The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1901-08-26
VAN WORST PARKS WRECK
Work Of Fifty Years Gone
in Two Minutes Of
Desolation.

The fury of the storm was seen at its
| height as it swooped down upon Van
| Worst Park. Like some invisible monster
| it took a serpentine course, wriggling and
itself with lightning-like rapidity about
the trunks and branches of scores of trees,
crushing the branches and hurting and
upheaving the trunks by the roots.
Some of them were snapped off near
the tops of their trunks. One after an
other fell SO fast that before it could be
realized the park of treesa had been con-
verted into thicket made almost inn
penetrable by the partially hidden trunks
and great mounds of earth that had been
thrown up by the trees. The trees creak-
ed and groaned as they fell.
Some of them had proudly reared their
heads for nearly half centurp and had
firmly held their ground as they battled
hundreds of times with the elements.
Like grizzIed warriors bearing the scars
of conflict they went down before the
sudden onslaught, throwing entrench-
ments of earth before them and hundreds
of people peering through the windows
OF the four rows of residences overlook
ing the park from. it's four sides, groaned
with the trees as they fell. The trees had
sheltered them in their infancy and had
sheltered their childrn.
The beautiful park was in ruins, razed
as though it had been the target of the
artillery of allied armies, and when the
city's corps of woodmen with saws and
axes came from the Street and Water
Department to cut away the debris no one
had heart to laugh as the man mis-
quoted:-
'4Woodman, spare that tree. In youth it
sheltered me, and I'll protect it now!"
The storm coming from the southwest
after leaving Greenville and Lafayette
carrying desolation in it's tracks swept
over the top of the big fiat in Jersey
avenue, opposite the Palma Club building,
erected by the late DR.. Rae and owned
now by James Clark, dismantled its roof,
threw tower from the front and blew it
as far as Jersey avenue and York street,
nearly a hundred yards; ripped up the
tin roof of the Union League Club build
ing with terrific fury upon the park.
The only occupants of the park at the
time were Policeman Gus" Martin and
Patrick Leonard, one of the parkkeepers.
The other keeper, Patrick Flaherty, had
but shortly before been relieved by Leon
ard. The rain had been falling in tor
rents, sent with the advent of the
cyclone it was driven in sheets. Leonard
took refuge in the little yellow shanty,
midway in the park on the Montgomery
street side.
Martin, the policeman, clad in rubber
coat and boots, was leaning against the
iron rail that surrounded the fountain,
and saw the cyclone approaching-tha is,
through the cloud of pelting rain, drops
as big as marbles, he saw the tin roofs
of the houses on the York street side be-
ing ripped, the tin coverings buckled and
flying in dark cloud against trees that
were falling in the wake of the storm. Fl
was in the very teeth of the monster.
He, too, made for the shanty. The
wind helped him along 1t was about to
blow him past but he is of salwart
build and strong as an OK. He caught
hold of the door frame and yelled to
Leonard to open the door. Leonard had
seen his plight from the little square win
dow facing the park centre. He opened
the door and Martin crawled inside. When
the door was opened the blast blew opeE
the window on the Montgomery street
side. The little shanty, apparently the
weakest thing in the park, swayed and
rocked.
'If you ever had any prayers to say"
said Martin to the assistant park keeper,
"say them now
Both men were badly scared. A great
tree came crashing down near them. But
while the duration of the storm seemed
ages to both the storm lifted and with a
road swept upward and beyond to the
north, ripping up the roof coverings of
the block of the northern side with
crash and passed on.
The policeman, amid the fallen trees,
had, from a window of the shanty, seen
man crossing the park diagonally from
Montgomery street to York street and
Jersey avenue. His danger over he made
his way as rapidly as possible through the
debris of the park in the direction the
man had taken. Finding no trace Of him
he wended his way back, went to the
Gregory street station, and with bated
breath and right arm lifted, said
Sergeant, / am sorry to report that Van
Worst Park is out of commission
Bricks from the shattered upper walls
of the Rea flats were hurled with force
against the roof of No. 4aS Jersey avenue,
riddling it with holes. Every roof on the
block on York street facting the park, e1-
cept three, two on one end and one on the
other, were partially unroofed and the
| block of houses overlooking the park from
Montgomery street met with the same
fate.
The roof Of the handsome Publ Library