1.8 - Fast Cars Fill Manhattan in 1905
And Their Stories Fill the Newspapers, Too
Within less than a decade of the New York Herald’s relocation to Herald Square, the area’s traffic was leading to dramatic proposals for relieving congestion. The Bureau of Highways was releasing plans to send Broadway’s street cars under 34th Street through a tunnel. A similar proposal was revealed for lowering 42nd Street so it could pass under Fifth Avenue ("New York's Street Traffic Problem"). The young Fred Astaire’s impressions of busy-ness and speed were reflected in the pages of the New York Tribune in January 1905. More than a dozen articles, several on the front pages, highlighted auto accidents and egregious speeding, many connected to the Automobile Show that ran for a week at Madison Square Garden. On January 2, a speeding chauffeured automobile carrying six people hit an electric streetcar at 88th St and Avenue A and knocked it from the track. The auto caught fire and exploded (NY Tribune 3 January 1905:16).
Nor was it just automobiles— on January 3 a runaway coach and team of two horses ran wildly down Broadway from Central Park West and 64th to 38th Street, where Officer John Fleming grabbed one horse’s bridle, missed and fell but jumped and clutched the coach’s rear spring and was then dragged three blocks, until one of the horses stumbled. Fleming seized the other horse’s bridle and at 34th Street, just a block from where the Astaires would be staying, swerved the horses against a pillar of the Sixth Avenue El and threw the animals to the ground (NY Tribune 3 January 1905:16).
Six days later police were chasing a speeding automobile down the same section of Broadway, from 59th to 39th Street, and arresting four people (NY Tribune 9 January 1905:12). Five days later there were reports of scores of policemen pursuing speeders down Broadway and Seventh Avenue and making a half dozen arrests. (NY Tribune 14 January 1905:3) On January 17 the Tribune’s front page featured two stories about automobiles being chased down Broadway, crashing with a pursuing policeman at Columbus Circle and striking a horse attached to a cab at 53rdStreet. Another story told of an automobile cutting in ahead of a Sixth Avenue trolley car, which hit the auto, jamming it against a pillar and overturning the auto. Two days later the front page featured three stories about autos racing up Madison Avenue, up Broadway from Times Square to 59th Street, and another on Lexington Avenue endangering school children. A final story told of English actor Sir Charles Wyndham being hit by a car at Columbus Circle, fracturing his arm and preventing him from appearing in Mrs. Gorringe’s Necklace at the Lyceum.
SOURCES
"New York's Street Traffic Problem." New York Herald 30 August 1903: 11.