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