“Wall Street Explosion Kills 30, Injures 300” read the headlines of the New York Times. It sounds like it could have come from yesterday’s newspaper, but in fact was reporting an incident from 1920. It was a terrorist attack on American soil that to this day has remained unsolved, though police and historians have a probable group in mind that was responsible. It was the worst terror attack in American history to that point, the prior record being held by the Los Angeles Times bombing of 1910 that killed 21 people and wounded over 100 others.
On September 16th, 1920, a horse drawn wagon pulled up in the street across from the J.P. Morgan bank at 23 Wall Street. It was the busiest corner of the Financial District. The driver of the wagon made a hasty escape, and at 12:01 pm, during the lunch hour rush, 100 pounds of explosives were detonated by a timed fuse. The wagon was also filled with 500 pounds of small cast iron sash weights, which created a deadly hail of shrapnel. Thirty members of the public were killed immediately, with eight later passing due to the severity of their injuries. Over 300 people were injured with 146 of those suffering severe injuries. The majority of the people on the street when the bomb went off were young people employed as messengers, stenographers, clerks, and brokers.
The bomb was powerful enough to knock over a streetcar a block away and sent debris flying high enough to hit the 34th floor of the nearby Equitable Building. Among the dead was William Joyce who was the chief clerk of J.P. Morgan and had been seated by the front window. J.P. Morgan Jr.’s son Junius was one of the injured, and stockbroker Joseph P. Kennedy father of future President John F. Kennedy was lifted off his feet by the blast and knocked to the ground. The blast caused two million dollars damage (around 25 million today) and destroyed most of the interior spaces of the Morgan building. Within one minute of the blast trading on Wall street was halted by William H. Remick, president of the New York Stock Exchange, to prevent panic.
Police were on the scene immediately and along with countless volunteers performed first aid, commandeering any working vehicles in the area to transport the wounded to hospital. Many World War 1 veterans were on the scene and later said it was as bad as the battlefield scenes they had seen in Europe.
Police began investigating immediately as soon as the wounded were removed from the scene, unfortunately so did cleaning crews. It is unknown how much evidence was swept up and hauled away by those eager to see Wall Street return to “normal” as soon as possible. By the next morning, the scene was mostly cleaned up. The NYPD was able to reconstruct the bomb and fuse from bits they had found in the street, but recollections of the driver and wagon were vague. It had been the lunch rush after all, and wagons and drivers were a dime a dozen.
When no person or group claimed responsibility for the bombing, they began to look at possible motives. The most obvious was an attempt on the life of J.P. Morgan Jr. His bank had been accused of profiteering during World War 1, however he was in Europe on the day of the attack so that seemed unlikely.
The next possible suspect was Edwin Fischer, a very accomplished tennis player at the time winning four mixed tennis championships at U.S. National Championships and reaching the finals in the men’s singles competitions. He had sent out postcards to friends warning them to leave the area before September 16th. He was taken into custody in Hamilton, Ontario, and delivered to New York. During questioning he told police he had received the information “through the air from God” and upon further investigation found out he regularly sent out such warnings to people, it just happened this time he was right. He was later committed to the Amityville Asylum, and was diagnosed as “insane but harmless”.
A final possible target for the bombing, was an attempt to rob the adjacent Sub-Treasury building. It just so happened they were moving $900 million worth of gold bars that day. But nothing came of that theory either.
Without a direct target, the police ruled the bombing an act of general terrorism, meant to create general fear and havoc in the financial sector of New York. The most promising lead came when a letter carrier found a stack of flyers in the area just prior to the bombing from a group calling itself the “American Anarchist Fighters”. They were extremely similar to other flyers involved in two much smaller bombings the previous year that had been carried out by Italian Anarchists known as “Galleanists” for their leader Luigi Galleani. The most likely suspect for the New York attack was Galleanist Mario Buda who, it is believed planned and carried out the attack as revenge for two of his associates being convicted of murder in a robbery gone wrong. He was in New York on the 16th but immediately fled to Italy after the bombing and remained there until his death. No charges were ever laid due to a lack of evidence against him.
The Morgan building still bears the scars of the bombing to this day, some are fist deep holes in the marble. It was the deadliest terrorist attack in New York City until the September 11th attacks in 2001. The investigation was dropped in 1940 and the case remains unsolved.
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