9/11 was not the first terrorist attack in NY
By
Thomas Michalski
The terrorist attacks in
New York City and Washington has left citizens incredulous, wary, and
anticipating additional attacks by a somewhat invisible force.
But the Sept. 11th
attack in Manhattan was not the first of its kind. On Sept. 16, 1920 hundreds of
Wall St. workers were injured and 38 died in a terrorist attack that to this day
is unsolved.
It was a partly cloudy day
in New York City that fateful day. A subway strike in Brooklyn was finally
settled and passengers were again using the city’s 600 miles of tracks that
connected Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens.
Only a decade before it was
estimated that 128,000 horses pulled delivery, work and other wagons throughout
the city. They outnumbered motor vehicles by a hundred to one, but by 1920
800,000 cars and trucks clogged the city’s streets. That was welcomed because
horses, despite their popularity, caused disease and critical sanitation
problems. Their corpses were left in the streets to decay and spread
sometimes-fatal disease. Workers each day collected tons of manure.
More than three million
people on that September morning converged on lower Manhattans to work in
factories, warehouses, department stores and office buildings. Many of them
worked in the financial district, even then the hub of international business.
The name Wall St. resulted because a giant wall, constructed in the 1700s to
ward off Indian and other attacks, crossed the entire lower part of the island.
It was removed in the following century and the land where it stood forever
would be known as Wall St.
Prices at the New York
Stock Exchange were rising slowly all that fateful morning. In front of the
House of Morgan, a well-known banking institution in its day, a man parked a
horse-drawn wagon. It was covered with tarp and the driver melted into the
noontime crowds. What no one could know was that the wagon was loaded with
dynamite, iron window sash weights and other scrap metal.
There was no warning when
the explosion erupted into a blinding flash and a deafening roar that ricocheted
through the steel and concrete canyons of the financial district, just a few
blocks from where the World Trade Center would be constructed 50 years in the
future.
The explosion shattered
windows for a half-mile in every direction. The deadly shrapnel struck
pedestrians, killing 38 of them and injuring hundreds of others. Mangled bodies,
and parts of them, lay in the streets. The wreckage of twisted steel, broken
glass and other destruction could be seen in the smoking debris.
The wagon that held the
powerful explosives vaporized, along with the horse whose hoofs were found
blocks away near the famous Trinity Church. Besides those killed and injured in
the streets, several others died in the bank itself. The culprit, an early day
terrorist, was never found. No messages were sent to authorities or the
newspapers of the day. It was theorized that Bolshevik groups and other radicals
caused the attack, but no evidence was found and no arrests were ever made.
The building still exists
today. The scars gouged into the limestone facade remain as a reminder of that
terrible tragedy.
New Yorkers then, as they
would 80 years later when the then non-existent World Trade Center would be
targeted, joined hands to bring the stricken city back to its feet. Flags were
flown at half-mast and mourners visited the site where so many lives were
snuffed out or changed forever. Funerals were attended while others suffered
with their wounds.
It’s ironic that the attack
of Sept. 16, 1920 was almost 81 years to the date of the World Trade Center
tragedy, and only a stone’s throw away from where the twin towers once stood.
The author, a former New York
City area journalist, lives in St. Petersburg.
BACK to
Serious Written Sidebars
Back to Coping with the 9.11.01
Aftermath
HOME
Coping.org:
Tools for Coping
with Life's
Stressors
Coping.org
is a Public Service of James J. Messina, Ph.D. & Constance M. Messina, Ph.D.,
Email: