African American Aviator Hubert Julian, taken during his time as head of Emperor Haile Selassie’s Air Force
By Mary Hoar, City of Yonkers Historian, President Emeritus Yonkers Historical Society, recipient of the 2004 Key to History, Yonkers Landmarks Preservation Board Member, Revolutionary Yonkers 250 Chair and President Untermyer Performing Arts Council
Monday, March 31st
March 31, 1889: The Eiffel Tower opened, equipped with Otis elevators manufactured in Yonkers! France wanted French manufactured elevators in the entrance to their 1889 World’s Fair, but Otis was the only company in the world that could do the job.
March 31, 1933: After calling the Yonkers Corporation Counsel’s office “one of the most expensive luxuries” at City Hall, the Crestwood Citizens’ Association began investigating its cost. J. W. Martin of the Association’s Tax and Budget Committee later reported the legal department had cost $72,974 in 1932.
Tuesday April 1st:
April 1, 1680: Governor Edmund Andros gave a royal patent to Frederick Philipse, providing annual rent of one bushel of winter wheat to be paid to the Duke of York.
April 1, 1911: Workers began restoring the exterior of Manor Hall, to restore the Hall to its original pre-Revolutionary appearance. Work on the inside would not begin until the City Clerk’s office was moved to the new City Hall.
April 1, 1933: The Appellate Division ruled against Yonkers in the Nepperhan Avenue “dump suit.” The decision awarded former Children’s Court Judge Benjamin Moore, former City Treasurer Frederick Breithack and contractor George T. Kelly $45,000 for damages caused by Yonkers’ illegal dumping on their land.
Wednesday, April 2nd
April 2, 1943: After spotting a nine-year old girl fall into the Nepperhan Creek near the Ben Franklin dock, Yonkers Police Matron Mary Bachtler jumped in and saved her.
April 2, 1943: Tests to qualify college students and high school seniors for Army and Navy officer training programs were given at Saunders Trades School. Training would be carried on at colleges while the men were in uniform, on active duty and receiving pay. The test takers were civilians between seventeen and twenty, either had a high school diploma or would graduate by July 1st.
Thursday, April 3rd
April 3, 1919: Yonkers War Camp Community Service, the Ellery Players and the Warburton Theater hosted wounded and gassed veterans from the Evacuation Hospital in East View for a performance of “Charlie’s Aunt,” a story of love, intrigue and the US Secret Service.
April 3, 1939: A NYC gunman, after failing to surrender to an “army of police” using tear gas and machine guns, yielded to the words of a Yonkers trained priest!
Fr. Francis Quinn, a 1928 graduate of St. Joseph’s Seminary and College, managed to persuade Joseph Naumo to release Merton Nicholas and his wife, an elderly couple he was holding hostage at gunpoint in their West 22nd Street apartment. After talking to Naumo for an hour, Fr. Quinn convinced him to listen to his heart… and guaranteed he wouldn’t be killed if he left the building. Police had fired more than 40 shots at Naumo before he took refuge with the couple.
Friday, April 4th
April 4, 1934: Cora Porter, a Director of Yonkers SPCA, rescued a pheasant in Getty Square! She spotted it wandering on North Broadway after 9:00 pm, looking at windows; it then tried to cross the street. The bird was so scared by the cars, it tried to fly but couldn’t. When it finally reached the front of Singer Sewing Machine Company, it fell to the ground; with the assistance of a passerby, she was able to capture the bird. She brought it to the SPCA shelter at the Police Stable and placed an ad in the Herald Statesman to find its owner. Porter said “Accommodations suited the pheasant very well.”
April 4, 1947: Newspaper columnist and author Charles Driscoll of Glenbrook Avenue published his latest book, Country Jake, the story of his life growing up on a farm in Kansas. Driscoll was the writer of “New York Day by Day” newspaper column for the McNaught Syndicate, succeeding the late O. O. McIntyre. He began his journalism career in Kansas, rising to Editor of the Wichita Eagle, but was forced out of that position by the Ku Klux Klan.
Saturday, April 5th
April 5, 1934: An ad ran in The Herald Statesman: “Pheasant—Found. Getty Square, Wednesday evening. Owner, Phone YOn.xxxx-J”. Now called Herbert, he was happy in the shelter.
April 5, 1946: The Yonkers Communist Party held a rally at the Polish Community Center to support justice for the Freeport Case. A Freeport L.I. Officer, Joseph Romeika, shot three African American veterans and brothers. Brothers Charles and Alfonso Ferguson died from their injuries; their brother Joseph was wounded. Congressman Adam Clayton Powell spoke at the rally, as did supporters from the American Labor Party, International Workers’ Order, Samuel H. Dow Post, and other Yonkers residents.
Sunday, April 6th
April 6, 1928: A three-continent flight with a transatlantic leg was planned by Black aviators Hubert Julian and Herbert Wilkie; to support them, Alvin Martine of North Broadway gave one of his planes and pledged to share the cost with the famous 369th Regiment, the Harlem Hellfighters. The plane, named “The 369th Rattlesnake,” had regimental numerals and a rattlesnake on each side of the plane. Unfortunately, the flight never happened.
Julian served in the Royal Canadian Air Force; when the US entered the war, he joined the American Expeditionary Force. He later headed Emperor Haile Selassie’s Air Force.
April 6, 1934: Although Herbert, the well-mannered pheasant deemed tame, friendly to strangers and happy in his downtown Yonkers pad, SPCA Agent Butler ruled he had to go back to nature. Yonkers Game Warden John Canepi was tasked with taking Herbert from his comfortable Yonkers flat to the wilds of Pleasantville.
And Herbert never did say why he dropped by Getty Square!
Questions or comments on this column? 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.
