Jan 6
Author E. L. Doctorow is born in New York City.

Jan 26
Lynn Riggs' Green Grow the Lilacs has its premiere in New York City. It will be the inspiration for the musical Oklahoma.

Apr 30
Service ends on the Rochester, Lockport, and Buffalo Railroad. ** The Empire State Building is dedicated.

May 1
The Empire State Building opens.

May 5
Gangster Francis "Two-Gun" Crowley kills a New York City police officer.

May 7
Crowley is tracked to a West 90th Street building, which is soon surrounded by 300 policemen. Over 900 shots are exchanged before a wounded Crowley is captured. He is later executed.

May 14
Broadway theatrical producer David Belasco dies at the age of 77.

Jun 23
Aviators Wiley Post and Harold Gatty take off from New York City for the first single- engine aircraft flight around the world. They complete the 15,000 mile journey in 8 days, 15 hours, and 51 minutes.

Jun 28
Service ends on the Rochester & Syracuse Railroad (formerly the Rochester, Syracuse & Eastern interurban line).

July
Charles and Anne Lindbergh fly the Great Circle Route from New York to China on an exploratory flight for Pan American World Airways.

Jul 28
Five-year-old Michael Vengalli is shot to death by gangster Vincent Coll, during an attempt to kill Joey Rao, the policy boss for Arthur "Dutch Schultz" Fegenheimer. Coll is acquitted and given the nickname Mad Dog.

Aug 6
Jazz cornetist-pianist-composer Leon Bismarck "Bix" Beiderbecke dies in Queens at the age of 28.

September
Gangster Salvatore Maranzano, named earlier in the year as the "Boss of Bosses" for creating New York's five Mafia families, is murdered by Genovese and "Lucky" Luciano.

Sep 10
"Mad Dog" Coll's boss Salvatore Maranzano is murdered in Manhattan's Grand Central (Helmsley) Building by henchmen of Lucky Luciano and Vito Genovese. Coll recognizes them, but pretends not to.

Sep 11
A gas explosion at Rochester's Kodak Park kills four men.

Oct 24
Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt and New Jersey governor Morgan F. Larson dedicate the George Washington Bridge, linking New York City to New Jersey.

Oct 25
Othmar H. Ammann's George Washington Bridge across the Hudson River is opened to traffic.

Oct 29
Howard Hanson conducts the premiere of William Grant Still's Afro-American Symphony, in Rochester.

Nov 13
The temperature in New York City reaches 73 degrees F, highest here for the date.

Nov 15
The Bayonne Bridge, connecting Staten Island with New Jersey, is opened.

Nov 22
Temperatures in New York City climb to 72 degrees F, highest temperature here for this date.

Nov 23
New York's temperature again reaches 72 degrees F, setting another record, for the date.

Dec 17
Jack "Legs" Diamond is on racketeering charges acquitted in a Troy Federal Court.

Dec 18
"Legs" Diamond is rubbed out in Albany.

Dec 25
Seven people are killed when a passenger train hits an automobile at a grade crossing in Batavia.

Dec 27
Rochester's Veterans Memorial Bridge, over the Genesee River, is dedicated.

City
The RCA Building (later the General Electric Building), the McGraw-Hill Building, and the Cross and Cross' City Bank Farmer's Trust Company (later the First National City Trust Company) Building are completed. ** Bernard Castro opens a furniture- making workshop in a 21st Street loft. ** Claude Bragdon's final Festival of Song and Light environmental piece is presented in Madison Square Garden. ** The London Terrace apartments are completed. ** Cartoonist Charles Addams begins two years of study at New York City's Grand Central School of Art. ** Irving Kaufman graduates from Fordham Law School. ** The Gimbel Brothers opens television station WICR. ** Publicity-shy Variety founder and publisher Sime Silverman travels to Havana and Mexico to avoid being in New York City for the paper's Silver Anniversary. ** Electrification of Manhattan's railroad system begins. ** Alvin F. Harlow's Old Bowery Days

State
Donato Marchioli opens the Penthouse bar on Batavia's Ellicott Street. ** The state legislature forms the New York Power Authority. ** Corning Glass engineers begin trying to cast fused quartz mirror blanks for telescope lenses.

Buffalo
Father Justin Figas begins radio's Father Justin Rosary Hour out of Buffalo's Corpus Christi Parish. It's the first Polish-language religious program in the U. S. ** Dietel, Wade and Jones' City Hall is completed.

Rochester
East Avenue is paved. ** Harry C. D'Annunzio, fashion designer for the Fashion Park and Stein-Bloch factories, receives a papal honor. ** Anthony Talerico wins an appointment to Annapolis. ** Wegmans supermarkets are incorporated. ** The Educational Building for Nurses is added to Genesee Hospital.

Jan 12
Philip Barry's play Animal Kingdom premieres in New York City.

Jan 13
Temperatures in New York City climb to 68 degrees F, highest here for this date.

Jan 14
Temperatures in New York City rise to 70 degrees F, highest here for this date.

Jan 15
New York City temperatures reach 67 degrees F, setting another daily record.

Jan 26
Novelist Thomas Wolfe jumps from a moving train car in Grand Central Station, severs a vein in his left arm.

Feb 4
The third Winter Olympic games open in Lake Placid.

Feb 8
Gangster Vincent "Mad Dog" Coll is machine gunned to death by Dutch Schultz's men, on New York City's West 23rd Street.

Feb 9
The U. S. airship Columbia crashes during a storm at Flushing.

Mar 3
Trolley bus service is discontinued in Rochester.

Mar 14
Ailing photography pioneer George Eastman, 78, commits suicide in his Rochester home, shooting himself.

Apr 27
Poet Hart Crane leaps overboard off a ship returning to New York from Mexico dead at 34. ** Temperatures in New York City drop to 36 degrees F, lowest here for this date.

Apr 30
Walter Piston's Suite for Flute and Piano premieres in Saratoga Springs.

Jun 3
Yankees baseball player Lou Gehrig hits four consecutive home runs in one game.

Jun 15
Future governor Mario M. Cuomo is born in South Jamaica, Queens.

Jul 1
Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt is nominated for President of the U. S. at the Democratic convention in Chicago.

Jul 4
Fascists and anti-Fascists clash on the Staten Island grounds of the Garibaldi-Meucci Memorial.

Jul 22
Broadway producer Florenz Ziegfeld dies.

Jul 28
Binghamton trolley service is discontinued.

Aug 1
Rabbi and Jewish activist Meir Kahane is born in New York City.

Aug 2
Binghamton has a parade of its discontinued trolley cars.

Aug 31
The International Railway Company, operator of the Niagara Gorge Belt Line tourist trolleys, unwilling to relocate its tracks as required, decides to renew its second 20-year lease of land from Canada's Niagara Parks Commission, but agrees to operate the trains through September 11th.

Sep 1
New York City mayor James J. Walker resigns. Joseph V. McKee becomes acting mayor through the end of the year.

Sep 11
The final Gorge Line tourist trolley on the Canadian side of the Niagara River is run.

Nov 8
Franklin Delano Roosevelt defeats Herbert Hoover for the Presidency.

Nov 27
Temperatures in New York City plunge to 12 degrees F, the lowest temperature here for this date.

Dec 27
Radio City Music Hall opens in New York City, with 17 live acts, including Ray Bolger, Martha Graham and the Flying Wallendas.


City
The Cities Service Building, Clinton and Russell's 60 Wall Tower and Voorhees, Gmelin and Walker's Irving Trust Company building on Wall Street are completed. ** The original Ambrose Lightship, placed as a beacon 25 miles off the mouth of the Hudson River, is replaced. ** The IND subway line is completed. ** The Riverhouse apartment building is completed. ** Jacob Starr merges his Artkraft Company with the Ben Strauss sign company. ** Brothers Nicola and Pasquale D'Agostino combine a number of food operations to form a single food market at Lexington and 83rd Street. ** Democrat John O'Brien defeats Republican Lewis H. Pounds, Socialist Morris Hillquit and write-in candidate, acting mayor Joseph V. McKee, to become mayor, completing James J. Walker's term. ** 5,500,000 vehicles use the new George Washington Bridge this year. ** George Abbott's sage production of Twentieth Century premieres. ** Lawyer Irving Kaufman joins the firm of Louis Rosenberg. ** Writer Harvey Fergusson moves to Hollywood to become a scriptwriter. ** Samuel I. Newhouse buys the Long Island Press.

State
Pioneering western New York doctor Annie Cheney-Spofford dies in Batavia. ** Upstate is hit by a severe winter. ** Perry's Commodore Hotel is sold at forced auction. ** The cornerstone is laid for Comstock House, a new residence at Geneva's William Smith College.

Rochester
The city forbids wives of employees to hold city jobs, which would take work away from men during the Depression. ** The city and Monroe County form a joint survey commission to assess the effects of a proposed St. Lawrence seaway. The commission prepares a report for the federal government. ** Tony Agostinelli starts an appliance store at 4669 Lake Avenue that will later be known as Charlotte Appliances, in the building housing Cavacori's Restaurant. ** The city annexes additional land in Durand Eastman Park, increasing its own size to 34.77 square miles. ** The city discontinues its mounted police patrols. ** Wegmans markets introduce refrigerated display windows, and vaporized water sprays for keeping produce fresh. ** The Saturday night comedy radio program Hank & Herb Show (The Old Timers) debuts on WHAM. ** Photographer Charles C. Zoller dies, in his late seventies or early eighties. ** The Duffy-Powers department store closes.

Jan 24
Noel Coward's Design for Living opens on Broadway.

Mar 4
Former governor of New York State Franklin D. Roosevelt is sworn in as President of the U. S.

Mar 26
Jazz guitar player Salvatore Massaro (Eddie Lang, Blind Willie Dunn), 31, dies in New York City.

Apr 25
Yankees pitcher Russ Van Atta shuts out the Washington Senators 16-0.

May 26
New York City's last steam fire engine is retired.

Jul 6
Life with Father begins a record stage run in New York.

Jul 10
Austrian-born designer for the Metropolitan Opera Joseph Urban dies at the age of 61.

Aug 15
Singer and folk song collector Michael "Mike" Seeger, brother of folksinger Pete Seeger, is born in New York City.

Aug 19
New York City subway (IND) service begins, linking Roosevelt Avenue to Jackson Heights.

Sep 22
Sime Silverman, founder-editor-publisher of the entertainment industry paper Variety, dies in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles at the age of 60. Earlier in the year he had appointed Abel Green to replace him.

Sep 25
Writer Ring Lardner dies in East Hampton.

Nov 11
The temperature in New York City drops to 28 degrees F, lowest temperature here for this date.

Nov 17
The temperature in New York City drops to 20 degrees F, lowest temperature here for this date.


City
Fiorello H. La Guardia, running on the Republican-City Fusion ticket, defeats Recovery candidate Joseph McKee and Democrat John O'Brien, to become mayor. ** The Rabbinical Seminary of America is founded in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. ** Poet Ogden Nash publishes Happy Days. He marries and moves to Baltimore. ** Artists Mike Wolfe and his photographer wife Louise Dahl-Wolfe move here. ** A television signal is beamed from the Empire State Building. ** Comedienne Joan Rivers is born in Brooklyn. ** Hollywood scriptwriter Ayn Rand moves here. ** The barkentine Norden, voyaging from Laguna, Mexico, to Le Havre, France, is battered by storms and barely makes it into New York Harbor. ** The Rangers win hockey's Stanley Cup. ** New York Times editor John Huston Finley walks the perimeter of Manhattan on his 70th birthday. ** 150 people are employed in Irving Trust's receivership department at 1 Wall Street. As standing receiver in bankruptcy for the Southern District of New York it manages failed businesses such as Radio-Keith- Orpheum the Savoy Plaza Hotel and the Shubert Theater.

State
Augustino, Paul and Sam Caito open Batavia's first liquor store, on Main Street. ** The State Public Service Commission orders a 15% reduction in municipal water rates for Utica. The owner of the Consolidated Water Company shows an interest in selling the company to the city. ** Honeoye Falls lifts its ban on Sunday baseball. ** Elizabeth Bacon "Libby" Custer, 91, widow of George Armstrong Custer, is buried in a grave next to her husband's. ** The Abell Mansion, former home of Colonel David H. Abell, in the town of Groveland just south of Geneseo, burns down. The building was at the old town of Williamsburg. ** Construction begins on a bridge across the Niagara River to connect southern Grand Island with Tonawanda. ** Miss Carrie Stewart acquires Painted Post's Patterson Inn. ** The nephew of Albany political boss Daniel O'Connell, John O'Connell, Jr., is kidnapped.

Rochester
Port of Rochester lake tonnage bottoms out at 489,000 tons. Imports reach $426,525. Imports under bind drop to $1,500,000. ** A fish hatchery is built in Powder Mills Park. ** The Reynolds Arcade is remodeled into a ten-story office building with anArt Deco interior. The arcade itself is lost.



© 2002 David Minor / Eagles Byte


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