1920: The Wagon That Vanished: New York’s Unsolved Wall Street Bombing
At 12:01 pm on September 16, 1920, a horse-drawn wagon parked across from the J.P. Morgan & Co. headquarters at 23 Wall Street exploded, packed with 100 pounds of dynamite and 500 pounds of cast-iron sash weights turned into shrapnel. Thirty people died instantly and eight more later succumbed to their wounds, with 143 seriously injured and hundreds hurt in total. Witnesses saw the driver step down and vanish down a side street moments before the blast; he was never identified.
Within a minute, the New York Stock Exchange president suspended trading to head off panic. A 17-year-old messenger, commandeered a parked car and used it to ferry 30 wounded victims to hospital as police seized nearby vehicles for the same purpose. Crews worked through the night to clear the wreckage so the Exchange could reopen the next morning, but in doing so destroyed evidence that might have identified the bomber.
Investigators from the Bureau of Investigation, forerunner of the FBI, suspected the attack was the work of Galleanist anarchists responsible for a string of bombings the previous year, but no one was ever charged. More than a century on, the Wall Street bombing remains unsolved, its perpetrator and motive still unknown.
