Queenswalk: The Long Island City Explosion, Part One

In 1891, the New York and Long Island Tunnel Company began the arduous process of constructing a tunnel beneath the East River, joining Long Island City to Manhattan. They were building a tunnel that would ultimately connect western Queens to Grand Central Terminal. The tunnel not only had to go underneath the East River, which was difficult enough for all sorts of reasons, but it also had to be cut into the very bedrock of Queens and Manhattan. Manhattan schist, one of those bedrocks, is a hard, metamorphic stone that is quite dense and difficult to tunnel through. It was time consuming and dangerous work.

The tunnel crew was using dynamite to blast through the rock. Dynamite works because of the explosive qualities of nitroglycerine, which is very unstable, and subject to temperature and moisture conditions. A stick of dynamite is two-thirds liquid nitroglycerine absorbed by diatomaceous earth, or other absorbents, wrapped in paper to hold it together, topped off with a fuse and blasting cap that carries the charge.

If dynamite got old, it could “weep” the nitro out, into the bottom of the box. Same if it got wet or too cold. Sometimes, frozen dynamite could form crystals of pure nitroglycerine on the outside of the stick, which was especially dangerous. If the sticks just rubbed together, that could make enough friction to cause the nitro to explode. Being around dynamite was a dangerous job, one best left to experts. It needed to be handled with care and respect, and was hardly the tossing around of sticks like you see in the movies.

Right after Christmas, on December 28, 1892, work was continuing on the Long Island City Tunnel. The men had sunk a 90 foot shaft into the bedrock of Queens, and had extended the tunnel 33 feet underground towards the river. The entrance to the shaft was in the middle of the block of Fourth Street, near what was then Jackson and Vernon Avenues, and Third and Fourth Streets. The neighborhood around this square included a market block with a large masonry building with storefronts on the ground floor and tenement apartments on the floors above.

The block was called the “Post Office block” by residents. It was also called the Davren Flats, named after the owner of the building. John Davren had complied a lively city block with a jeweler on the corner, followed by a restaurant owned by two brothers; John and Edward Hopkins. Next to Hopkin’s was Peter Rocco’s barbershop, followed by the post office on the end of the block. Above the ground floor establishments were two or three floors of flats, occupied by about 25 working class Irish and Italian families.

The surrounding blocks were a microcosm of classic city life. On Vernon, Fourth and Jackson were bakeries, a liquor store, a butcher shop, a saloon and other shops. Since this was a main commercial area on the way to the ferry to Manhattan, the streets were always busy, full of people walking to and from the ferry, or patronizing the shops and amenities of the neighborhood. On the morning of December 28th, they were all going about their business as usual – another work day in Long Island City.

Over on Fourth Street, at the tunnel entrance, it was work as usual for the sandhogs, too. They were preparing for another day of blasting through the rock, inching ever closer to the river. The entrance to the shaft was protected by a wooden shed that had been built to keep out the weather, shelter the men, and protect the elevator that dropped down into the darkness. They needed a lot of dynamite for this work, but it was unsafe to leave a cache of explosives that close to the site, so the storage house for the dynamite was about a mile away, in an unoccupied lot. Twice a week, the men received a several boxes of dynamite, enough for a day or two. The storage house was unheated, and by the time the dynamite reached the work site, it was frozen, and needed to be carefully thawed before use.

They had a large box prepared for this thawing. It was made out of wood, six feet square by eight feet. Inside was a coil of steam pipe which entered the box from the bottom, and surrounded the box. An engine powered a small boiler which slowly thawed out the dynamite which was placed in smaller boxes on shelves. The warming box was placed near the entrance of the shaft, which was in the middle of this block of Fourth Street. The buildings around the entrance had been torn down, but there were still a couple of wood-framed storefront tenements at the edge of the block, as well as a small brick building that was home to several Italian families.

At 6 am, the workers placed two boxes of the frozen explosives in the warming box and had turned on the engine. It usually took two hours for the steam to thaw the sticks enough so that they could be taken down the elevator and put into use. Around 8am, they should have been ready. The men left their shelter and headed for the warming box, and on to another day at work. The dynamite was more than ready, at around 8am, before the men reached the box, the unstable nitroglycerine detonated, blowing up an entire block of downtown Long Island City. The devastation and death that followed was horrific.

Next time: Hell comes to Long Island City on a cold December morning. The explosion, the aftermath, and the conclusion of our story.

(Downtown Jackson Avenue, late 19th century. Photo:Greater Astoria Historical Society)