Hot Time in the Old Town - Edward Kohn [95]
The Commissioner of Public Works said that flushing the streets would continue in the tenement house districts. The poor children, he noted, received free “shower-baths” while the flushing was in progress, as the children played in the hoses’ streams. Following the lead of the Street Cleaning Department, the Fire Department had recently volunteered to flush the streets in front of hospitals “and had cooled the hospital wards in the most gratifying manner.”
While much of the official response to the heat wave had already taken place by the time of the mayor’s meetings on August 13 and 14, the meetings show that a coordinated city response to the heat wave had been possible from the beginning. At both meetings steps had been taken and decisions made that required either mayoral-level decisions or communication among the department heads, which was fostered simply by meeting together in the same place. True, the meetings offered little new information that could not have been found in the city newspapers all week. The mayor’s observations that he had received complaints about the dead horses, and that he considered them a health risk, were a bit obtuse, as New Yorkers had been complaining about this problem all week. Yet in affirming the actions already taken, such as flushing the streets and fostering coordination among city departments, the meetings showed that the city might have taken the lead in responding to the crisis right from the beginning.
How many lives might have been saved by distributing ice beginning on August 4? How much less foul might the air have been if the city attacked the problem of carting away dead horses a week earlier? How many New Yorkers might have found relief at night in the floating baths and city parks had the rules been changed earlier? No one would ever know. Instead, the department heads met on a day when the temperature inside the mayor’s office was so pleasant, none of the men bothered to remove their jackets.
ON FRIDAY, AUGUST 14, the Bryan party visited Coney Island. Or to be more precise, William and Mary Bryan took the ferry to Coney Island, looked at the nation’s amusement capital from the pier side, and then returned to Manhattan without ever having left the boat. It was an odd trip that probably had to do with the late hour of their visit to the island and the exhaustion of both the candidate and his wife. But it seemed to underscore Bryan’s small-town and western disdain for all things big, eastern, and urban. “Mr. Bryan,” the Tribune speculated, “may have wanted to take himself away from the city that had, even in boiling weather, frosted his choicest blossoms.”
As Bryan’s party of seven, including his host, William St. John, made their way down to the steamboat wharf on the Battery—close to where a dog was recently shot and clubbed to death by a policeman—their progress through the streets went unnoticed. No one waved; no one cheered. Either no one on the street recognized the Democratic candidate for president, or no one particularly cared, as New Yorkers went about their work that busy Friday. Even on the steamboat Perseus, the Bryans remained unrecognized by their fellow passengers. They did not depart from Manhattan until 4:30 PM, and the trip to Coney Island took over an hour. Once at the island, the Iron Pier afforded steamboat passengers a good view of Brighton Beach, especially as the land on each side of the pier curved gently into the water. Looking west the Bryans could see the Windsor, Bay View, Occidental, and West End Hotels, while to the east could be glimpsed the main Concourse, with its various colorful and noisy amusements. Beyond the Concourse the Bryans could probably see the massive Brighton Beach and Manhattan hotels. Apparently, just looking was enough for them. “Mr. Bryan either did not like the looks of the ‘merry-go-rounds,’” one man commented, “or he was