Geneva1955Geneva
Jan 14
The first Alan Freed's Rock and Roll Party is
broadcast, in New York City.
Jan 27
Millionaire playboy Serge Rubinstein is found strangled to death in his
New York City mansion. The crime is never solved.
Feb 18
Murder suspect August Robles shoots it out with New York City police
and escapes.
Feb 20
Robles is tracked down by police to his 112th Street apartment and
besieged. After a shootout lasting several hours police break into the
apartment and find him dead with five bullets in him.
May 12
Demolition begins on New York City's Third Avenue El.
May 16
Author-scriptwriter-critic James Agee dies in New York City.
Jun 7
Dwight Eisenhower becomes the first U. S. President to appear on color
television, giving an address at West Point.
Jul 18
Atom-powered electricity debuts in Schenectady.
Sep 26
The stock market suffers its worst one-day loss ever, showing a
$14,000,000,000 drop, as a result from the news of the President's
heart attack.
Oct 4
The Brooklyn Didgers, aided by outfielder Sandy Amoros' double play,
wins the World Series (for the first time) against the New York Yankees
during the seventh game.
Nov 1
Author Dale Carnegie dies in Forest Hills, Queens.
Dec 15
The Tappan Zee Bridge, over the Hudson River, opens.
City
The city begins using water piped in from the Delaware River. **
The Hicksite and the Orthodox factions of the Quakers reunite to
increase their influence. ** Brooklyn's Rabbinical Seminary of
America moves to larger quarters, in Forest Hills. ** The first
Obie (Off-Broadway) theatrical awards are instituted, by the
Village Voice . ** Poet James Merrill's play
The Immortal Husband is done off Broadway. **
Georger Abbot''s production of Damn Yankees opens.
** New York's Group for Film Study publishes the "Monograph on The
Birth of a Nation" ** New York Herald Tribune
reporter Homer Bigart goes to work for the New York
Times. ** Mount Sinai Hospital develops and
installs an automatic device for use in brain angiography. **
Contralto Marian Anderson appears at the Metropolitan Opera, singing
Ulrica in Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera. ** Edwin
Steichen mounts the Family of Man exhibit for the Museum of Modern Art.
He chooses Life magazine photographer W. Eugene Smith's The
Walk to Paradise Garden as the theme photograph.
State
Batavia's Wiard Plow Company closes.
Rochester
Lawyer Frank Horton is elected to fill an unexpired term on the City
Council.
1956
Feb 21
Goldman Band founder Edwin Franko Goldman dies.
Mar 17
Radio comedian John Florence Sullivan (Fred Allen) dies in New York
City.
May 3
Frank Loesser;s musical Most Happy Fella opens at New
York's Imperial Thaeater.
Jun 30
The last trains are run on the Rochester subway system. The end of the
system results in bus rerouting.
Aug 11
Painter Jackson Pollock is killed in an automobile accident in East
Hampton, Long Island.
October
Batavia's Charter Revision Committee begins meeting.
City
The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey acquires most of the New
York Dock Company property in Brooklyn. ** Bedloe's Island, site
of the Statue of Liberty, is renamed Liberty Island. ** The
Whitehall Street ferry terminal building is renovated. **
Baltimore based poet Ogden Nash takes up residence at 333 East 57th
Street. ** London's Hambro Trading Corporation closes the failimg
Hambro House of Design on 54th Street ** New
Yorker cartoonist Charles Addams divorces Barbara Addams.
** Lawyer Howard Cossell gives up his practice to become a
sportscaster.
State
Mario M. Cuomo graduates from St. John's Law School. ** Baseball
authority Harold Seymour receives his doctorate from Cornell
University, writing a dissertation that later is reworked as
Baseball: The Early Years.
Batavia
Howard Eaton buys Don's Dinette from owner Donald Naegely. ** The
Genesee Trust Company mreges with Buffalo's Manufacturers and Traders
Trust Company, becoming a branch of the M&T.
Rochester
The Health Department closes a downtown tenement when the owner refuses
to bring the building up to code, evicting thirty black migrants. 246
vagrants are rounded up later in the year. ** High winds loosen a
500-pound panel on the "wings of progress" structure atop the Times
Square Building. ** Actress Louise Brooks moves here at the
invitation of the curator of the Eastman Museum of Photography.
1957
January
New York City's Mad Bomber is identified as George Metesky and
arrested.
Jan 16
Italian-born U. S. symphony conductor Arturo Toscanini, 89, dies in
Riverdale.
Feb 4
The first electric portable typewriter is sold in Syracuse.
April
Batavia's Charter Revision Committee files the final draft of a new
charter with the city clerk.
Apr 8
Batavia's new railroad station opens. The Empire State Express is the
first official eastbound train to use the new tracks.
Apr 11
Westbound rail traffic begins on the new track outside Batavia.
May 3
Eugene O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten opens in
New York City.
May 9
Italian-born operatic and Broadway bass Ezio Pinza dies at the age of
64.
May 15
Evangelist Billy Graham begins a crusade at Madison Square Garden.
May 25
The Lincoln Tunnel under the Hudson River, opens for traffic.
May 28
Two New York City baseball teams receive permission to move to
California, the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles and the New York Giants
to San Francisco.
Jul 6
New York City's Althea Gibson defeats Arlene Hard, becomes the first
black to win the Wimbledon womens' singles tennis crown. Lew Hoad
defeats Ashley Cooper.
Jul 7
A U. S. Army Redstone missile goes on display in Grand Central
Terminal.
Jul 11
Althea Gibson is given a New York City ticker tape parade.
Jul 20
100,000 people see Billy Graham at Yankee Stadium - the arena's largest
attendance.
Aug 7
Rudolph Abel is indicted as a Soviet spy, in New York City.
Aug 16
The first black family moves into the all-white suburb of Levittown,
under a police guard.
Aug 21
President Eisenhower signs a bill authorizing the Niagara Power
Authority.
Aug 31
The last freight is carried over Rochester's defunct subway system.
Sep 1
100,000 people gather on Broadway for Billy Graham's farewell rally.
Sep 9
George Metesky's last, unexploded bomb is found inside a Manhattan
theater.
Sep 23
Canadian prime minister John George Diefenbaker addresses the United
Nations General Assembly.
Sep 29
Former New Giants fans chase the team back to their clubhouse after the
last New York game, steal souvenirs.
Oct 10
The Milwaukee Braves defeat the Yankees in the World Series.
Oct 25
Gambino godfather Albert Anastasia is gunned down in a New York City
barber shop by Gambino family members.
Oct 26
Rudolph Abel is found guilty of espionage.
November
Police raid a Mafia convention in Apalachin. The mobsters will be
convicted, but the ruling will later be overturned.
Nov 19
Leonard Bernstein is named musical director of the New York
Philharmonic.
December
C. Richard Foote is appointed city manager of Batavia.
Dec 9
New York City subway motormen go on strike.
Dec 16
The subway motormen end their strike. ** Macy's department store
does a record $2,000,000 business in one day.
City
Mayor Robert F. Wagner, running on the Democrat-Liberal-Fusion ticket,
defeats Republican Robert K. Christenberry to win re-election, serving
through 1965. ** Hulan E Jack is re elected borough president of
Manhattan. ** The Queensboro Bridge railway system, the last
trolley line in the state, discontinues service. ** Charlie
Chaplin's film A King in New York opens. **
Meredith Willson's The Music Man and Leonard
Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim and Jerome Robbins' West Side
Story open.
State
The Louis Comfort Tiffany estate on Long Island's Oyster Bay is
destroyed by fire. ** Utica's Munson-Williams Memorial is
demolished for a gas station. ** The Adirondack Museum, in Blue
Mountain Lake, is established.
Batavia
A group of businessmen open the bargain store Mill Outlet on Russell
Place.
Rochester
Lawyer Frank Horton is re-elected to a full term on the City Council.
Copyright 1997 David Minor / Eagles Byte
I'm going to break for a couple weeks for the holidays. See you next
year. The happiest of holidays to all of you and your families.
David
David Minor
Eagles Byte Historical Research
Rochester, New York
716 264-0423
http://home.eznet.net/~dminor