Geneva1925
GenevaJan 1
Metropolitan Opera stars Lucrezia Bori and John McCormack make their
radio singing radio debuts.
Feb 21
The New Yorker magazine begins publication.
Apr 14
Actor Rod Steiger is born in Westhampton.
May
The scheduled seasonal startup of Manitou Beach trolley service along
Lake Ontario north of Rochester does not take place.
May 31
Living Theatre founder-producer Julian Beck is born in New York City
Jun 3
Actor Bernard Schwartz (Tony Curtis) is born in New York City.
Aug 1
Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer buy the Modern Library from Boni and
Liveright.
Aug 25
The Manitou Beach trolley line is put on the market. Service is never
resumed.
Oct 3
Novelist-essayist Eugene Luther Vidal, Jr. (Gore Vidal) is born in West
Point.
Oct 10
Author Janet Flanner (Genet) begins writing the Letter from
Paris for the New Yorker.
Oct 13
Playwright Frank Gilroy is born in New York City. ** Comedian
Leonard Alfred Schneider (Lenny Bruce) is born in Mineola.
Nov 22
Composer-conductor-French-horn player Gunther Schuller is born in New
York City.
Nov 24
Columnist-author-talk show host William F. Buckley is born in New York
City.
Nov 26
Pianist Eugene Istomin is born in New York City.
Dec 3
George Gershwin's Concerto in F has its premiere in
New York City.
Dec 8
The Marx Brothers open at New York's Lyric Theatre in The
Coconuts. ** Actor-singer dancer Sammy Davis Jr. is born
in New York City.
Dec 9
Actress and Post Cereal fortune heir Nedenia Hutton (Dina Merrill) is
born in New York City.
Dec 18
A fire destroys Batavia's Pioneer Sheds and 85 automobiles.
City
The Subtreasury Building on Wall Street becomes Federal Hall National
Monument, to commemorate the spot where Washington took his oath of
office as president. ** The old Madison Square Garden is torn
down. ** The Ritz apartment building is completed. **
Construction begins on the Tudor City apartment complex. ** State
senator James John Walker defeats incumbent mayor John F. Hylan in a
Democratic primary and goes on to defeat Republican Frank D. Waterman
and Socialist Norman Thomas. He will serve 1926-1932, winning
re-election once. ** Ernest Jarvis, future contractor of Loews
movie palaces, and a cousin of Senator Jacob Javits, camps out in front
of the dean's office at Columbia University until he is accepted into
its engineering school. ** The New York stock market sets record
high closings 59 times this year, a record not to be equaled until
1964. ** Future chairman of the New York Stock Exchange Henry
Miller Watts Jr. graduates from Harvard University. ** Richard F.
Walsh is elected president of the International Alliance of Theatrical
Stage Employees Local No. 4, in Brooklyn. ** High-profile lawyer
Simon H. Rifkind receives his LL. B. degree from Columbia. ** The
New York World journalist Alexander Cameron Sedgwick
joins The New York Times to cover local news. **
Future New York Times Book Review editor Francis Brown
earns a bachelor's degree in science from Dartmouth College. **
Mount Sinai Hospital publishes the first American textbook on thoracic
surgery. ** WEAF premieres the Victor Hour a
program of classical music. ** The Americans team enters the
National Hockey League.
State
Fillmore Glen, near Moravia, becomes a state park. ** The village
of Warsaw purchases the Wyoming County Agricultural Society
fairgrounds. During the Depression it will be turned into a village
park as a work project. ** Perry's Commodore Hotel is built by
popular subscription after local interests raise $100,000.**
Geneva's electric trolley service is shut down. ** The
Appalachian Trail Conference is formed, to coordinate the building of
the trail. ** The Great Lakes steamer T. P.
Phelan, berthed in Toronto, is sold to the Buffalo Sand &
Gravel Corporation. She's converted to a sandsucker over the winter and
renamed for one of the owners, Howard S. Gerken.
Batavia
Clubwoman Kate Fisher McCool has the monument "Herald of the Dawn"
erected in Grandview Cemetery, in honor of her mother Alice Fisher and
husband Daniel McCool. ** Alice Monteith Gould sells her Main
Street restaurant to Mary Sweetland. It will later be named the Berry
Patch.
Rochester
Il Popolo Republican is formed in the city to draw local Italians to
the Republican Party. PaulNapodana leads the organization for many
years. ** The city adopts the city-manager plan of government.
** An Italian Business Men's Association is formed. ** A
deluxe Browncroft bus line is established.
1926
Jan 31
U. S. Army photographers, with the cooperation of Eastman Kodak, drop
flash powder bombs over Rochester, enabling them to take the first
night aerial photographs.
Feb 22
Broadway showman Earl Carroll throws a party at his Seventh Avenue
theater.
Feb 23
A young lady bathes nude in a tub of champagne at Carroll's party.
Mar 3
Poet James Ingram Merrill is born in New York City to Charles Merrill
(co-founder of Merrill, Lynch, Pierce, Fenner and Smith) and Mrs.
Merrill.
May 13
Actress Bea Arthur is born in New York City.
May 30
Sex change pioneer Christine Jorgensen is born in New York City.
June
The artists' colony of Yaddo, in Saratoga Springs, begins receiving its
first guests.
Jun 28
Film director and actor Melvin Kaminsky (Mel Brooks) is born in
Brooklyn.
July
A monument is erected at Caledonia to the Scots pioneers of the area.
** Trolley service in Hornell is discontinued.
Jul 9
Nathaniel Hawthorne's daughter Rose dies, in Hawthorne, New York.
Aug 13
Singer Anthony Benedetto (Tony Bennett) is born in New York City.
Sep 26
Producer Jed Harris opens his first production,
Broadway, on Broadway.
Nov 25
Playwright Murray Schisgal is born in New York City.
City
Starrett & Van Vleck's Downtown Athletic Club on West Street is built.
** Three tabloids - the Daily News, the
Daily Mirror, and the Evening Gazette
- capture a combined readership of 1,500,000. ** Two members of
the Gaelic Athletic Association of Greater New York purchase land
(later Gaelic Park) at Broadway and 240th Street in the Bronx. **
Mark Koenig becomes starting shortstop for the New York Yankees. **
The New York Rangers hockey team is founded.
State
The state creates a Board of Water Supply to supervise the replacement
of the Hudson River as a source for Albany's water. ** Dunkirk's
American Locomotive Company halts production. ** A program of
erecting historic markers along highways is established by law to
commemorate the 150th anniversary of the American Revolution. **
B. F. Skinner graduates from Hamilton College. ** Pulmonary
disease expert Dr. Norman Plummer gets his degree from Cornell
University Medical School.
Batavia
William Rippey opens a luncheonette on Jackson Street. ** Trolley
service is discontinued. ** Burt Welch's Bur-wel Garage is built
on Russell Place, in the area destroyed by last year's fire.
Rochester's Werner and Spitz are the contractors.
Rochester
The Chamber of Commerce expands its building on St. Paul and Mortimer.
** Democratic politician and newspaper editor Clement G. Lanni
switches affiliation to the Republicans, because of President Woodrow
Wilson's veto of the Immigration Bill. ** The city annexes the
Andrews Farm, Genesee Valley Park and abandoned lands of the Erie
Canal, increasing its own size to 34.76 square miles. ** An
Irodequoit bus line is begun run from St. Paul and Ridge to Clifford
and Culver, to link Rochester with two Irondeqiout trolley lines. **
A bus feeder line is established on Glide Street for the benefit of
the Emerson streetcar line.
1927
Jan 7
Commercial telephone service between New York and London begins.
Mar 1
Singer-actor Harry Belafonte is born in New York City.
Mar 11
U. S. Secretary of Commerce Robert Mosbacher is born in Mt. Vernon.
Mar 16
New York State Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan is born.
Apr 6
Jazz saxophone player Gerald Joseph "Gerry" Mulligan is born in New
York City.
Apr 19
Actress Mae West is sentenced to ten days on New York City's Welfare
Island jail for performing in her own play Sex, deemed
obscene.
May 13
Folksinger Fred Hellerman of The Weavers is born in New York City.
May 17
Oswego trolley service is discontinued.
May 20
Aviator Charles A. Lindbergh takes off on his solo flight to Europe in
the Spirit of St Louis.
May 21
Lindbergh reaches Paris.
May 25
Author Robert Ludlum is born in New York City.
Jun 4
Aviator Clarence D. Chamberlain, his trans-Atlantic flight delayed by
the lawsuit of would-be co-pilot Lloyd Bertraud, takes off from Long
Island's Roosevelt Field in the Columbia, a plane
designed by Giuseppe Ballanca. He carries rthe plane's owner,
businessman Charles A. Levine, as a passenger, the first to cross the
Atlantic.
Jun 6
The Columbia lands in a field near Eisleban, Germany,
100 miles short of Berlin, its goal. Chamberlain sets a record of
3,911 miles in 43 hours, 300 miles more than Lindbergh.
Jun 13
Lindbergh is given New York City's first ticker tape parade.
Jul 4
Playwright Neil Simon is born in New York City.
Aug 22
15,000 people gather in New York City's Union Square in a death vigil
for Sacco and Vanzetti. The two are executed, in Charlestown,
Massachusetts.
September
An inspection run is made on Rochester's new subway system.
Nov 13
New York City's Holland Tunnel opens.
Dec 1
Rochester's subway system begins partial service, between the Winton
Road loop and City Hall Station. Cars from the Rochester & Eastern
Rapid Railway interurban are used.
Dec 27
Florenz Ziegfeld, Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein's musical,
Show Boat opens at Broadway's Ziegfeld's Theater.
City
Fraunces Tavern is refurbished in the style of the late 1700s. **
Jazz musician Duke Ellington begins playing at Harlem's Cotton Club.
** The Russian Tea Room opens. ** Pace accounting schools
moves their headquarters from the Hudson Terminal Building on Church
Street to the new Transportation Building at 225 Broadway. ** The
stone arches of High Bridge are replaced with a steel arch. ** 71
theaters present a record 257 productions this year. ** Terre
Haute, Indiana, journalism student Will Weng moves to New York City to
pursue his master's degree at the Columbia University School of
Journalism. ** Wyoming cowboy James King Merritt participates in
the Tex Austin rodeo at Madison Square Garden. ** Physicist
Isidor Isaac Rabi earns his PhD at Columbia.
State
The post of Commissioner of Mental Health is created. ** A
mastodon skull is found at Pike. ** Edward Corsi and other state
Republican leaders organize the Columbian Republican League to attract
Italians to the Party. ** Niagara Falls annexes La Salle. **
The Rensselaer County Historical Society is founded, in Troy. **
Walter L. Greene's painting Thoroughbreds.
Rochester
The city retires its fire horses. ** Ridership on the city's Lake
Ontario ferries reaches a peak of 88,831. ** Caledonia Street
becomes part of Clarissa Street. ** The Rochester, Syracuse, and
Eastern Railway trolley converts seven of its cars to lush chair cars,
each named for a community along the route.
NOTE: Files through 1674 are now available on my home poage:
David Minor
Eagles Byte Historical Research
Rochester, New York
716 264-0423
http://home.eznet.net/~dminor