1.7 - Worst Blizzard Since ‘88
Manhattan Freezes Soon After Astaires Arrive
Even though the Astaires had come from Nebraska, where winters could be bitterly cold, Manhattan’s winter in January 1905 was extraordinarily frigid. More than half of the days in January 1905 had highs well below freezing, and nine days included measurable snowfall. On January 5, the New York Tribune’s front page proclaimed that a 9-inch snowfall with 50-knot winds was the “worst blizzard of the 20th century” (just five years into the century at this point). But in three weeks, the city was facing the “worst blizzard since ‘88” (NY Tribune 26 January 1905:1). In both blizzards, the newspapers were filled with reports of horses slipping and falling on treacherous asphalt, brewery wagons becoming stuck as horses fell on the street tracks, and trolley cars languishing as the slits in the rails were filled with ice. On Fifth Avenue from 24th to 40th streets, merchants brought out cinders and ashes to scatter on the streets and sidewalks to give both horses and pedestrians better footing. The staff at the Waldorf-Astoria brought out barrels of cinders and broadcast them on the streets (NY Tribune 4 January 1905:1).
In both major storms, coal, food and milk supplies ran short, and the dead remained unburied in the city’s cemeteries, as the winds drove snow into excavated graves as fast as they were opened. Stubborn fires blazed throughout Manhattan, including stables between 70th and 71st streets near Avenue A (today named York Avenue), where 54 horses were burned to death (NY Tribune 5 January 1905:2). Among the other big blazes were the Borne-Scrymser Company on South Street and the Clyde Steamship offices on Pier 36 on the North (Hudson) River.
During a sleet storm on the afternoon of January 3, the first car on the Third Avenue El caught fire after a loosened shoe formed a short circuit (NY Tribune 4 January 1905:2). In the blizzard at the end of the month on January 25, the Sixth and Eighth avenue surface lines were closed as the snowplows were repeatedly impeded by stalled trucks. Snow filled in the conduits that held the wire providing electric power. The wind drove the fine, dry snow through the slots and then drifted and entirely filled them. Snow melting on the surface would then run into the drifts between the slots and freeze into a solid mass of ice. Cases were reported of five carloads of snow being removed from the streetcar slots in a single block (NY Tribune 30 January 1905:12). Both long distance and suburban commuter trains were delayed for hours or completely shut down, which led to Broadway hotels from 28th to 42ndstreet being overwhelmed with guests and cots being placed in the corridors of numerous hotels (NY Tribune 26 January 1905:2).
At the Flatiron Building, long noted for its extraordinary wind-tunnel effects, the gale force winds kept pedestrians sliding down the icy streets. The winds kept the Fifth Avenue side of the building free of snow but still slippery, while on the Broadway side the snow drifted as high as six feet (NY Tribune 26 January 1905:2).
Perhaps the only enterprises benefiting from the snowstorm were the city’s elevated trains and the new subway system, which had first opened just three months before on October 27, 1904. During the snowstorm, crowds gathered at the uptown stations in such numbers that policemen had to be stationed to prevent the crush from pushing people onto the tracks. At the South Ferry elevated railroad terminal, windows in both the railway cars and the terminal partitions were broken by the crowds. Passengers struggling to get onto the trains prevented others from exiting until they resorted to climbing out through the windows. In the early January storm, up to six cars were added to the Broadway express trains, which usually pulled only eight (Fischler 44). Vice President Bryan of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company issued a statement saying that on the day after the storm (Thursday, January 26) the elevated lines carried 835,000 passengers and the subway lines 411,000 (NY Tribune 28 January 1905:16).
One other business also increased – the graft and petty theft that always seemed to plague the city. Early in the month the Tribune reported the inconsistent enforcement of clauses in asphalt companies’ contracts that required them to sand slippery streets when ordered to do so by the Commissioner of Public Works (NY Tribune 6 January 1905:1). At the end of the month, patrolman Frank G. Fletcher was arrested for participating in a plan to swindle Bradley & Co., the contractors for snow removal. As snow was cleared from Manhattan’s street, it would be loaded into horse-drawn snow carts, which would then be driven to the East and North rivers for dumping. A ticket would be given to each driver when a load was dumped into the river, which could be redeemed for 331/2¢ at 154 E. 24th St. On January 28, Julius Bendt whose job was to deliver tickets to the dumping places, claimed that he had been robbed of 900 tickets. The next night Fletcher tried to sell the tickets worth $300 for $50 to an employee of Bradley & Co. (NY Tribune 30 January 1905:12). In the same issue of the Tribune, it was reported that William Bradley, the snow removal contractor, claimed to have been swindled out of nearly $10,000 by “panhandlers and tramps from the Hell’s Kitchen district, who have stolen shovels and picks to sell them at junk stores.”