The Great Blizzard Of ’88 (February 1977 | Volume: 28, Issue: 2)

The Great Blizzard Of ’88

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Authors: Nat Brandt

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February 1977 | Volume 28, Issue 2

At fifty-eight years of age, Roscoe Conkling was still a strapping figure of a man, proud of his strength. The former senator, presidential aspirant, and kingpin of Republican politics in New York State neither smoked nor imbibed. He exercised and boxed regularly. So when William Sulzer, a young lawyer who had an office on the same floor as Conkling’s in a Wall Street building, could not find a cab, Conkling decided to leave for his club, two and a half miles away, “on my pins.”

 

At fifty-eight years of age, Roscoe Conkling was still a strapping figure of a man, proud of his strength. The former senator, presidential aspirant, and kingpin of Republican politics in New York State neither smoked nor imbibed. He exercised and boxed regularly. So when William Sulzer, a young lawyer who had an office on the same floor as Conkling’s in a Wall Street building, could not find a cab, Conkling decided to leave for his club, two and a half miles away, “on my pins.” The Fastest Commuter in the East

The deserted streets outside were clogged with fallen telephone and telegraph poles and blocked, as Sulzer recalled, “by great mountains of snow.…We could hardly see Trinity Church, or the buildings on Broadway.” Conkling led the way, telling Sulzer to follow in his footsteps. Struggling against a fierce, bitterly cold wind, the two men reached the Astor House a few blocks away. Sulzer gave up and urged Conkling to join him in seeking refuge inside the hotel. But Conkling refused and continued on his own:

“It was dark, and it was useless to try to pick out a path, so I went magnificently along shouldering drifts.…I was pretty well exhausted when I got to Union Square, and, wiping the snow from my eyes, tried to make out the triangles [pathways that crisscrossed the park] there. But it was impossible. There was no light, and I plunged right through on as straight a line as I could determine upon.…

“I had got to the middle of the park and was up to my arms in a drift. I pulled the ice and snow from my eyes and held my hands up there till everything was melted off so that I might see; but it was too dark and the snow too blinding.…”

It took Conklihg twenty minutes to wrestle free from the huge snowdrift, coming “as near giving right up and sinking down there to die as a man can and not do it. Somehow I got out and made my way along.” Covered with snow and ice, he finally reached his club and collapsed inside the lobby. It had taken him three hours to get there. He had fought his way through the worst snowstorm in the history of New York City, the Blizzard of 1888.

There have been snowfalls that were greater, hurricanes with winds that were stronger, cold waves when temperatures plummeted lower, but never a combination of the three that was