At 12:01 p.m., as lunchtime crowds filled the street, a wagon stopped across from the headquarters of J.P. Morgan & Co. exploded. It carried about 100 pounds of dynamite packed with 500 pounds of cast-iron sash weights, which tore through the crowd. Thirty people died at once and eight more later, and 143 were seriously injured. The driver slipped away, and although investigators suspected followers of the Italian anarchist Luigi Galleani, the case was never solved.
The blast came during America's first Red Scare, a year after a wave of bombings attributed to Galleani's followers had targeted politicians, judges and business leaders. Wall Street, and the Morgan bank above all, stood as the most obvious symbol of American capital, and the explosion hit it at its busiest hour.
Most of the dead and injured were clerks, messengers and passers-by rather than financiers. A 17-year-old messenger, James Saul, commandeered a parked car and drove about 30 injured people to a hospital. The bomb caused more than $2 million in property damage and wrecked most of the interior of the Morgan building, and the president of the New York Stock Exchange suspended trading to head off a panic.
The Bureau of Investigation, forerunner of the FBI, pursued the case for years. Investigators were puzzled by the number of ordinary people killed and by the lack of any specific target beyond the street itself, and no one was ever convicted. The bombing remains one of the deadliest and most notorious unsolved attacks in New York City's history.
Key people: Luigi Galleani, James Saul