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You are looking at an educational picture of 1920 Wall Street bombing. At about 11:00 AM, Thursday, September 16, 1920, an old wagon, pulled by an old dark bay horse, travelled westward on Wall Street. It halted about 75 feet from Broad St., near 23 Wall St., the offices of J. P. Morgan & Co. The day was clear, and the stock market was open, and up that day. According to Sutherland’s "The Mystery of the Wall Street Explosion," in Liberty magazine, many officers were on duty at a Brooklyn transit strike; others, including the officer assigned to the Broad and Wall intersection, had been ordered "a few blocks north to help herd the paraders in a procession of colored folk."
The wagon then exploded. Next door, the massive iron bars across the Assay Office’s windows bent in from the blast. The Stock Markets huge windows fell to the trading floor. Trinity Church shook. Thirty people died instantly, some mere red blots on the pavement. A woman’s head, still wearing a hat, stuck to 23 Wall’s façade. A messenger lay decapitated, a packet of stocks smoldering in his hand. An eyeless clerk, his feet blown off, tried to crawl away. Two hundred lay wounded: 10 more would later die. A hoof of the horse lay in a pool of blood; a witness recalled how the pool had sparkled in the sunlight.
The picture presents Wall St.
We have created this collection of pictures primarily to serve as an easy to access educational tool. Contact curator@old-picture.com.
Image ID# 13E7620F
Ref: loc/Bain Collection
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