The Wall Street Bombing

FIRST OF TWO POSTS ON THE DEADLY ATTACK. SEE SEPTEMBER 17 FOR MORE.

One hundred years ago today … at one minute after noon, a bomb exploded on Wall Street at the intersection where Nassau Street becomes Broad Street. Thirty-five people were killed in the blast (Ellis, 516).

According to Edward Robb Ellis:

Up Wall Street from the east came a brown wagon covered with canvas. Drawn by an old dark-bay horse, it stopped at Wall and Nassau streets. Th edriver tossed his reins across the horse’s back, jumped to the pavement, and walked away. As the twelfth bong of the Trinity [Trinity Church] clock reverberated through the autumn air, horse and wagon vanished in a tremendous explosion. (516)

Eric Burns calls the Wall Street bombing the “most destructive” terrorist strike on the US until the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Buiding by Timothy McVeigh in 1995.

References/further reading:

Burns, Eric. 1920: The Year that Made the Decade Roar. New York: Pegasus Books, 2015.

Ellis, Edward Robb. The Epic of New York City. New York: Basic Books, 1966.

WRITTEN BY JONATHAN GOLDMAN, SEPTEMBER 16, 2020.

TAGS: terrorism, Wall Street, explosions