December 31: ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
ON THIS DAY IN 1900, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “The last day of the nineteenth century began with alternate scowling and weeping, but even ill humor or remorse, or the combination of both, seemed to be having little effect upon the spirits of people whose faces showed that they were looking forward to the mystic hour of midnight when the chimes on Trinity Church will announce such a New Year’s morn as no one who hears them understandingly has ever seen before or will ever see again. For it will be, indeed, the beginning of the ‘year of a hundred years,’ and it was not difficult to imagine a trace of this thought in the face of many a man gazing absently at his newspaper as the groaning motor or the panting engine carried him toward his business. It seems quite certain, therefore, that there will be some definite expression of this feeling in the demonstrations of various kinds which will mark the passage of this New Year’s eve. That these demonstrations will be of all kinds, to say nothing of all degrees of exuberance, needs not to be said. There is certain to be an unusually large crowd on lower Broadway, gathered ostensibly to hear the chimes, but actually to make such a racket that the chimes can’t be heard at all.”
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ON THIS DAY IN 1928, the Eagle reported, “New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Night are going to bring the greatest police cleanup of night clubs, speakeasies and criminal haunts the Greater City has ever witnessed. That, said Deputy Chief Inspector Thomas P. Cummings this afternoon, is not a mere prediction. It is just a bald statement of impending facts. While he was speaking, most of the city’s 700 detectives were sifting out the batch of 183 alleged criminals who were dragged in during the weekend roundup — the largest lineup at Police Headquarters in the city’s history. Commissioner Whalen personally directed the sending of the prisoners to the platform for inspection. ‘We are going to make the speakeasies of New York as dry as the Sahara Desert,’ Inspector Cummings continued, with a bang of his fist to emphasize his remarks.”
Brooklyn Boro
View MoreNew York City’s most populous borough, Brooklyn, is home to nearly 2.6 million residents. If Brooklyn were an independent city it would be the fourth largest city in the United States. While Brooklyn has become the epitome of ‘cool and hip’ in recent years, for those that were born here, raised families here and improved communities over the years, Brooklyn has never been ‘uncool’.