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| Re: Landmarking of 45-47 Park Place denied (646224) | |||
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Re: Landmarking of 45-47 Park Place denied |
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Posted by SelkirkTMO on Thu Aug 5 22:14:19 2010, in response to Re: Landmarking of 45-47 Park Place denied, posted by GP38/R42 Chris on Thu Aug 5 22:01:59 2010. NY TIMES EXCERPT:Terror in the Age of Eisenhower; Recalling the Mad Bomber, Whose Rampage Shook New York By CHARLES DELAFUENTE Published: September 10, 2004 Photos: Police officers put a container holding a bomb into a protected van at Grand Central Terminal in 1956. Right, pieces of letters to the police from the Mad Bomber. (Photo by New York Police Department); (Photo by Neal Boenzi/The New York Times)(pg. B1); George P. Metesky, 53, at the jail in Waterbury, Conn., shortly after his arrest in January 1957. He was later brought to New York for trial. (Photo by Edward Hausner/The New York Times)(pg. B6) There was a bomber on the loose in New York City. On the evening of Dec. 2, 1956, 1,500 people were at the Brooklyn Paramount Theater watching ''War and Peace'' when a pipe bomb beneath a seat exploded at 7:50 p.m. Six people were injured, including Abraham Blumenthal, who was lifted out of his seat by the blast. The next day, Police Commissioner Stephen P. Kennedy ordered what he called the ''greatest manhunt in the history of the Police Department.'' At the time of that bombing, the police had been searching for the man known as the Mad Bomber for years. He first struck in the city in 1940 and 1941, planting two bombs that did not explode. He resurfaced in 1951, planting 22 bombs that did explode and several more that did not. It is one thing to live under a cloud of fear -- the Soviet Union's nuclear warheads threatened Eisenhower-era New Yorkers, and Al Qaeda's suicidal warriors threaten Bush-era New Yorkers. But it is another thing altogether when lightning strikes again and again. As new Qaeda plans to attack specific buildings in New York surfaced last month, some veteran New Yorkers were reminded of the days when the city cowered before the Mad Bomber. Carl J. Pelleck, a reporter who covered the Police Department for The New York Post, said the Mad Bomber ''scared the hell out of people.'' ''He had the city jumping,'' Mr. Pelleck said. ''When the Police Department can't do anything about it, the public always gets scared.'' Bombs were left in crowded public places: train, bus and subway stations, Macy's, movie theaters, office buildings and the New York Public Library. The fact that a place had been bombed before was no assurance that it was subsequently safe. Grand Central Terminal was the site of five bombs; there were three at Pennsylvania Station; two were planted at the Port Authority Bus Terminal; and two at Radio City Music Hall. Fifteen people were injured by the bombs. Though no one was killed, the city's nerves were rubbed raw. ''There was a lot of fear, especially in the subways,'' recalled Arthur Gelb, a former managing editor of The New York Times. ''People thought twice before taking the subway,'' said Mr. Gelb, who was a Times reporter during the series of attacks. ''Many people took buses because they felt the subways were where he would attack.'' There were notes with some bombs, but they did not explain the motives or locations. ''The Mad Bomber never gave a reason,'' Mr. Gelb said. ''That's what made it so scary.'' There have been other bombers in New York, both before and after the Mad Bomber. German saboteurs struck in 1916, during World War I, and attackers believed to be Bolsheviks planted a bomb on Wall Street in 1920. Another serial attacker, known as the Sunday Bomber, left bombs in a subway car, a subway station, the Staten Island Ferry and public buildings in late 1960, killing one person. That bomber was never caught. Members of the Weather Underground, a radical group, committed at least a dozen bombings in New York in 1969 and 1970 to protest the war in Vietnam. The only fatalities were three of the radicals, who were killed when a townhouse in the Village, described by the police as a bomb factory, exploded. And in 1974, the Armed Forces of National Liberation, better known as F.A.L.N., the initials of its Spanish name, began a decade-long bombing campaign in New York that killed five people. But no one person left as many bombs around the city as the Mad Bomber did. Even while the bombs were being discovered, ''there was the feeling that this was the work of one man, not a conspiratorial group,'' said Thomas A. Reppetto, president of the Citizens Crime Commission and author of ''NYPD: A City and Its Police'' (Henry Holt & Company, 2000). There was no discernible rhyme or reason behind the Mad Bomber's targets, and the unusual handwriting on the notes suggested the work of a single man and not a plot. Mr. Reppetto said the public figured that the odds of being a victim ''of one lone individual'' were slim. |
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