Halley's Last Visit (1986 Gusto cover story)

There’s a comet in the sky again this summer, which summons up thoughts of that superstar of cosmic travelers, Halley’s Comet. When it last streaked past us, I wrote a story about it for the Jan. 17, 1986, cover of Gusto. So climb into the time machine, fasten your seat belt and get ready for a long, long ride. We’re going back to Buffalo’s previous encounter with it in 1910.

        HALLEY’S LAST VISIT

        Buffalo held its breath and there was panic abroad

        When Halley’s Comet paid its last call in 1910.

THE LAST TIME Buffalo got a glimpse of Halley’s Comet – in 1910 – it was a bustling city full of confidence in its role as a major lake port and railway center. “Buffalo Means Business,” The Buffalo Evening News trumpeted from a banner in the upper left corner of the front page of its four afternoon editions. Indeed, it was earthly business, rather than heavenly happenings, that preoccupied our civic forebears as the celestial visitor approached that spring.

        Proof of the city’s pre-eminence was expected to be confirmed in the 1910 census. Population was approaching 425,000, and The News exhorted its readers to “let every man, woman and child belonging to Buffalo see that the census man gets his name. We must beat Detroit if it is merely by a few noses. Or even by a nose.”

        An auspicious omen of Buffalo’s bright future that season was the merger of the city’s two rival business groups, the Chamber of Commerce and the Manufacturers Club. To celebrate this marriage of interests, they threw the biggest banquet the town had ever seen. There would be 1,065 guests April 30 in the Convention Hall at Elmwood Avenue and Virginia Street and the featured speaker would be none other than the president of the United States, William Howard Taft.

        “The banquet tonight,” the Buffalo Morning Express noted that day, “will be Buffalo’s first step toward a position of industrial importance second to no other city in the Union.”

        It marked the first time a president had visited here since President McKinley’s assassination nine years earlier at the Pan American Exposition and the subsequent swearing-in of Theodore Roosevelt in the home of prominent attorney Ansley Wilcox on Delaware Avenue. The Express headlined it: “A Red Letter Day.”

         Taft, on a nine-city tour with Secretary of State (Philander C.) Knox, arrived early that morning at the Exchange Street rail station in his private railway car, the Olympia, and was taken by automobile to the Wilcox residence. He met reporters there and talked about his nomination of his 1908 Democratic opponent, New York Gov. Charles E. Hughes, to the Supreme Court. He also reiterated his arguments in favor of establishing a federal tax on incomes.

        Hailed and applauded, Taft made stops at the University Club for lunch, then at the Buffalo Club and the Gratwick Cancer Laboratory on High Street before taking a brief auto tour of the town and attending the banquet. Sharing the stage with him, along with dozens of business leaders, was an enormous white buffalo which, a reporter noted, was a “veteran of the successful industrial exposition.”

        Taft was constantly on the move. Before May was over, he’d already used up his annual travel allotment of $25,000 and told Congress he’d pay his own way if it wouldn’t give him more. Upstaging him, however, was Teddy Roosevelt, who generated headlines daily all spring with a triumphal tour of the capitals of Europe.

        Dominating the front pages along with Taft and Roosevelt were a variety of other concerns – the eruption of Mount Etna, a civil war in Nicaragua, a killer earthquake in Costa Rica, attacks on foreigners in China, the expulsion of Jews from their homes in Czarist Russia, the excavation of the Panama Canal, Interior Secretary Richard Ballinger’s feisty denials of Congressional charges that he gave away Alaskan timber and mineral rights, the cracking of a white-slavery ring in New York City and the lynching of Blacks in the South.

        When Buffalonians contemplated the skies in 1910, it wasn’t so much to search for Halley’s Comet, but to admire the feats of pioneer aviators, which grew more sensational every week. The end of April saw a French aviator win $50,000 for flying from London to Manchester, England. Not many days later, another Frenchman flew across the English Channel. The Wright Brothers were so confident of their machines that they took their 85-year-old father up in one. Then came American Glenn Curtiss, who captured a $10,000 prize for flying from Albany to New York City.

        After that, there came a spate of offers to daredevils, including $20,000 for a flight from New York to Washington, D.C., and $30,000 for a flight from St. Louis to New York. Wilbur Wright speculated that there was no reason why transoceanic flight shouldn’t be

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possible “with sufficient gasoline capacity.” In June, another aviator, Charles K. Hamilton, proposed that airplanes might even be used to drop bombs in wartime.

       

CLOSER TO HOME, our ancestors were distracted by the perennial push-and-pull of state and local politics. Gov. Hughes struggled mightily to get lawmakers in Albany to approve direct voting in state primaries and finally wound up calling them back for an extra session in June.

        When they weren’t debating that and the proposed constitutional amendment on women’s suffrage, they found time to pass a law restricting the number of saloons to one per 750 people (in Buffalo, the ratio was one per 250) and cutting back the hours during which liquor could be sold. Instead of running from 5 a.m. to 1 a.m., taverns would not be allowed to open until 6. Albany also set a speed limit for automobiles – 30 mph in open country.

        Here in Buffalo, where city government was comprised of two legislative bodies – councilmen and aldermen – it was hard to get agreement over even such simple things as passing an ordinance banning ladies’ hatpins more than three inches long or whether to commend Mayor Louis P. Fuhrmann for declaring a half-day civic holiday May 9 to celebrate the local opening of the Eastern League baseball season.

        Needless to say, more complex issues were submerged in endless wrangling. Charges and countercharges paralyzed action on such matters as the extension of Elmwood Avenue from North Street to Virginia Street, the choice of a design for the new Hutchinson High School, the designation of land for a new downtown railway terminal commeasurate with the New York City’s newly-completed Pennsylvania Station (complicated by a plot by rail interests to grab all the choice waterfront property from Porter Avenue south) and a list of East Side improvements championed by The News, including a convention hall on the Broadway Arsenal site, a technical high school and a contagious disease hospital.

        Meanwhile, Canisius College was launching a drive for $100,000 to start construction of its new campus at Main and Jefferson and the combined Chamber of Commerce and Manufacturers Club canvassed for another $100,000 to promote industrial development. Both were successful.

        All this took a back seat, however, to the investigation of bribery and construction defects in another major project – the not-yet-finished water pumping station – and the barrage of criticism directed at the city’s embattled public works commissioner, Col. Francis G. Ward.

        Machinery suppliers testified to paying $5,000 in bribes in 1903 to secure contracts, then being asked for $4,000 more. There was a questionable junket to Pittsburgh. There were cost overruns. “Pay! Pay! Pay!” the Morning Express headlined a story which revealed that the pumping station would go more than $1 million over budget. “Leaks Like a Sieve,” the paper bannered a subsequent piece on the condition of the tunnel from the new water intake to the pumping plant.

       

DESPITE ALL THIS, Buffalo was booming, especially its real estate market. A developer on Manchester Place reported that the Elmwood District was almost entirely built up. Suburban farmland was at a premium. Advertisements touted construction of “Delawanda,” a huge tract between Kenmore and the City of Tonawanda bounded by Delaware Avenue on the west and Niagara Falls Boulevard on the east.

        Though clergymen protested the granting of permits for new nickelodeons, complaining that the darkened unsupervised premises were demoralizing to children, the moviehouse already was a popular entertainment, although the big-name feature film had not yet arrived. Movies also were part of the attraction at the city’s vaudeville houses, the Lafayette, the Garden, the Academy, the Lyric and Shea’s.

        Dramatic presentations at the Star, the city’s best theater, generally consisted of touring Broadway productions. Lillian Russell visited the Star in May, as did Billie Burke in W. S. Maugham’s farce, “Mrs. Dot.” At the Teck, where a full season of summer stock was starting, the debut offering featured a show complete with the costumes used on Broadway.

        Meanwhile, at the Albright Art Gallery, a major exhibition of American artists was underway. Mid-May saw the city’s fifth Music Festival, which prompted the Morning Express to reflect: “When the first music festival was held 25 years ago, there was talk of Buffalo some day having a beautiful music hall and a permanent orchestra …”

        Sports were a constant diversion, especially baseball. The Bisons, however, lost their momentum early and sank to the .500 mark by Memorial Day. Soon thereafter, the team captain was released outright. Prizefighting wrestlers made regular visits to the Broadway Arsenal. And hardly a day went by without a report from the training camps of heavyweight boxing contenders Jeffries and Johnson.

        Prosperous Buffalonians might indulge in an Edison phonograph ($12.50 to $200, half the price of a piano) and the latest Caruso record ($2), a new porcelain refrigerator with 115-pound ice capacity ($38), a factory rebuilt Pierce Arrow motorcar (originally $5,300, now at $3,000) or perhaps a Pierce Arrow motorcycle (one-cylinder model, $250; four-cylinder model, $350). For motorists of more modest means, there was the E. R. Thomas Motor Co. turning out Thomas Flyers at 1200 Niagara St.

        Although there were already 100,000 automobiles in New York State, the citizenry hadn’t quite come to terms with them. Hardly a day went by without the report of a serious accident, either by way of a driver losing control or a heedless pedestrian stepping out in front of a speeding car, which often kept right on going.

        Nor were automobiles the only hazard to life and limb. Railway mishaps killed and maimed rail employees and trespassers alike. Runaway horses were not unusual. Bare electrical wires claimed at least one victim a week in Western New York. There were numerous fights, stabbings and shootings stemming from drunken arguments in the city’s many taverns. And suicide was common, often brought on by poverty or poor health. Four folks went over Niagara Falls during Memorial Day week in 1910.

        Should a citizen of 1910 escape accident and despair, there was always the possibility of infectious disease. Tuberculosis had become such a concern that doctors advised against casual kissing and the city imposed a $25 fine on anyone caught spitting in the street. An outdoor camp for consumptives was established on upper Main Street near the city line. Quarantines were quickly imposed whenever a case of scarlet fever, smallpox or diphtheria turned up. Typhoid, which was epidemic in all major American cities during the previous 15 years, was supposed to be alleviated by the new water pumping system.

        The greatest concern for health and hygiene was focused on the ethnic communities. It was very much a city of immigrants. In addition to the six daily English-language newspapers, there were three German dailies and two Polish dailies.

        The spring of 1910 saw bitter fights erupt between the city’s newest arrivals, the Poles and the Italians. The Italians, who dominated the construction unions, were on strike, holding out for a pay increase from $1.50 to $1.75 a day. Polish laborers, brought in as strike-breakers, often got a hostile reception, like the 15 who were driven off the site of the new School 1 annex on Seventh Street by a group of angry Italians and their wives, armed with clubs and baseball bats.

OF ALL BUFFALONIANS, the Italians seemed to have the greatest fascination with Halley’s Comet. The Morning Express noted on May 9 that “Vito Christiano and a delegation walked from Dante Place to Washington and Broadway to have a look.” They sat on the steps of the library while Christiano located Venus through opera glasses, then a police officer came along and informed them that they couldn’t see the comet from that location. “You have to go out on the lake or into the country to see it,” the group was told.

        Official Buffalo looked upon the impending arrival of Halley’s Comet with tolerant amusement. A column entitled “Oatmeal and Mackerel,” appended to the Morning Express editorials, scoffed April 29: “Many a man who gets up at 3 a.m. to see the comet hates to roll out of bed at 8 to look for a job.” The same scribe reported May 1: “Halley’s Comet isn’t such a much after all. Even the astronomers are disappointed in the old thing.”

        The papers began carrying accounts of sightings on the previous visit in 1835 (unfortunately, none of them by Buffalonians), which noted that the comet came in a rain of stars with a long tail that stretched halfway across the sky. The 1910 version did not promise to be nearly as spectacular.

        Nevertheless, local comet spotters located it. On May 5, the Morning Express reported: “Those who were up yesterday morning between 3:30 and 4 o’clock had a good look at Halley’s Comet. The heavenly visitor was observed just a little north of Venus and its tail could be plainly discerned. Patrolman Stephen Southall, detailed at Station No. 12, was among those who observed the comet. Southall told his brother officers and the entire platoon saw the comet. Many railroad engines in that section of the city were blown, calling attention to the phenomenon.”

        Comet-gazing also became something of a police problem. The Express wrote May 8: “‘There ought to be some way to identify people who prowl the streets before daylight looking for Halley’s Comet,’ remarked Patrolman Edward O’Grady at Police Station No. 3 yesterday. ‘How’s an officer to know that they are looking for the comet or an open back window? They ought to be made to take out a license and carry a lantern.’”

        O’Grady went on to tell of a pair of young men he encountered at 4 a.m. climbing up the façade of Shea’s theater on Court Street and prowling about the McKinley Monument hoping to get a peek at the comet.

        The passing of England’s King Edward VII May 7 lent a bit of credence to the superstition that the comet signals the death of kings, but a local amateur astronomer tried to put perspective on it a week later, writing: “Sensible people are all agreed that the visit of the comet should be treated as a sort of interesting joke.” He did, however, cite the possibility that the comet’s tail, which was supposed to brush the Earth’s atmosphere, might create a permanent ring around our planet, like the rings of Saturn.

THE TAIL WAS TO SWEEP PAST on May 18. By May 16, the comet was bigger front page news than Teddy Roosevelt. The News noted, however, that “they have been treating the visitor more cordially in some other places than here – probably because Buffalo’s lake-bred clouds have rendered nearly hopeless the watch for it before dawn.”

        On the fateful day, the Morning Express headlined: “The Comet! Hold Fast!” The subsequent story noted, however, that it probably wouldn’t be visible here that night, due to poor weather. In other places, though, there was high frenzy.

        In Haiti, witch doctors sold comet pills to frightened natives. Fortune tellers had a field day. One New York City theater manager promised patrons he would pump pure oxy-

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gen into the hall to offset allegedly poisonous gases in the comet’s tail and have medical attendants on duty. Taverns held comet parties serving comet cocktails – “six of which are guaranteed to make a blind man see the comet.” Sly saloonkeepers announced that the comet’s poisonous cyanogen gas was soluble in whiskey.

        There was a heavy demand for telescopes. “A number of Buffalo folks have rigged up telescopes in their back yards to the envy of the neighborhood,” it was reported. “And the first comet dance was held in Buffalo last night at the reception to the senior class of the Lafayette High School at the school on Lafayette Avenue. All the lights were turned out and the young men and women, chaperoned by their teachers and mothers, danced by the light of the moon and the comet. It was a huge success.”

        In Mount Morris, meanwhile, the Italian community reacted to the comet’s onset with terror. Some stayed up all night, fearing for their lives. Workers in the nearby salt mines pleaded to be allowed to spend the night 1,500 feet below the surface to escape the cyanogen gas. During the day, a rain of deep indigo bubbles fell on the community, some as big as water pails, it was reported in The News. Residents blamed them on the comet.

        After all the excitement, the aftermath on May 19 was decidedly sheepish. “Buffalo slipped through comet night as methodically as any other night,” the Morning Express reported. “David Cuthbertson of the Weather Bureau said last night that a great many of the inhabitants did not expect so uneventful an occurrence. In anticipation of a catastrophe, they had kept the telephones of the Weather Bureau busy for the last two days.

        “Mr. Cuthbertson remained in the office of the Weather Bureau on the top of the Prudential Building until 1 o’clock this morning. With him was the office force, Principal P. Frederick Piper of the Central High School and a few visitors.”

        Cuthbertson spotted the comet between a rift in the clouds at 7:45 p.m. It was pale yellow and it remained in view for three minutes. At 9 p.m., he noted a faint aurora over the northern sky which had a wavy motion. At times, it was quite brilliant. At 9:30, it showed vertical streamers of light. At 10:20, it turned a rosy color for a few minutes. By midnight, it was gone. The most interesting spectacle, a reporter observed, “was the reflection of the moonlight along the dark waters of the lake.”

        When the phone rang at 11 p.m., Cuthbertson asked the caller: “Have you said your prayers?” Getting the affirmative, he replied, “Well, then you may go to bed.”

        “Half the town seems to be afraid of this comet,” he remarked as he hung up the receiver.

        The Morning Express editorialist noted: “Passing through the tail of the comet was no more trying than passing through the tales of the comet which we have been undergoing.”

       

BUT THE COMET CRAZE wasn’t over yet. On May 19, scientists were baffled by an unexpected trick of its tail, which appeared in the eastern sky at dawn instead of the western sky at sunset. “The Comet’s Tail Is Gay Old Joker,” The News headlined. “Somewhere in Cosmic Space It Is Wandering About to the Great Confusion of the Calculations of Astronomers. Sh! It May Be Lost Altogether.”

        Buffalonians, however, saw little of this. Except for a brief period the evening of May 21, the sky continued to be cloud-covered through the weekend. There was hope of clearing for the May 23 eclipse of the moon. Despite more heavy rain clouds, the eclipse was seen, but no comet. The rain did nothing to discourage other outdoor activities that night, however.

        Crowds estimated at 10,000 turned out for opening night of the Barnum and Bailey Circus on the old Driving Park grounds on East Ferry Street. Another 10,000 showed up for the Elk Street Carnival, sponsored by businessmen on the street between Chicago and Katharine streets, who celebrated the opening of the new Michigan Avenue railroad bridge with “illumination surpassing anything Buffalo has seen” – more than 6,000 electric lights.

        “Very disappointing is the tail of Halley’s Comet, thinks Weather Forecaster Cuthbertson,” The News noted May 27. “He said this morning that last night he peered at it from his home with a spy glass and while it had a good bright head, its tail was a farcical hoax. ‘This comet does not compare with Donati’s Comet of the late ‘50s,’ he said.”

        With Memorial Day weekend ahead, Buffalonians turned to other concerns. Crowds gathered on the dock to take the ship Americana to Crystal Beach. Throngs crowded the new Carnival Court amusement park at Main and Delavan. Announcement was made that the operators of the ferry to Fort Erie would refurbish the Fort Erie Beach resort in time for July 4. The New Academy Theater advertised “10 Vaudeville Comets – something to look at all the time.” Rail excursions brought 25,000 to the city, despite the cold and rainy weather.

        During a break in the skies May 28, the comet put in one last appearance. The Express reported the following morning that it was visible for several hours: “Even in the haze and smoke that hangs over downtown streets, anyone who knew just where to look for the comet could have found it last night.”

        As the clouds returned and the comet disappeared from the headlines, Weatherman Cuthbertson had the last word on it June 1. Noting to a reporter that the city had just experienced its coldest month of May in 40 years, he went on to add: “You might also say that the comet has had nothing to do with it.”