100 years ago in The Record

Sunday, March 25, 1917

As Troy’s National Guard regiment is called back into national service, Mayor Cornelius F. Burns has ambitious plans for patriotic demonstrations on the day Congress convenes for a probable declaration of war with Germany.

The Second New York Infantry, based in Bolton Hall in Lansingburgh since the Troy Armory was destroyed by fire earlier this year, is one of eleven regiments in nine states mobilized by the War Department this afternoon. The Second spent most of last summer on border-patrol duty in Texas during the U.S. punitive expedition against insurgent warlord Pancho Villa.

Congress meets in special session on April 2. In his capacity as president of the New York State Conference of Mayors, Mayor Burns is calling on his peers to schedule patriotic exercises for that day on the model of events planned for Troy.

“The situation that confronts us is a grave one,” Burns writes in a letter published today, “and it is fitting that the Mayors of Cities of the Empire State should set a good example by publicly proclaiming at this time unanimous and hearty support of the Government in any course which it may deem proper to pursue in a matter so deeply involving the rights, honor and interests of our country.”

Burns calls for assemblies of schoolchildren in every public, private and parochial school in New York at noon on April 2, when President Wilson is expected to ask for a war declaration. He suggests a program including the singing of “the Star-Spangled Banner” and “America,” a flag salute and “appropriate resolutions of loyalty and support.” He also recommends “brief patriotic addresses” and the ringing of bells from every church and public building for the occasion. The mayor tells The Record that he’d like to see his plan go national. “It would be one of the biggest, sincerest and most patriotic demonstrations in the history of civilization,” he predicts.

POWERS OPERA HOUSE

“A landmark interestingly associated for more than fifty years with the religious, civic and entertainment history of Lansingburgh” is gutted by a fast-moving fire tonight. Opened as a church in the 1860s, the Powers Opera House was showing movies despite being described as a “fire trap.” Within a “few minutes” after patrons exit tonight’s program, a fire breaks out in the operator’s room. “A half hour after the discovery of the fire the building lay in ruins,” The Record reports. Its brick walls remain standing but its wooden interior is “nothing but a mass of charred timbers, “fulfilling a longstanding prophecy that “when the old building caught fire it would burn to charcoal in an hour.”