Geneva1931Geneva Jan 6 Author E. L. Doctorow is born in New York City. Apr 30 Service ends on the the Rochester, Lockport, and Buffalo Railroad. May 1 The Empire State Building is dedicated, 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 Catty take off from New York City for the first single-engine aircraft flight around the world. 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 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. 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. 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. ** The Bayonne Bridge is opened. ** 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. 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. 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. 1932 Jan 26 Novelist Thomas Wolfe jumps from a moving train car in Grand Central Station, severs a vein in his left arm. 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. 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. 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 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. Sep 1 New York City mayor James J. Walker resigns. Joseph V. McKee becomes acting mayor through the end of the year. Nov 8 Franklin Delano Roosevelt defeats Herbert Hoover for the Presidency. 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 3rd 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. 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. ** Charlotte Appliances opens. ** The city annexes additional land in Durand Eastman Park, incresing its own size to 34.77 square miles. 1933 Jan 24 Noel Coward's Design for Living opens in New York City. Mar 26 Jazz guitar player Salvatore Massaro (Eddie Lang, Blind Willie Dunn), 31, dies in New York City. 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. New York 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. 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 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. 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. The arcade itself is lost. David Minor Eagles Byte Historical Research Rochester, New York 716 264-0423 http://home.eznet.net/~dminor