1910
January
Batavia's George D. Williamson, head of the Permanent Revision
Commission, dies and is replaced by Edward Russell. ** Aviator
Glenn Curtiss makes the first experimental drop of a bomb from
plane.
Jan 1
Italian tenor Enrico Caruso sings in the first live radio broadcast
from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera.
Feb 7
Temperatures in New York City drop to 1 degree F, lowest here
for this date.
Feb 15
30,000 members of New York City's International Ladies' Garment
Workers (ILGWU) return to work, having won a wage increase, improved
conditions and a 52-hour week.
Feb 27
Surgeons at New York City's Beth Israel Hospital use X-rays to
locate and guide the removal of a swallowed nail from a young
boy's lung.
Feb 28
Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova makes her U. S. debut at the Metropolitan
Opera House.
Mar 5
Land is purchased by the Catholic Church for the Gate of Heaven
Cemetery in Niagara Falls.
Mar 12
78-year-old Forrest Tuller of Hornell falls into a water-filled
ditch while carrying kindling wood, which holds his head under
water. His daughter hears the fall and rescues the unconscious
man. A doctor revives him and labels his condition serious.
Mar 17
Foreign correspondent Ernest R. Pope is born in New York City.
Mar 19
U. S. president William Howard Taft visits Rochester.
Apr 1
The Rochester street railway systems places 25 new cars, designed
for collecting fares upon entry, in service.
Apr 6
An anonymous bidder in New York City acquires J. M. W. Turner's
Rockets and Blue Lights and Jean-Baptiste Corot's The
Fisherman.
Apr 13
The Pennsylvania Railroad begins regular service through tunnels
into Manhattan.
Apr 25
New York State governor Charles Evans Hughes is appointed an Associate
Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court.
Apr 26
Opera impresario Oscar Hammerstein signs an agreement to not produce
opera in Boston, Chicago, New York or Philadelphia for ten years.
May
Glenn H. Curtiss flies from Albany to New York City in 2 1/2 hours,
setting the long distance speed record. ** Frank Kirby 's passenger
steamboat S. S. Canadiana is launched at the Buffalo Dry-Dock,
the last passenger vessel to be built there.
May 10
Animals are provided for the new zoo in Rochester's Durand-Eastman
Park. ** Many in Rochester are disappointed when Halley's Comet
fails to appear.
May 16
Rochester driver Blanche Stuart leaves on a cross-country trip
in a Willys Overland, to become the first woman to drive across
the U. S.
May 23
Bandleader-composer, clarinet and saxophone player Arthur Jacob
Arshawsky (Artie Shaw) is born in New York City.
June
Glenn Curtiss makes a successful water landing at Hammondsport.
** Historian folklorist Carl Carmer graduates from Albion High
School.
Jun 5
U. S. writer William Sidney Porter (O. Henry), 48, dies in New
York City.
Jun 10
Florenz Ziegfeld's Follies of 1910 opens at New York's
Jardin de Paris theater, introduces Fanny Brice and Bert Williams.
Jun 19
Teddy Roosevelt returns to the U. S. from an African safari. He's
given a ticker tape parade down New York City's Broadway.
Jun 24
Federal judge Irving Robert Kaufman is born in New York City.
Jul 4
The Rochester City Club sponsors a new citizen's banquet at the
Powers Hotel.
Jul 7
New York City cloak-makers walk off the job, stay out nine weeks,
until their demands are met. ** 60,000 members of New York City's
International Ladies' Garment Workers walk off the job.
Jul 24
The state awards a contract to the Sherman-Stalter Company to
repair Dam #1 and a fish ladder on the Cayuga and Seneca Canal
at Cayuga, for $24,750.
August
Rochester illuminates its downtown with strings of incandescent
lights. ** The Odd Fellows organization holds a convention in
the city.
Aug 1
New York City's Pennsylvania Station is dedicated.
Aug 2
Novelist Louis Zara is born in New York City.
Aug 4
Composer William Howard Schuman is born in New York City.
Aug 7
William Le Baron and Deems Taylor's The Echo opens at New
York's Globe Theatre.
Aug 19
In a New York City speech Colonel Theodore Roosevelt urges blacks
to find work and stop seeking government privileges.
Sep 2
The International Ladies' Garment Workers return to work after
a "Protocol of Peace" is signed. Working hours are moved
up to 54 hours a week but other concessions are won, strengthening
the labor movement.
Sep 8
Pennsylvania Station opens to Long Island Railroad trains.
Sep 9
Oscar Hammerstein announces he will build an opera house in London.
Sep 25
West Point Military Academy cadets are placed under arrest for
giving the silent treatment to a captain.
Oct 8/18?
A parade is held to celebrate Rochester's two-week Third Industrial
Exposition.
November
3,000 boot and shoe workers in Brooklyn go on strike. The action
fails and they go back to work.
Nov 7
Rida Johnson Young and Victor Herbert's operetta Naughty Marietta
opens at the New York Theatre.
Nov 8
Franklin Delano Roosevelt is elected to the New York State Senate.
Nov 27
Full service begins out of Pennsylvania Station.
Dec 10
Puccini's La Fanciulla del West (The Girl of the Golden
West) premieres in New York City, with Caruso singing the
lead. Arturo Toscanini conducts.
Dec 15
Jazz producer John Hammond is born in New York City.
Dec 18
Playwright-director-lyricist Abram Solman Borowitz (Abe Burrows)
is born in New York City.
Dec 29
New York awards a contract to the Sherman-Stalter Company to construct
the section of the Cayuga & Seneca Canal from Montezuma to
Seneca Falls, for $1,313,619.
Dec 30
New York State awards a contract to Scott Brothers to build a
lock and a dam on the Cayuga and Seneca Canal at Cayuga, for $352,845.
Dec 31
New York's uncompleted Manhattan Bridge opens for traffic.
City
St. Patrick's Cathedral is dedicated. ** Clinton & Russell's
additions to the Whitehall Building are completed. ** U. S. poet
Ezra Pound visits the city on a return trip from England. ** The
Queensboro Realty Company syndicate now owns a total of 350 acres.
** United Press, International News Service and Time correspondent
Jack Belden is born in Brooklyn. ** Mount Sinai Hospital performs
the first successful removal of bladder tumors using electric
current under direct vision. ** College teacher and baseball authority
Harold Seymour is born. ** Impresario Tony Pastor dies. ** The
four masted bark Peking, now at the South Street Seaport
in New York City, is launched for the Hamburg, Germany, shipping
firm of Ferdinand Leisz. ** Brooklyn's Erie Basin warehouse pier
ceases being used to store grain. ** Construction begins on Store
46, a reinforced concrete warehouse at Brooklyn's New York Dock
Company. ** Oscar Hammerstein I presents the first three-ring
vaudeville bill, using three "dumb" (non dialogue) acts.
** The approximate date Italian-born bookseller Ernesto Rossi
moves into a new store at 191 Grand Street, where he sells Italian
play scripts and sheet music.
State
The Woodbury family begins cultivating wine grapes in Dunkirk.
** Paul Wilbur Woodward, son of the late Genesee Pure Food Company
founder Orator F. Woodward, dies of pneumonia at Annapolis, Maryland.
** A wing is added to Pulteney's Land Office on Washington Street.
A second story is also added. ** Long Island's Metoac Indian population,
close to 10,000 in the year 1600, is now down to 167 Shinnecock,
one Poosepatuck, and 29 Montauk. ** Canandaigua's Red Jacket Club
disbands. The American Legion occupies the Red Jacket Building.
Batavia
The village limits the sale of liquor. John Mayer converts his
Main Street saloon to a restaurant (later Young's). ** Dyer's
Hotel opens on Main Street. ** William G. Pollard buys controlling
interest in the Bank of the Genesee from the Cary family. ** James
M. Williams sells his State Street livery stables to H. J. Kellogg.
Rochester
Henry Clune flunks out of Massachusetts's Phillips Academy, returns
home to become a subreporter on the Democrat and Chronicle.
** The U. S. Engineer's office surveys the needs of the port of
Charlotte. ** The city has an Italian population of over 10,000,
including over a hundred Italian tradesmen. ** Davis Street's
Housekeeping Center and the Bureau for Information and Protection
of Foreigners, on Frank Street, are combined and moved to Lewis
Street, where they soon become a settlement house. ** Claude Bragdon's
Bevier Building at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT)
is completed. ** 20% of the city's deaths are children under the
age of five (not counting stillbirths). ** A new six-story addition,
the Mercantile Building, is connected to Sibley's department store.
Jan 13
New York Central Train 23 crashes into the Pullman car of Train
49, standing at the Batavia station. Five men are killed. Engineer
J, B. Lydell of Buffalo, at the controls of 23, is accused of
ignoring signals.
March
Alfred Stieglitz shows twenty Cézanne watercolors at his
291 Gallery in New York City.
Mar 16
Temperatures in New York City drop to 13 degrees F, lowest here
for this date.
Mar 18
International Workers of the World (Wobblies) of Local 168 in
New York City go on strike.
Mar 20
The Shuberts' new Winter Garden Theatre opens with Frank Tour
and Jerome Kern's revue La Belle Paree, with newcomer Al
Jolson.
Mar 25
New York City's Triangle Shirt Waist Company fire kills 146 female
employees. The company's owners are tried for negligent homicide
and are acquitted.
Mar 29
The Assembly library of the Capitol building in Albany is badly
damaged by fire. Many records are lost.
Mar 30
The first trustees of Rochester's Public Library are named.
April
Cesare Sconfietti opens Rochester's first foreign consul office.
He's feted by local officials.
Apr 21
Operatic baritone Leonard Vaarenov Warren is born in New York
City.
Apr 29
New York City's new Follies Bergere Theatre opens with a triple-bill
musical revue.
May 8
The first direct telephone conversation between New York City
and Denver, Colorado, is held.
Jun 7
Rondout poet Henry Abbot dies in a sanitarium in Tenafly, New
Jersey, at the age of 68.
Jun 8
Glenn Curtiss receives the first pilot's license, issued by the
Aero Club of America.
Jun 26
Ziegfeld's Follies of 1911 opens at the Jardin de Paris
Theatre, introduces comedian-dancer Leon Errol.
July 7
The Benevolent Protective Order of the Elks opens a week-long
convention in Rochester with a parade.
Jul 8
Mystery writer John Dudley Ball is born in Schenectady.
Jul 11
The U. S. purchases it's first airplane, Glenn Curtiss's A-1 Hydroaeroplane.
** The Shriners, in Rochester for a convention, hold a parade
down Main Street.
Jul 17
Rochester's Duffy-McInnerney Company department store on West
Main Street becomes the Duffy-Powers Company. It's the first store
in the city where customers pick out their own purchases and take
them to a sales counter.
Jul 27
Former bellboy Paul Geidel kills stockbroker William Henry Jackson,
in New York City's Hotel Iroquois. Convicted, he spends a record
69 years in jail.
Aug 6
Comedienne and musical comedy star Lucille Ball is born in Jamestown.
Aug 25
The Lehigh Valley Railroad's eastbound Train No. 4 derails near
Manchester. Several train cars fall off a bridge and plunge 45
feet to a creek bed below. 27 people, including two Civil War
veterans returning from a GAR convention in Rochester, are killed.
Sep 17
Calbraith P. Rodgers takes off from New York to make the first
transcontinental flight. It will take him 49 days.
Sep 18
Rochester's National Theatre becomes the Sam S. Shubert Theatre.
The opening presentation consists of 12 short films in kinemacolor,
including newsreels of Queen Victoria's memorial and the English
naval review at Spitshead.
Sep 19
George Arliss makes his New York debut, as Disraeli.
Sep 23
Earle Ovington begins a week of flying mail from New York City
to Mineola, Long Island, making the first airmail deliveries in
the U. S.
Sep 25
George M. Cohan's The Little Millionaire opens at New York's
Cohan Theatre.
Nov 1
The U. S. stages a naval pageant, with the Pacific fleet assembling
at San Diego, and the Atlantic Fleet at New York City.
City
Alfred Dickens, son of the novelist, dies of a cerebral embolism
during a lecture tour of the U. S., at the Astor House. ** Queens'
Oakland Golf Club buys its land from president and owner John
H. Taylor. He sells the remainder of his property to the Draper
Realty Company, for building lots. ** Jackson Heights' first apartment
building, at Northern Boulevard and 82nd Street, is completed.
** Producer Marcus Loew opens the American Roof Theatre, featuring
a roof garden and vaudeville stage. ** Construction begins on
Warren and Wetmore's Grand Central Palace exhibition hall on Lexington
Avenue near the terminal. ** The Franklin and Nye Stores of Brooklyn's
Atlantic Basin Terminal are demolished to make room for a pair
of loft buildings. Store 46 is completed. The facility's Pierrepont
Block, stores 48-53, are fireproofed. ** Columbia literature professor
Joel Elias Spingarn is fired by president Nicholas Murray Butler
for protesting the arbitrary firing of a fellow professor. **
The approximate date restauranteur Pasquale Ronca begins importing
Italian singers for concerts at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
State
Utica's Hinkleyville Reservoir is completed. ** Following the
Triangle Shirtwaist tragedy the New York State Factory Investigating
Commission is formed, chaired by state Senator Robert F. Wagner,
and consisting of assemblyman Alfred E. Smith, union leaders Mary
E, Dreier and Samuel Gompers, and two business representatives.
Over the next three years the commission will make more than 60
individual recommendations. ** The Le Roy House becomes the official
residence of the Le Roy high school principal. ** A private residence
is built in Warsaw. It will one day become the community hospital.
** The Buffalo, Lockport and Rochester Railway interurban is acquired
by the Beebe Syndicate, owner of the Rochester, Syracuse and Eastern
trolley line. ** Inventor George B. Selden successful 1909 lawsuit
against Henry Ford for patent infringement is reversed. The court
rules that the two men had used different engines. ** James A.
Van Fleet is appointed to the U. S. Military Academy. ** Construction
of the Erie Barge Canal prism between Three Rivers and Baldwinsville
is nearly complete. ** The Polish American-Journal begins
publication in Scranton, Pennsylvania. It will later shift its
operations to Buffalo. ** The Curtiss Hydroaeroplane employs the
first dual pilot control mechanism and the first retractable landing
gear. Glenn Curtiss wins the Collier Award for the plane. ** Senator
George F. Argetsinger and Assemblyman Frank A. Waters get legislation
passed allowing cities to have the first chance to purchase canal
lands, at an appraised price fixed by the State Board of Canals.
** Socialist George Lunn is elected mayor of Schenectady. ** Canandaigua's
U. S. Post Office, at 28 North Main, designed by the Boston firm
of Arthur and Collens who were hired by Mary Thompson, opens its
new building on the site of the former Atwater Building.
Rochester
Only two out of 33 factories pass hazardous working conditions
inspections made by a state inspector. ** North American Civic
League official H. H. Wheaton investigates 53 complaints by immigrants.
** A Methodist Church group lead by Reverend Joseph Vitale acquires
property on North Street for the city's first Protestant Italian
church. ** The Lamberton Conservatory for floral displays and
exhibits is built in Highland Park. ** The Rochester Public Library
is founded. ** A second nine holes and a clubhouse are added to
the Oak Hill golf club. ** A horse and wagon parade is held along
Main Street. ** President Taft attends the Grand Army of the Republic
Convention.
Jan 10
A man in Monroe County kills his father. When an arrest is attempted
he shoots and kills deputy Simon J. Bermingham, attempts to kill
county sheriff Harley E. Hamil and wounds three other deputies.
He is electrocuted at Auburn Prison in April of 1913.
Jan 29
Canandaigua's County National Bank at 130 South Main Street opens.
Feb 3
Owney "The Killer" Madden starts his life of crime by
gunning down William Henshaw, in New York City. He is never prosecuted
for the shooting.
Mar 1
New York City appoints the first female detective, Isabella Goodwin.
Apr 7
The Socialist Party meets in New York City.
Apr 22
Mrs. James Sibley Watson donates the Memorial Art Gallery to the
University of Rochester.
May 7
18,000 members of New York City's Hotel Workers Industrial Union
walk off the job. They sign a few contracts.
May 16
Author-interviewer Studs (Louis) Terkel is born in New York City.
May 18
Eugene V. Debs and Emil Seidel become the Socialist candidates
for the U. S. presidency.
May 28
Jazz guitarist David Michael "Dave" Barbour is born
on Long Island.
June
Glenn Curtiss invents the first successful Flying Boat.
Jun 21
9,000 members of New York City's United Hebrew Trades union walk
off the job. They will gain union recognition, a forty-nine hour
work week and nearly full unionization of the fur trade.
Jun 28
Wobblies in New York City walk off the job.
July
Batavia's Bank of the Genesee moves across Main Street into a
building recently purchased by bank head William G. Pollard, on
the southeast corner of Main and Jackson Streets. Henry W. Hornelius
is hired to redesign the interior and facade and Edward J. Dellinger
is awarded the construction contract.
Jul 16
New York City gambler Herman Rosenthal is gunned down outside
the Hotel Metropole. Police lieutenant Charles Becker is fingered
by mobsters as the man behind the killing and is convicted of
the murder.
August
Rochester illuminates its downtown with strings of incandescent
lights. ** The Odd Fellows organization holds a convention in
the city.
Aug 19
New York State's Bronx County is incorporated.
Oct 21
The Ziegfeld Follies of 1913 opens at New York City's Moulin
Rouge Theatre.
Oct 28
Victor Herbert's The Lady of the Slipper opens at New York's
Globe Theatre.
Oct 30
Vice-President James S. Sherman dies, in Utica. His place on the
reelection ticket is assumed by Columbia University president
Nicholas Murray Butler.
Dec 2
Rudolf Friml's The Firefly opens at New York's Lyric Theatre.
City
The Salvation Army opens a lodging for the destitute. ** The 960
Park Avenue apartment building is completed. ** The Allendale,
Evanston and Glen Cairn apartment buildings are completed, as
are those at 530 and 600 West End Avenue. ** The bank forecloses
on Charles F. Rogers' 777 Madison Avenue apartment building. **
The women's Zionist organization Hadassah is organized, at Temple
Emanu-el. ** Jackson Heights now has eight miles of paved streets
and five miles of sewers. ** Burlesque producer Al Reeves buys
an expensive car, parks it in front of the Columbia Theatre, impressing
the locals. ** Cass Gilbert's Woolworth Building is completed.
** The Museum of Natural History purchases George Catlin's series
of paintings of La Salle's expeditions to the mouth of the Mississippi
River. ** Construction begins on baseball's Ebbets Field with
Brooklyn Dodger's owner Charles Ebbets wielding he first shovel.
** Warren and Wetmore's Grand Central Palace exhibition hall is
completed. ** Dance instructor Arthur Murray begins teaching at
a studio in the Grand Central Palace. ** Grain warehouses in the
Atlantic Basin Terminal are converted to other uses, since grain
is no longer stored in elevators. ** William Hammerstein stages
a Woman's Suffragette Week at his Victoria Theatre. Wisconsin
senator Robert La Follette's daughter Fola lectures. Hammerstein
loses money, gets a lot of publicity.
State
Wagon maker Francis C. Pollay, builder of the first jinricksha,
dies in Pulteney. ** Buffalo's Concrete-Central grain elevator
is built. ** The Pittsburgh Building at Troy's Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute is completed. ** Lock 12 is built for the Champlain
Canal at Whitehall, replacing the 1823 triple lock. ** Victor
resident Sarah Hall Bonesteele begins creating miniature rugs,
continues to do so up until 1922. ** Hobart College's Phi Beta
Kappa chapter, Zeta of New York, is extended to William Smith
College. ** Geneva's William Smith College graduates its first
class. ** Avon's Sanitarium spa is converted to a inn and restaurant
by Frank Hovey. ** Glenn Curtiss receives the Collier Trophy for
his invention of the Flying Boat. ** The state legislature begin
using the Genesee River as a dividing line between Monroe County
congressional districts.
Batavia
H. J. Kellogg sells his State Street livery stables to Solomon
Lyman.
Rochester
Business interests begins agitating to have the Erie Canal's bed
moved out of the city. ** Architect Claude Bragdon remarries.
** St. Lucy's Church is built on Troup Street for the Italian
community. ** The Common Council approves a funding ordinance
to construct a subway system in the soon-to-be-abandoned (1919)
Erie Canal bed. ** The city's first bus service is begun, between
the city and the village of Pittsford. It competes with the Park
Avenue streetcars and the Rochester & Eastern Rapid Railway
interurban line. ** William Bausch, son of Bausch & Lomb co-founder
John Jacob Bausch, begins producing optical-quality glass. **
The Rochester Engineering Society moves its headquarters from
the office of the City Engineer to the Sibley block, enabling
them to add a billiard tab;e and a piano. ** The Plymouth Congregational
Church becomes known as the Spiritualist Church. ** Mayor Hiram
Edgerton authorizes a museum in Edgerton Park. It will become
the Rochester Museum and Science Center (RMSC).
© 2002 David Minor / Eagles Byte