100 YEARS AGO IN THE SARATOGIAN
Friday, Feb. 22, 1918. A nine year old Saratoga Springs boy dies this afternoon after falling down an elevator shaft in the Algonquin building, The Saratogian reports.
Harold Benson was the son of Mr. and Mrs. Pearl Benson. “He was well known about the city and in the Algonquin building where he had sold grated horseradish,” a reporter elaborates.
Benson shows up at the Algonquin this afternoon to bring lunch to a friend, errand boy Walter Currier. Currier tells investigators that despite his warning, Benson opened the elevator door and stepped into empty space.
The boys are in the basement when Benson falls. He lands in the pit of the elevator shaft, where “there is a heavy beam upon which the elevator stops.” Benson hits this beam headfirst.
Dr. Douglas C. Moriarta declares Benson dead at the scene. Later this afternoon he performs an autopsy showing that “the right ear of the boy had been severed from his head by a downward stroke and hung by a small piece of skin. The right side of the face was bruised and there was a concussion at the base of the brain.” Further investigation is unlikely. Benson will be buried on Monday, February 25.
Open New Bridge at Schuylerville
“As a fitting celebration for Washington’s birthday the bridge between this village and Washington county which crosses the Hudson river at the foot of Ferry street was formally opened this morning,” Schuylerville correspondent Garnsey Weeks reports.
Weeks rides in the first truck to cross the bridge, along with acting village president Philip Kahn, civic engineer C. A. Curtis, contractor M. Fitzgerald, Schuylerville National Bank representative J. B. Deyoe and Ford Garage manager Ray W. Prindle, who provided the truck.
“The trip across was made without mishap,” Weeks writes, “but in attempting to turn the Ford around for the return trip the machine became stalled in a snow bank. It was drawn back upon the bridge by a team of horses belonging to William Ruff.”
Despite that mishap, “the opening of the bridge is extremely gratifying to the residents of this village as it opens a direct route to Greenwich and Williamstown” for the first time since the former bridge was condemned in 1911. What’s Happening “Draft 258,” starring Mabel Taliaferro, is the Broadway Theatre’s special Washington’s Birthday attraction. From the director of the recent hit, “The Slacker,” the new film is “An American Masterpiece Dedicated to Every American” and a “Great Masterpiece of Brilliant Patriotic American Nature.” Taliaferro plays the sister of a draft dodger in the film, in which, a disclaimer notes, there are “No War Scenes Depicted.”