The Wall Street Bombing: NYC's First Massive Terror Attack
It’s one of America’s oldest unsolved cases, and until 9/11, it marked the most brutal terrorist attack in New York City’s history. According to CBS News, all victims of the Wall Street bombing hailed from the middle or working-class rather than the elite businessmen the sector was famous for. Still, the ultimately fruitless investigation initially followed suspicions of “radical leftist political groups,” alleged communists, Bolsheviks, and other anarchists dissatisfied with the country’s skyrocketing wealth inequality.
The bombing occurred on September 16th, 1920. It would kill 38 people and wound at least 143 more (potentially 300, according to the FBI).
As the FBI narrates, it began with a man driving a horse and cart into the center of Wall Street. Before vanishing into the crowd, he stopped between the U.S. Assay Office and the J. P. Morgan building, which was specifically designed to resist bombings, featuring two-foot thick concrete walls and bronze-reinforced windows. These precautions, initially set in place during World War I, proved themselves by protecting the majority of the legendary banker’s office building. Passers on the streets outside were not as lucky.
The dynamite inside the cart detonated at 12:01 PM. Shrapnel showered its surroundings, killing 30 people in the first seconds. 8 would die later of their injuries. Packed with iron window sash weights for extra impact and activated with a timer, the cart bomb wreaked extremely effective damage at the scene.
According to Britannica, J. P. Morgan’s chief clerk William Joyce was the only victim inside the J. P. Morgan building who was killed. Most victims were “street workers, vendors and clerks, many who were on their way to lunch.” While survivors received treatment and battered Wall Street managed to return to business as early as the following day, law enforcement scoured for leads.
Hundreds of interviews produced no more detailed description of the man who’d driven the horse and cart, states the FBI. The bomb was reconstructed, but its build was basic enough that attempting to trace the components turned up nothing useful. Even a motive couldn’t be narrowed down, though the assassination of J. P. Morgan himself was out of the question — he’d been in Europe at the time. Robbery of the nearby Sub-Treasury Building’s gold bars was considered, but according to Britannia, political terrorism on behalf of the ‘Reds’ became the prevailing belief.
Some documents supported this hypothesis: four flyers from the “American Anarchist Fighters” had been unearthed, sent soon before the bombing, which allegedly called for “the release of political prisoners.” According to CBS News, these prisoners were suspected to be the Italian immigrants Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, which placed increased scrutiny on their countrymen. Political activists, particularly Italian, Jewish, and Russian foreigners, were heavily profiled. The Secret Service and the Bureau of Investigation (the FBI’s early predecessor) interrogated thousands of alleged anarchists and arrested many, according to Britannica, but the bombing charge never stuck.
The impact of the bombing had been enormous on the minds of 1920’s people. From the History News Service, Beverly Gage points out that these 38 deaths were “statistics from a past when we counted civilian deaths in dozens instead of thousands,” and it pushed forward initiatives for increased immigrant restriction as well as reinforcing America’s public support of its capitalistic centerpiece. Speaking out against the financial system could make you seem like a supporter of terrorism — maybe even a threat. And the hunt for culprits continued ceaselessly for two decades, coming to an end in 1940.
What remains of that bombing scene can be observed even today: on the facade of the J. P. Morgan building, concludes CBS News, the shrapnel marks were never removed.
