![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/pisc.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
German theater director Erwin Piscator<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 By Mary Hoar, City of Yonkers Municipal Historian, President Emeritus Yonkers Historical Society, recipient of the Key to the City of Yonkers, 2004 Key to History, Yonkers Landmarks Preservation Board Member, Founder of Revolutionary Yonkers 250 and President Untermyer Performing Arts Council<\/p>\n
Monday, January 19th<\/p>\n
January 19, 1931:\u00a0 Three World War Veterans began \u201ctours of duty\u201d after Public Safety Commissioner Frank Devlin administered their Oaths of Office; they were assigned to special police work at school crossings in Northeast Yonkers.\u00a0 School janitors had replaced regular police officers after policemen were given other assignments.\u00a0 The men were specially chosen by Secretary of the Joint Veterans\u2019 Relief Committee Harold Thibault for this special police assignment; each would be paid $5 a day from the Mayor\u2019s Unemployment Relief Fund, not the Police Bureau budget.\u00a0 Although the men, John Coyne, Frank Kavanaugh and James Manning, would not be armed, they were authorized to issued tickets for traffic violations and wear police uniforms.<\/p>\n
January 19, 1943:\u00a0 On orders from the Federal Mileage Administrator for Yonkers, City Manager William Walsh announced once-a-week garbage collections throughout out the city, reducing services by fifty percent.<\/p>\n
Tuesday, January 20th<\/p>\n
January 20, 1931:\u00a0 Federal authorities, still chasing the origination of the beer pipeline discovered running through the sewers of Yonkers a few months earlier, pursued a different route, uncovering the manufacturer of the rubber hose to identify who purchased the six-inch hose. The hose carried non-prohibition beer to thirsty New Yorkers from an unknown Yonkers brewery.\u00a0<\/p>\n
January 20, 1945:\u00a0 Twenty-four-year-old Captain Bernard Diekman, husband of Yonkers resident Leilah Diekman and pilot of a B-25 Mitchell bomber operating out of Corsica, was awarded a Bronze cluster to his Distinguished Flying Cross.\u00a0 He received it for \u201cextraordinary achievement in an attack upon enemy supply and troop concentration near Santa Lucia, Italy.\u201d\u00a0 Captain Diekman led a formation of twelve bombers over the target, \u201cinflicting severe damage.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wednesday, January 21st:<\/p>\n
January 21, 1942:\u00a0 \u00a0Yonkers native Major Thomas Trapnell was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for singlehandedly fending off a Japanize advance with a daring feat of courage in Luzon December 22, 1941.\u00a0 He remained between enemy troops and his men, set fire to a truck on a bridge and waited until the bridge was fully engulfed in flames before leaving. \u201cWith complete disregard for his safety, Major Trapnell delayed the hostile advance and set an inspiring example to his entire regiment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trapnell was \u201cAll American\u201d star end of the West Point football team of 1926 and chose the Calvary branch of the service after graduation. He retired as a Lieutenant General.<\/p>\n
January 21, 1953:\u00a0 Samuel Schreiber, Yonkers Railroad Company\u2019s modernization expert, reported the company was washing, sanitizing and cleaning all bus interiors, using a special chemical to destroy germs and bacteria.\u00a0 The treatments lasted four weeks and would be repeated on a regular schedule.\u00a0 The chemical had a \u201cpleasant pine aroma;\u201d this agreeable non-toxic odor would signal riders their bus had been treated!\u00a0<\/p>\n
Thursday, January 22nd<\/p>\n
January 22, 1929:\u00a0 Missing paychecks for fourteen Yonkers men, including Supervisors and other officials, were found in the White Plains Post Office!\u00a0 The checks, missing for a week, were found in a batch of envelopes deemed unusable.<\/p>\n
January 22, 1933:\u00a0 Harry Garing of New York City, Grand Dragon of the New York Ku Klux Klan, asked Mayor Joseph Loehr for the Klan to use both Larkin Plaza and the corner of South Broadway and McLean Avenue for public meetings to discuss \u201cAmericanism and Its defense.\u201d\u00a0 Mayor Loehr made no immediate comment.<\/p>\n
January 22, 1937:\u00a0 More than 100 drivers got their license plates at the first Yonkers office of the County Automobile Bureau, located at Tibbetts Brook Park.<\/p>\n
Friday, January 23rd<\/p>\n
January 23, 1942: Keeping up the tradition of the house, German Theatrical Director Erwin Piscator and his wife, dancer Maria Ley, purchased the home of the late Joseph Urban at 83 Hudson Terrace.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Piscator, once director of the Peoples and State Theater in Berlin, was making a movie in Russia when Hitler took power.\u00a0 Nazis stole or burned all his possessions, including his Family Bible. After living in France for a few years, he went to New York in 1939.<\/p>\n
He chose Yonkers for his new home; he loved the view of the Hudson and Palisades. A former communist, he returned to Germany in 1951 because of the McCarthy era political pressure.<\/p>\n
Saturday, January 24th<\/p>\n
January 24, 1947:\u00a0 The American Red Cross appointed several Yonkers people to reshape the Yonkers Chapter of the American Red Cross.\u00a0 Appointed were Mrs. William Crocker, wartime director of Civilian Protection Office; Mrs. John Dill, former head of Child Care Centers; City Judge Martin Fay; Arthur Giddings, Nepperhan Center; Henry Herz, Chamber of Commerce Treasurer; John Ormiston, President of the Young Men\u2019s Chamber of Commerce; Mrs. Peter Tomashevsky, YWCA; and Oliver Trotter, Yonkers Tercentennial Chair. The Chapter had been without officers since the mass resignation of its officers and directors in December.<\/p>\n
Sunday, January 25th<\/p>\n
January 25, 1905:\u00a0 Massive \u201cinconvenience\u201d was caused by a severe snowstorm, labeled almost as severe as the 1888 snowstorm.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yonkers residents working outside the city limits were unable to get home.\u00a0 Hotels, large and small, were filled by very early evening; guests continuously were turned away.\u00a0 Many spent the night sleeping in the waiting rooms of the Putnam and Central-Hudson Railroad stations. In some sections of Yonkers, coal was very scarce; the temperature registered below 20 degrees in apartments and homes.\u00a0 Police patrol wagons and sleighs were at the carpet factories when the whistle blew.\u00a0 Women were taken to their homes and children found on the streets were helped.\u00a0 Those who lived outside of Yonkers were advised to stay in homes of friends. Customers stayed away from stores, and most closed early.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mail service between Yonkers and New York was delayed, but not by much.<\/p>\n
Questions or comments on this column? \u00a0Email YonkersHistory1646@gmail.com.<\/p>\n
For information on the Yonkers Historical Society, Sherwood House and upcoming events, please visit our website www.yonkershistoricalsociety.org, call 914-961-8940 or email info@yonkershistoricalsociety.org. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"German theater director Erwin Piscator \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 By Mary Hoar, City of Yonkers Municipal Historian, President Emeritus Yonkers Historical…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":104453,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,9,24,63,129,131,130],"class_list":{"0":"post-104452","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-the-bronx","8":"tag-bronx","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-nyc","12":"tag-the-bronx","13":"tag-the-bronx-headlines","14":"tag-the-bronx-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104452\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}