontario, route across Lake Ontario, joining the Ontario I.

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