Henrietta Wells Livermore, New York Stated Suffrage Leader and founder of the Women’s National Republican Club in 1921
By Mary Hoar, City of Yonkers Historian, President Emerita Yonkers Historical Society, recipient of the 2004 Key to History, Member of the Yonkers Landmarks Preservation Board, and President Untermyer Performing Arts Council
Monday, August 21st
August 21, 1919: The latest American submarine, the USS R-2, visited Yonkers as part of a recruitment drive! Built by the Electric Boat Company of Massachusetts, it was the only type of vessel able to approach an enemy submarine on the surface undetected in clear weather.
August 21, 1920: George Buck, the Actuary hired by Mayor Wallin to study the Yonkers Police and Firemen’s Pension Funds, found they were unsound. He reported they could not be continued for long with Yonkers contributing at the level as it was. He recommended the city appropriate $800,000 over several years to meet future liabilities.
Tuesday, August 22nd
August 22, 1952: Consolidated Edison Company took possession of the sixty-five-foot tug “Alice Murray” and paid to have it raised from 20 feet of water off the Glenwood generating station. A victim of Hudson River ice floes, the Murray’s hull split in half near the Habirshaw Dock; it managed to get to the Glenwood dock, only to sink an hour later. It lay in the Hudson for several months, only showing its mast above water. Owned by the Neptune Line, the company had salvage specialists examine it; the experts declared the tug machinery was too damaged, and it was a loss. Neptune abandoned it, putting it in the hands of the Army Corps of Engineers. After a few months, the Army Corps decreed it could be claimed by anyone who wanted to pay to raise it. Con Ed’s engineers believed it was a hazard, potentially blocking the power plant’s intake; they raised the tug and put it on the plant’s south dock for repairs.
Wednesday, August 23rd
August 23, 1911: Steamboats in the Hudson and Yonkers factories stopped operation to welcome daring aviator and cross-country pilot Harry Atwood, flying over Yonkers at an altitude of 500 feet. Atwood, on the last lap of his flight from St. Louis to New York City, was welcomed to Yonkers air space by both factories and steamboats blowing their whistles.
August 23, 1958: Yonkers learned YPD was still investigating the unsolved murder of labor leader John Acropolis six years earlier. Police disclosed the murder weapon was a revolver stolen from the US Navy in New Jersey a few days before the murder. The gun was found long after the crime; the killer had tossed it into a 10-foot hedge on the property. A few years later, the building super tore down the hedge and burned its thick branches in a bonfire; the gun was found in the ashes.
Although faced with “flimsy clues and faded data,” the Acropolis’ killing remained in the “Active File;” Yonkers Police were not willing to admit it would become one of Yonkers few unsolved murders.
Thursday, August 24th
August 24, 1925: Park Avenue’s Henrietta Livermore was Guest of Honor at a NYC luncheon celebrating the fifth anniversary of the women’s suffrage amendment.
August 24, 1933: Thomas Beer released his new collection of short stories called, “Mrs. Egg and Other Barbarians,” published by Alfred Knopf of New York. Six of these stories, called by Beer “frivolous tales,” previously appeared in The Saturday Evening Post between 1922 and 1930. Best known for his biographies of Stephen Crane and Mark Hanna, he also published three novels and was considered Yonkers leading author. Beer, who grew up in Yonkers at 227 Palisade Avenue, “wintered” in Yonkers and spent summers on Nantucket as an adult.
Friday, August 25th
August 25, 1923: Henrietta Livermore of Park Avenue, Deputy Commissioner General to the Brazilian Centennial Exposition, presented a paper on “Outstanding Problems of the American Continent” at the Institute of Politics at Williamstown Massachusetts.
August 25, 1948: Former Army nurse Angela Flanagan of 100 North Broadway answered the call of the Yonkers Red Cross to minister in polio-stricken areas. She flew to North Carolina to care for polio patients in the town of Gastonia, an area suffering from a bad polio epidemic.
Saturday, August 26th
August 26, 1933: Chairman of the National Lawn Tennis Umpire’s Association Ben Dwight, a former Yonkers Recreation Commissioner, officiated at what arguably is the most controversial game in Women’s Tennis history. Queen of American Tennis and 1924 double Olympic Gold Medal winner Helen Wills Moody, who had lost only one tennis game in eight years, walked off the court when it became evident Helen Jacobs was going to win. Moody claimed her leg was bothering her, so Jacobs won by default. Later that day, Moody wanted to play in the doubles finals but was talked out of it.
Sunday, August 27th
August 27, 1948: Yonkers officially welcomed gold medalists Steve Macknowski and Steve Lysak home and celebrated the first American team to win an Olympic canoe race!
The “Welcome Home” parade featured the handmade canoe the two built to win the Olympic championship. As the two Steves, dressed in official US Olympic uniforms, went up a South Broadway lined with thousands of cheering people, a large spotlight shone from the Proctor Building, highlighting the partners. Some former Yonkers Olympians—Harry Babcock, Alan Helfrich, Thomas Morrissey, Jim O’Rourke, Michael Spring, and Al Tripoli– served as honor guard to the medal winners. Lysak thanked the crowd, saying, “… no one could ask for more than the way we’ve been welcomed!” Mayor Frank welcomed the pair home and presented scrolls at the Larkin Plaza ceremonies. The mayor told the two men Yonkers was proud of them, and told the thousands gathered “Membership on the Olympic team means the Steves are the best in the United States and the best in the world!”!
Questions or comments? Email YonkersHistory1646@gmail.com. For information on the Yonkers Historical Society, Sherwood House and upcoming events, please visit our website www.yonkershistoricalsociety.org, call 914-961-8940 or email info@yonkershistoricalsociety.org
