NYC’s Deadliest Hotel Fire Took 86 Lives
On March 17, 1899, the Windsor Hotel at 575 Fifth Avenue caught fire, the first smoke and flames billowing from the building just as the city’s annual St. Patrick’s Day parade reached 47th Street. Not even the proximity of the city’s firefighters marching by could save the grand hotel from burning to the ground. Nearly 90 people died, making the Windsor the deadliest hotel fire in New York and the worst commercial disaster until the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911.
“The Most Comfortable and Homelike Hotel in New York”
Advertising itself as “the most comfortable and homelike hotel in New York,”…
Carrie Chapman Catt and Mary Garrett Hay: A Dynamic Duo for Women’s Suffrage
When president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, Carrie Chapman Catt (1859–1947) first clapped eyes on Mary “Mollie” Garrett Hay (1857–1928), president of the New York Equal Suffrage League, in 1895, Carrie was five years’ married to her second husband, George Catt. Soon after George’s death in 1905, Carrie would make her home with Mollie. The women would share a common cause and a roof for the next thirty years. As fellow activist Maud Wood Park remarked, “Mrs. …
