Jan 1
Batavia's revised charter goes into effect, abolishing the office of mayor and replacing it with that of city administrator.

Jan 4
Temperatures in New York City rise to 66 degrees F, highest here for this date.

Feb 2
The Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge spanning the Hudson opens.

Feb 28
John Steinbeck begins writing The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights, in New York City.

Mar 28
Blues composer William Christopher Handy dies in New York City at the age of 84. ** A tenement fire on Rochester's Delevan Street kills seven people and injures 15.

Nov 27
Buffalo gets 27" of snow.

December
A five-foot by twenty -foot Bronx property along East 161st Street is sold to a service station. Part of the deal is a renewal holdover piece of property with a tiny house on it that had been in turns Dr. Lebish's dog and cat hospital, lunch counter, seafood stand, license bureau, and photography shop. The building is demolished.

City
The Seagram Building is completed, with an open plaza in front. Zoning laws are rewritten to encourage the construction of plazas surrounding new buildings. ** Developer Morton Pickman sells Queens' Oakland Golf Club to Marvin Krattner. ** Pace College begins awarding MBAs. ** Playwright Paul Zindel graduates from Staten Island's Wagner College. ** President Eisenhower lays the cornerstone for the headquarters of the National Council of Churches. ** The city proclaims Hobart and William Smith Colleges Day. The colleges' choral group Schola Cantorum performs at Town Hall. ** Brooklyn's Erie Basin is taken over by the Port Authority of New York. ** Pies 2 and 11 of Brooklyn's New York Dock Company are leased by the Port Authority to the Maersk Line. ** The Brooklyn Battery Tunnel under the East River is completed. The Brooklyn end is located between the Red Hook and Gowanus neighborhoods.

State
Batavia contractor Vito J. Gauteri adds an office for the city attorney and a new council chamber to the second floor of City Hall. ** Donald Woodward, third son of Genesee Pure Food Company founder Orator F. Woodward and his wife Cora, dies. ** Niagara University's Our Lady of the Angels Cemetery on the north side of campus is moved to St Joseph College in Princeton, New Jersey, to make room for theNiagara Power Project. ** The first Elizabeth Blackwell Award is presented to medical missionary Gwendolyn Grant Mellon to commemorate William Smith College's 50th anniversary. ** The Lehigh Railroad discontinues passenger service, including the Black Diamond Express between New York City and Buffalo. ** Canandaigua's Treadway Inn, on the site of the former Blosson House hotel, suffers over $20,000 worth of damages in a fire. ** Nelson A. Rockefeller is inaugurated as governor.

Jan 1
A fire on Rochester's St. Paul Street kills six people. ** Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute gym custodian Emil Page retires after 47 years of service.

Jan 22
Temperatures in New York City rise to 61 degrees F, highest here for the date.

Feb 15
Violinist Itzack Perlman, 14, preforms on the Ed Sullivan Show.

Feb 16
Tennis champion John McEnroe is born in New York City.

Mar 10
Tennessee Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth opens on Broadway.

Mar 24
New York City's last Cortlandt Street Ferry sails.

Mar 30
Rochester's Democrat and Chronicle joins the Times-Union in its building at Broad and Exchange streets. The building becomes known as the Gannett Newspaper Building.

May 11
The Lehigh Valley Railroad's Black Diamond passenger express makes its final run, just short of its 63rd birthday.

May 14
President Dwight D. Eisenhower turns the first shovelful of earth for the groundbreaking ceremonies of New York City's Lincoln Center of the Performing Arts. Earlier in the year the design work was turned over to architects Wallace K. Harrison, Max Abramovitz, Philip Johnson and Richard Foster. A concert is performed under a tent for 12,000 people.

May 26
The Castleton-on-Hudson Bridge across the river opens.

June
Rochester reaches a tentative agreement with private investors headed by Eugene Tanner of New York City to develop the Crossroads area.

Jun 26
U. S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower and Britain's Queen Elizabeth II officially dedicate the St. Lawrence Seaway.

Aug 30
Self-styled "Cape Man" Salvador Agron stabs two teenagers to death in New York City. (New Paul Simon musical based on this incident.)

Oct 19
George Abbott's musical Fiorello! opens for tryouts in New Haven, Connecticut's Schubert Theatre.

Oct 27
Fiorello! begins out of town previews in Philadelphia's Erlanger Theatre.

Nov 23
Fiorello! opens at Broadway's Broadhurst Theatre.

City
Innerwyck (the Brazier House) in Flushing, Long Island, is demolished for a housing development. ** The Jewish Museum installs a sculpture garden. ** Retired trumpeter Louis Bacon makes occasional appearances at Ryan's. ** Skidmore, Owings and Merrill's Nichols Hall of New York University's Graduate School of Business Administration at 100 Trinity Place is completed. ** The state legislature extends the celebration of Rally Day, commemorating the Sunday school movement, to Queens. It will become known as Brooklyn- Queens Day. ** Pier 1 of Brooklyn's New York Dock Company is dedicated, replacing piers 3, 4, 5, and 6. ** Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein III open their final collaboration, The Sound Of Music, starring Mary Martin and Theodore Bikel. ** Brooklyn's Jay Street Connecting Railway line to the terminal district is abandoned.

State
Anita M. Smith's Woodstock, History and Hearsay is published. ** The Champlain Canal terminal building at Whitehall is converted into the Skenesborough Museum. ** The contracting firm of Rumsey and Petronio rebuilds and enlarges the first-floor tax offices of Batavia's City Hall. ** The approximate date Matt Pelcynski begins publishing Cheektowaga's weekly newspaper Am-Pol Eagle to serve the local Polish community. ** A surgical center is added to Canandaigua's F. F. Thompson Hospital. It now has 142 beds and a staff of 200. ** Alphonse D'Amato graduates from the Syracuse University School of Business Administration.

Rochester
The Wegmans grocery chain buys its first truck trailer. It begins using a sunburst logo. ** The city launches a study of the Crossroads area. ** An east wing is added to the Genesee Hospital complex.

February
Dr. James R. Powell, caught in a New York City traffic jam, conceives the principle of magnetic levitation (maglev) as a propulsion force.

Feb 11
Temperatures in New York City rise to 65 degrees F, highest here for this date.

Mar 26
Temperatures in New York City drop to 20 degrees F, lowest here for this date.

May 3
The Off-Broadway hit musical The Fantasticks opens in Greenwich Village.

May 16
The Hudson River sloop Clearwater launched in South Bristol, Maine.

Jun 16
The lower section of New York's George Washington Bridge is completed. ** Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho opens, in New York City.

Jul 9
The young Woodword brother and sister, along with Jim Honeycutt, are swept toward Niagara Falls. Honeycutt is killed. The sister is grabbed by tourists. The brother becomes the only person to go over the falls unprotected and survive.

Jul 15
Operatic baritone Lawrence Tibbett dies in New York City at the age of 73.

Aug 23
Broadway lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II dies at the age of 65.

Oct 12
An angry Khrushchev pounds on the podium with his shoe at the United Nations.

Nov 7
5,000 members of New York City's Local 1199 of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) walk off the job.

Nov 8
The teachers return to work, having been promised a collective bargaining agreement.

Dec 18
Temperatures in New York City plunge to 1 degree below zero F, coldest here for this date.

City
Gordon Bunshaft's Pepsi Cola Building is completed. ** Retired trumpeter Louis Rich makes occasional appearances with Garvin Bushnell's orchestra. ** Manhattan borough president Hulan E Jack resigns his office after being indicted for receiving anillegal gift. ** Food market chain co-founder Pasquale (Patsy) D'Agostino dies. ** Retired Foote, Cone & Belding founder, and current executive vice president of McCann-Erickson, Emerson Foote is named president. ** Sculptor William Zorach resigns from teaching at the Art Students League in New York City and holds a one- man show there. ** Richard Eells leaves General Electric to become an adjunct professor at Columbia University's business school. ** William Eaton joins Hardy, Peal , Rawlings, Werner & Maxwell. ** The Brooklyn Dodgers trade outfielder Sandy Amoros to the Detroit Tigers. ** An angry Khrushchev pounds on the United Nations podium with his shoe.

State
The Shaker Ministry sells the settlement at Hancock to a non-profit group wanting to preserve contributions of the Shakers. ** Mr. and Mrs. Beverly Chew donate their Geneva home to the Geneva Historical Society. ** Ellenville's Sun-Ray spring water company closes. ** The State University of New York (SUNY) system converts teachers colleges to Colleges of Arts and Sciences. ** Judge Irving Kaufman presides over the trial of underworld figures arrested while meeting at Apalachin, New York. The defendants are convicted but the ruling is later overturned. ** The Historical Society of the Tonawandas, Inc. is formed. ** Canandaigua's Treadway Inn is repaired and renamed the Canandaigua Hotel. ** Irene Neu's biography Erastus Corning, Merchant and Financier: 1794-1872 is published by Cornell University Press.

Rochester
The Rochester Transit Corporation (RTC) begins buying "New Look" buses from the General Motors Corporation.

Italy
Calabria tailor Angelo (Joe) Amore emigrates to the U. S. He will one day have Albany mayor Erastus Corning 2nd as a client.

Switzerland
Jean Tinguely debuts his self-destructing sculpture Homage to New York.


© 2002 David Minor / Eagles Byte

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