Jan 1
Columbia defeats Stanford in the Rose Bowl.
Jan 7
Russia's first ambassador to the U. S. arrives in New York City.
Jan 19
Robert Moses becomes New York City's first city-wide parks commissioner.
Jan 20
Mercantile heiress Charlotte Spaulding (Mrs. Franklin) Sidway
dies in Buffalo at the age of 91. She had witnessed Lincoln's
first inauguration.
Jan 29
Members of Canandaigua women's Current Events Club pose for
a group photo, dressed in period costume.
Feb 1
A New York City art gallery holds a retrospective of painter Georgia
O'Keefe. ** Anarchist Emma Goldman pays a visit to her old home
in Rochester.
Feb 6
New York City taxi drivers walk off the job.
Feb 8
Temperatures in New York City drop to 7 degrees below 0 F, lowest
here for this date.
Feb 9
Temperatures in New York City plunge to 15 degrees below 0 F,
setting a February record here. Lake Ontario freezes over from
shore to shore. When the thermometer drops to 22 below at Rochester,
also a record; the car-ferry Ontario II gets stuck in the
ice.
Feb 10
Rochester composer Howard Hanson's opera Merrymount premieres
at the Metropolitan Opera.
Feb 11
Pianist Vladimir Horowitz makes his debut with the New York Philharmonic.
Feb 16
Due to January's devaluation of the dollar $100,000 worth of gold
arrives in New York City. ** A rally in New York City's Madison
Square Garden turns into a free-for-all between Communists and
Socialists.
Feb 20
A snowstorm hits the northeastern U. S., causing more than thirty
deaths. ** Virgil Thomson's opera Four Saints in Three Acts
opens in New York City, with its librettist Gertrude Stein in
the audience.
Feb 22
Frank Capra's film It Happened One Night opens at Radio
City Music Hall.
March
Batavia businesswoman Mary Sweetland moves her Main Street restaurant
further along the street, renames it the Berry Patch.
Mar 6
New York City's cab drivers return to work, having won a wage
increase.
Mar 17
5,000 blacks riot in New York City over the Scottsboro Boys trial.
Mar 23
The congregations of Brooklyn's Plymouth Church and the Congregational
Church of the Pilgrims agree to merge, the new church being named
Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims. ** Temperatures in New York City
drop to 13 degrees F, lowest here for this date.
Mar 27
Dance Theatre of Harlem founder Arthur Mitchell is born in New
York City.
Mar 29
U. S. philanthropist and arts patron Otto Hermann Kahn dies in
New York City.
Apr 7
A pro-Nazi rally in a Queens stadium erupts in a number of small
skirmishes when anti Nazi protestors gather outside the arena.
May 17
20,000 people attend a pro-Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden.
May 22
Pianist Peter Nero is born in New York City.
May 31
President Franklin D. Roosevelt reviews a U. S. fleet of 81 warships
and 185 planes, in New York City harbor.
Jun 13
Max Baer knocks out Primo Carnera, in New York City, to become
the new heavyweight boxing champion.
Jun 15
Joseph H. Freelander and Max L. Hausle's $8,000,000 Bronx County
Building (Bronx County Courthouse) at Grand Concourse and East
161st Street is dedicated. The building displays detailing by
sculptors Charles Keck and Adolph Weinmann.
Jun 24
Fats Waller records Somebody Stole My Gal, Dinah,
12th Street Rag and Blue Because of You.
Jul 9
American Airlines inaugurates sleeper service between New York
and Chicago.
Aug 13
15,000 tons of rock plunge into the gorge below Niagara Falls.
September
Carson Smith (McCullers) travels by boat from Savannah to New
York City to begin her career as a writer. She loses her support
money and begins a series of odd jobs.
Sep 1
Colonel Roscoe Turner flies from New York to Los Angeles in ten
hours, two minutes and 51 seconds, beating his old record.
Sep 4
A New York City court sentences John Smiuske to six months in
jail for burning a satirical portrait of President Roosevelt.
Sep 7
The car-ferry Ontario I is turned around by rough weather
while on a moonlight cruise, sponsored by Rochester restauranteur
Joe Ryan, with 500 passengers aboard. 60 people are injured and
carried to local hospitals, forewarned by the Coast Guard cutter
Eagle.
Sep 8
Ku Klux Klan members in Westchester County pledge support for
Naziism.
Sep 15
A New York City gas station attendant is paid with a five dollar
gold certificate that turns out to be from the Lindbergh ransom.
He jots down the license plate number.
Sep 20
Bruno Hauptmann is arrested for receiving the Lindbergh ransom.
October
Con artist Charles Ponzi is deported to Italy. ** Cleveland Still,
first tenor with The Dubs, is born in New York City.
Oct 1
The New York Stock Exchange registers with the Securities and
Exchange Commission (SEC).
Oct 8
Baritone Doc Green of The Drifters is born in New York City.
Oct 13
New York City police sink 1,155 slot machines in Long Island Sound.
Oct 25
A Union Pacific train makes a record-setting transcontinental
run, New York to Los Angeles, in 57 hours.
Oct 28
The FERA arranges to buy Long Island potatoes to feed the needy.
Nov 1
Union Pacific's new diesel cuts 14-and-a-half hours off the Los
Angeles to New York run.
Nov 4
New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art opens a new show on industrial
art.
Nov 9
Astronomer-author Carl Edward Sagan is born in New York City.
Nov 20
Lillian Hellman's play The Children's Hour has it's New
York premiere.
Nov 21
Cole Porter's Anything Goes opens on Broadway.
Dec 12
Members of Canandaigua women's Interrogation Club pose for
a group photo, dressed in period costume.
Dec 20
Katharine Cornell's production of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet
opens at New York's Martin Beck Theatre starring herself, Basil
Rathbone, Edith Evans, Paul Julian, and Charles Waldron.
Teen-age Orson Welles makes his professional stage debut as Tybalt.
** The New York Philharmonic premieres Philip James' Bret Harte
Overture.
City
Robert Moses begins construction of Orchard Beach in the Bronx.
** The women's Zionist organization Hadassah forms Youth Aliyah
to rescue German children. ** 70 trains a day are now crossing
the Spuyten Duyvil Bridge. ** Salvador Dali has a show at a local
gallery. ** Giants pitcher Carl Hubbell strikes out five batters
in succession during an All-Star Game. ** Fiorello La Guardia
is inaugurated as mayor. ** The collections of Columbia University's
Low Memorial Library are moved across the quadrangle to Butler
Hall and the former library becomes an administration building.
** The City Parks Department moves into the arsenal in Central
Park at Fifth Avenue and East 64th Street.
State
Ted Zornow, Sr. purchases his in-laws' Pittsford produce business
and converts it into a bean and grain processing mill. ** The
U. S. Veterans' Facility opens in Batavia. ** Painter Reginald
Marsh spends six months in Hopewell Junction learning the fresco
secco process from expert Olle Nordstrom. ** Albany politician
Edwin Corning dies. ** Poughkeepsie architect William J. Beardsley
dies. ** Batavia mayor James J. Mahaney is inaugurated.
Rochester
The city celebrates its centennial. Among the guests is Joseph
Leech, mayor of Rochester, England. ** Architect Claude Bragdon
edits and writes the introduction to Louis Sullivan's Kindergarten
Chats. ** Radio station WHAM begins carrying a Boy Scouts
news program hosted by Hubbs & Hastings Paper Company executive
Walter E. Hastings. Syl Novelli provides piano accompaniment.
** The Exempts firefighting squad is formed in the area around
Thomas Avenue.
Jan 2
Bruno Richard Hauptmann goes on trial in New York City for the
Lindbergh kidnapping, with David Wilentz as prosecuting attorney.
** Alan Valentine is elected president of the University of Rochester.
Jan 25
John B. Abbott, first president of the Livingston County Bar Association,
dies in his Geneseo home on Wadsworth Street.
Feb 12
Talullah Bankhead opens in New York, in a revival of Somerset
Maugham's Rain.
Feb 13
Hauptmann is convicted.
Feb 21
Playwright Leonard Melfi is born in Binghamton.
Mar 6
Temperatures in New York City rise to 68 degrees F, highest here
for this date.
Mar 18
Riots break out in West Harlem after a young black boy is caught
shoplifting and is released. Untrue rumors spread out of control
and before order is restored one person is dead and over a hundred
are injured.
Apr 8
Newspaper publisher Adolph Simon Ochs dies.
May 29
The ocean liner Normandie leaves France on her maiden voyage,
to New York City.
Jun 10
Alcoholics Dr. Robert Smith of Akron, Ohio, and New York stockbroker
William Wilson found Alcoholics Anonymous.
Jul 8
Floods in the southern tier kill 46 people and wash out the main
highway through Bath.
Jun 17
Songwriter-folksinger Margaret (Peggy) Seeger is born in New York
City.
Jul 2
The Rip Van Winkle Bridge over the Hudson River opens.
Aug 26
Politician Geraldine Anne Ferraro is born in Newburgh.
Sep 13
New York State's Civilian Conservation Corps camp in Long Island's
Stony Brook State Park (SP-55) opens.
Sep 17
A rockslide permanently stops the running of the Niagara Gorge
Belt Line on the Canadian side at Niagara Falls, a popular tourist
attraction.
Oct 10
Porgy and Bess , George and Ira Gershwin's adaption of DuBose
Heywood's play Porgy , opens on Broadway.
Oct 12
Batavia's Dellinger Theatre burns down.
Oct 23
New York City mobster Lucky Luciano has rival Dutch Schultz rubbed
out, in Newark,New Jersey. Another Luciano victim, Marty Krompier,
survives a Manhattan attack with four bullets in him.
Nov 12
Greta Peltz shoots and kills her lover Fritz Gebhardt in their
New York City apartment. She claims he tried to force her to perform
an unnatural act and is acquitted.
Dec 1
Producer-director-comedian Woody Allen is born in New York City.
Dec 28
The Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project Gallery
opens in New York City.
Dec 30
Baseball player Sanford ("Sandy")Koufax is born in Brooklyn.
City
Naturalist Roy Chapman Andrews is named director of the American
Museum of Natural History, serving until 1942. ** The London Terrace
apartment complex is foreclosed. ** Pace Institute is incorporated.
** Babe Ruth leaves the Yankees to play for the Boston Braves.
** Max Baer loses the world's heavyweight championship to James
J. Braddock in Long Island City. ** Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontanne's
The Taming of the Shrew, Billy Rose's Jumbo, George
Abbott's productions of Boy Meets Girl and Three Men
on a Horse and Cole Porter's musical Jubilee. , all
premiere. ** The Wall Street investment firm of Morgan Stanley
is founded. ** Norwegian soprano Kirsten Flagstad makes her U.
S. debut at the Metropolitan Opera. ** Photographer Berenice Abbott
obtains a grant from the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress
Administration (WPA), to produce a photographic record of the
city. ** A project is begun to elevate the Hudson line train through
the Manhattanville area of the Upper West Side. ** Lillian Gish
stars in producer Jed Harris's stage production of Chekhov's Uncle
Vanya. ** The Parks Department restores the baseball clubhouse
on the site of the Revolutionary Battle of Brooklyn in Gowanus,
building with the original stones.
State
John Bridger builds a diner at the intersection of routes 20 and
63, next to a new ESSO gas station run by a Mr. Ayers. The facility
will become the Texaco Town truck stop. The local school burns
down and an asbestos building is moved to the site as a temporary
substitute. ** Mormons in the Palmyra area stage the first Hill
Cumorah Pageant. ** The movie The Farmer Takes a Wife is
filmed on the Erie Canal. ** Fitness proponent and financier Bernard
M. Baruch opens the Hall of the Springs buildings at Saratoga
Springs. ** The passenger boat Idler, the last steamer
left on Canandaigua Lake, discontinues service. ** A fireproof
maternity building (later called the Nichols Building) is added
to Batavia Hospital. ** Father Peter Quealy lays the cornerstone
for Rockville Center's St. Agnes Roman Catholic Church. ** The
factory of the former William A. Rogers, Ltd. silver-plating works
in Niagara Falls is demolished.
Rochester
The federal government assumes the cost of the lower basin at
the Port of Rochester. ** The Exempts buy property on Thomas Avenue
for a clubhouse and picnic grounds.
Tonawanda
The southern Grand Island bridge across the Niagara River to Tonawanda
is completed, replacing a ferry at the site. ** The city turns
the former Main Street depot of the New York Central over to the
Tonawanda Public Library.
Jan 1
The Civilian Conservation Corps camp in Stony Brook State Park
closes, after three and-a-half months of operation.
Jan 23
Temperatures in New York City plunge to 3 degrees below 0 F, lowest
here for this date.
Jan 29
Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, George Herman "Babe" Ruth, Christopher
"Christy" Mathewson, and Walter Perry Johnson are the
first inductees elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown.
Feb 19
Temperatures in New York City drop to 1 degree F, lowest here
for this date.
Feb 23
The first rocket air mail flight is made at Greenwood Lake.
March
The stone dam on Mill Brook at Sherburne is washed out by floods.
Mar 7
Ellsworth Oldman, owner of Buffalo's Oldman Boiler Works, writes
to yacht designers and brokers, seeking a 40-50 foot motor cruiser.
Mar 18
An ice storm causes extensive damage in Canandaigua.
Apr 22
John Torrio, public enemy number two, is captured in New York
City.
Apr 25
The Socialist Labor Party convention meets in New York City.
Apr 28
The Socialist Laborites adjourn, having nominated Massachusetts'
J. W. Aiken and New York's Emil F. Teichert.
Apr 29
Conductor Arturo Toscanini gives his farewell performance in Carnegie
Hall.
May 5
The Prohibition Party meets in Niagara Falls
May 7
The Prohibition Party adjourns, having nominated New York's Dr.
D. Leigh Colvin and Tennessee's Sergeant Alvin C. York.
May 15
Playwright Paul Zindel is born on Staten Island.
May 24
Yankees batter Tony Lazzeri drives in eleven runs in one game
(including two grand slams) to set an American League record.
The Yankees beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 25 2.
May 28
Pare Lorenz' documentary The Plow That Broke the Plains
opens in New York.
June
Blake McKelvey comes to Rochester to interview for the position
of Assistant City Historian. He is interviewed by the new City
Historian Professor Dexter Perkins and given the job. **
Novelist Carson Smith (McCullers) makes a brief visit home to
Columbus, Georgia.
Jun 1
The Queen Mary docks in New York. ** The Supreme
Court declares that New York's 1933 Minimum Wage Law for Women
is unconstitutional, in Morehead V. New York ex rel. Tipaldo.
The law had also covered children.
Jun 14
The 17-year locust reappears in the northeast U. S., hitting Long
Island especially hard.
Jun 18
Lucky Luciano is convicted on 62 counts of compulsory prostitution.
Jun 19
Max Schmeling knocks out Joe Louis in the twelfth round, in New
York City.
Jun 24
The Communist Party meets in New York City.
Jun 28
The Communist Party adjourns, having nominated New York's Earl
Browder and James W. Ford.
Jun 28
Pan-American Airways' Dixie Clipper lands in Lisbon with 22 people
aboard from Port Washington, Long Island, inaugurating transatlantic
passenger air service with a flight lasting 23 hours and 52 minutes.
Jun 29
Ground is broken on Long Island for New York City's World's Fair.
Jul 1
McKelvey moves to Rochester.
Jul 11
New York City's Triborough Bridge opens, connecting Manhattan,
the Bronx and Queens. 20,000 people cross the bridge today. President
Roosevelt attends the opening, then visits his mother Sara on
East 65th Street.
Aug 4
Bass singer Elsberry Hobbs of The Drifters is born in New York
City.
Aug 5
Dance instructors gather in New York City to reach a consensus
on the nature of "swing " music.
Aug 18
Joe Louis knocks out Jack Sharkey in New York City.
Aug 20
Ballerina Carla Fracci of the America Ballet Theater is born in
Italy.
Aug 23
One route of Rochester's New York State Railways streetcar lines
is discontinued. ** Lead singer of The Drifters Rudy Lewis
is born in New York City.
Aug 30
Ten more routes of Rochester's New York State Railways streetcar
lines are discontinued.
September
Rochester gets new buses to replace the recently discontinued
trolley lines.
Sep 12
Fred Perry and Alice Marbel win the Forest Hills tennis championships.
Oct 1
Ballet dancer Edward Villella is born in Bayside.
Oct 6
The Yankees defeat the Giants, 4 games to 2, to win the World
Series.
Oct 9
Joe Louis defeats Jorge Brescia in New York City.
Oct 25
A melee breaks out over a call during a football game between
the Giants and the Philadelphia Eagles. A referee has his shirt
torn apart.
November
Carson Smith becomes seriously ill and Reeves McCullers takes
her back to Georgia. She begins working on the story "The
Mute" which will later becomes The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.
Nov 4
New York State's Communist Party fails to get enough votes to
be legally viable.
Nov 18
Temperatures in New York City drop to 18 degrees F, the lowest
here on record for the date.
Nov 19
Temperatures in New York again drop to 18 degrees F, breaking
the record for the date for the second day in a row.
Dec 9
A show of Dada and Surrealistic art opens in New York City.
Dec 12
The Henry Hudson Bridge, over New York City's Harlem River, opens.
Dec 13
Football's old Brooklyn Dodgers team beats the St. Louis Terriers
100-0 in an exhibition game, scoring an average two points a minute.
Dec 25
Yellow journalism editor Arthur Brisbane, 72, dies in New York
City.
City
Bronx's Orchard Beach is completed. ** Construction of a
Queens-Midtown Tunnel begins, as well as that for a Sixth Avenue
subway. ** Construction begins on a project to bring Delaware
River water to the city for its supply. ** A second tunnel
is completed connecting the city to water from the Catskills.
** Robert E. Sherwood wins the Pulitzer Prize for Drama
for Idiot's Delight. Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne star
in the Broadway production. ** Rose Louise Hovick first
appears under the name of Gypsy Rose Lee in the Ziegfeld Follies.
** George Balanchine choreographs the number "Slaughter
on Tenth Avenue" for George Abbott's production of Richard
Rodgers and Lorenz Hart's musical On Your Toes, danced
by Ray Bolger. ** Brooklyn's Arbuckle Brothers wholesale
grocery firm discontinues the coffee portion of its business.
** The Louis Comfort Tiffany mansion at 72nd Street and
Madison Avenue is torn down. ** 217,976,370 commuters enter
and leave the city each day by way of 20 bridges, 18 tunnels,
and 17 ferries; 115,000 visitors come into the city by way of
railroad. ** Carson Smith begins studying fiction at Columbia
with Story editor Whit Burnett in the fall. Soldier Reeves MCullers,
having arrived to study anthropology and journalism at Columbia
after buying his army discharge with a small inheritance, joins
her.
State
A referendum is put before Cortland voters, to preserve the Randall
Mansion. It fails. ** An expedition from the Rochester Museum,
including historian J. Sheldon Fisher, excavates the Wadsworth
Mound, from the Hopewell culture, south of Geneseo. ** Batavia's
Cary family donates their East Main Street home to the city. After
several years the city will find the upkeep to be too expensive
and will return it. ** Benjamin O. Davis becomes the fourth
black to graduate from West Point. ** Dr. Arthur Limouze
purchases the deteriorating Narcissa Prentiss house in Prattsburgh,
begins restoration work. ** Codman Hislop's Albany: Dutch,
English and American. ** James Fenimore Cooper, grandson
of the author, arranges to have his great grandfather William
Cooper's A Guide to the Wilderness... printed in a third
edition. He also publishes Reminiscences of Mid-Victorian Cooperstown
and Sketch of William Cooper. ** Flemmie Kittrell becomes
the first black woman to earn a Ph.D in home economics at Cornell.
** A joint state legislative committee recommends naming
mineral baths at Sharon Springs, Richfield Springs and Alden's
springs as state reserves, in addition to the one at Saratoga
Springs. Nothing comes of the idea. ** Schenectady historian
Edwin G. Conde draws a map of his city back at the time of the
February 1690 Indian massacre.
Buffalo
The Bison City Rod and Gun Club builds a fifteen-foot rescue boat
for the Buffalo Fire Department.
Rochester
The Port of Rochester's imports climb back to $1,000,000. **
Downtown's Rundel Memorial Library opens. ** Bausch &
Lomb makes Ray-Ban sunglasses, produced for the Army Air Corps
in 1929, available to the public. ** "The Professor
and his Brain Twisters" radio program, hosted by Morden Buck,
debuts on WHEC, runs on into next year. ** The car-ferry
Ontario II goes aground off Crescent Beach. When the Coast
Guard cutter Jackson is unable to haul her free, her sister ship
Ontario I is called upon to do the job.