New-York tribune., 1911-11-16
TREE FALLS IN CITY
HALL PARK; 8 HURT
Woman's Warning Scream Saves
Many Pedestrians from Injury
as Big Maple Topples.
PANIC CALLS OUT RESERVES
Noise of Crash and Rumor of
Fatalities Draw Big Crowd,
Though Bridge Rush Is Over
Cause, Excavations.

One of the two ancient naples that
have for so many years sturdily held
their ground in the central grass plot on
the Park Row side of City Hall slipped
it's moorings last evening, and without
so much as the groaning Of a single root
fell with a crash to the sidewalk into the
midst of a crowd of scurrying pedes-
trians Three persons were knocked
down and injured so badly that they had
to be taken to the hospital. and scores of
others missed injury only by virtue of a
good deal of luck and a vigorous scram-
bic into the street.
The injured were Mrs. Catherine Sui
Ivan. forty-five years old. of No. 491
Pearl street, who was bruised about the
chest Ralph W. Carroll a clerk, fifty
one years old, of No. 205 West 103d
street. who got a deep cash on the head,
and his eleven-year-old son, Ralph.
whose right ankle was badly sprained.
All three We're put into ambulances and
hurried TO the Hudson Street Hospital.
The accident occurred just as the very
last struggling crowds of the rush hours
were making for the subways and the
bridge. The bootblacks and news ped
lers whose stands decorate the south
fence of the park at that point had
locked up their establishments and gone,
and luckily there was no congestion at
that point to impede the crowd into
h. fot -, h.; oIx
for safety. The single warning was the
high keyed scream of a woman. who in
passing looked up and saw the great
maple shuddering and swaying above
her. Men, women and children took one
look upward and then struggled to get
into the street, which they reached just
as a deafenng crashing Of limbs and a
rain of twigs and branches fell about
their ears.
The noise of the fall of the giant could
mob of a thousand excited persons
gathered. At the point where the tree fell
the park is badly lighted. In the ex-
citement, intensified by shouts that some
one was killed, one young man kept his
head. He was John H. Hall, of No. JO1
West 155th street, and he dved into the
broken tangle of limbs near the fence and
began pulling out the three persons who
Law on the sidewalk. Several patrolmen
from the City Hall station arrived in
time to assist in the work of removing
the injured.
The continual gathering of bigger
crowds had packed humanity so densey
about the fence that Lieutenant Kelley,
of the City Hall station, sent i'm a call
for the reserves. Thirty men under
Lieutenant Kenney, of the Elizabeth
street station. responded, and the Jam
was soon broken up and the curious dis
persed. With the exception of those
taken to the hospital no one could he
found who was hurt.
The tree that caused all the trouble.
one of the oldest in the park. was
a maple. nearly sixty feet in height, and
was planted long before the remem-
brance Of City Halls oldest attache.
With its mate, which still stands, few
yards back toward the hall, it was one OF
the few remaining veterans of the park.
1t appeared to he in a healthy condi-
tion.
The police think that the excavations
that have been carried on i'm the street a
few Yards distant near the elevated en-
trance to the bridge may have weakened
the old trees grip and brought about it's
downfall A crew of woodchoppers were
put on the Job half an hour after the ac-
cident and they quickly cleared away
the debris.