Manhattan. Afternoon of October 1st, 1927. The Rusto (pronounced ROOS-TOE ) Fault Line that crosses through the main island begins to rumble beneath the street of East Harlem.
Marcus Ghast, a brilliant and wealthy inventor inspired by out-of-the-box scientific minds Nikola Tesla and Henry Sutton, notices the tremors on his homemade sensors in his home at the lower end of Manhattan. By evening, Ghast makes a note of the unusual seismic activity but continues to ready himself for an appointment on his hot air balloon at 8PM. He had agreed to an interview inside his personal travel balloon with a young Irish reporter, J.J. Haines from The New York Patriot, a small but earnest three-man newspaper company near Hell’s Kitchen.
Ghast’s fortune was acquired by placing patents on two intricate vacuum tubes for light bulbs on military boats. In 1927, he had become obsessed with the innovation of aircraft and began working on a variety of experiments, including steam-operated ‘jettison packs’ and safer hot air balloons with better control.
With World War I a decade passed, many pondered the future of warfare, and Ghast correctly assumed combat planes would become a game changer in the next ‘Great War’.
For the next three hours, small but aggressive rumbles cause minor property damages throughout Harlem and the Upper East Side i.e. windows break from their frames, home decor on shelves and walls shatter, and several dilapidated structures begin to fall apart. Ghast’s Houston Street sensors on the other side of the city run out of ink and paper to scribble the valleys and peaks of an incoming disaster.
Concern grows as night sets in. Policemen and firefighters are summoned in droves to investigate and assist with possible bomb threats and a few historical yet dilapidated houses that collapsed in Lenox Hill—leaving much of Harlem and the Upper East Side abandoned by first responders.
The eastern half of New York City shakes in quick bursts as the chilly night goes on—from East Harlem, the fault line ran almost parallel with 3rd Avenue, ending at the outskirts of Chinatown at Canal and Elizabeth Street.
The city is on edge. It just doesn’t know it yet.
The great eastern quake of 1927
Colorized portrait of Marcus Ghast and wife, Eula in 1925 (age 32)
The pulverized condition of 3rd Avenue's buildings, several of which had stood since the 18th century. Over 800 were lost in the avenue's destruction.
NYC skyline right after quake by reporter Jerod John Haines-- luckily in a hot air balloon while interviewing eccentric inventor and stock broker, Marcus Ghast.
J.J. Haines' aerial photo southbound on the Upper East Side, heavy damage to weak cores of the buildings not meant to withstand earthquakes
A destroyed carriage near the collapsed 'Werner's Felts' Store in Little Germany in East Village
At 9:35PM, J.J. Haines and Marcus Ghast have finished up a joyous interview two hundred feet above the city, with Haines running through three notebook pads of notes, quotes, and side comments on Ghast’s optimistic, but impossible plans to remake New York City as a beacon of technological prowess.
At 9:42PM, the Rusto Fault Line shatters more than six miles below the surface, sending a powerful wave of energy through the streets, the buildings, and the helpless New Yorkers.
MAGNITUDE: 7.2— more than two hundred people in Harlem are killed in the midst of the twenty-two second quake.
The famed Regent Hall Theater that played Charlie Chaplin film premieres and had stood since the last century burned to rubble in a matter of hours due to a leak in the gas line. Thanks to the efforts of Regent Hall staff and their outward-sway double doors, no one was killed in the destructive inferno. By midnight, only cinders of the cinema Mecca would remain.
Ghast and J.J. Haines would become accidental but valuable reporters of the Quake, providing aerial coverage of a vast urban disaster in real time like never before. Ghast and Haines would both receive keys to the city by the mayor Jimmy Walker
In 1930, Ghast would betray a growing political friendship between him and Walker, outing him in a corruption scandal spearheaded by then governor of New York, Franklin D. Roosevelt
In all, the New York State Department counted 3,549 deaths and over 6,800 injured or severely wounded.
The quake triggered the immediate panic and subsequent crash of the United States Stock Market, as Wall Street was now cluttered by the debris of several small buildings that held fire for multiple days following the quake.
Thousands country-wide lose their jobs overnight as several corporations held offices in New York, with records and paper money destroyed or looted. America’s debt to the world at large threatens total financial ruin and chaos.
Later in history, the following day, October 2nd would be forever known as Sepia Sunday— the streets, skies, and people covered in a hazy brown murk among the stench of bodies and burning debris. The Great Depression’s logical start date begins here.
In the following months, Marcus Ghast prepared a near-manic overview of a newly revitalized New York with towering skyscrapers like a “Siberian treeline” that curved over electric railway lines, breathtaking fantasy-based architecture inspired by the works of German expressionism— riding on the incoming artistic French art style ‘Art Deco’. Newfound fame gave him the political thrust he needed to see his vision of an unforgettable city forged to life. As lovers of history know, in the years following the Depression, Marcus Ghast would obtain more than could have ever bargained for.
In 2027, on the 100th-year anniversary of the New York Quake, a memorial was erected at the site of the demolished Shandy Hotel where black doctor Henry Rutter and his two sons personally saved the lives of hundreds after convincing the hotel manager to make the first two floors makeshift hospitals. Henry Rutter died in bankruptcy and the suffered loss of his personal practice in 1938 and the death of his older son in 1941 to influenza. But the Rutter Memorial Fund’s bronze statue of Rutter (holding a roll of bandages in his right hand while clutching a small, battered child with his left arm amongst rubble) serves as a reminder to the heroes soon to be forgotten by time, no matter how great the tragedy.
Rubble of the burnt-down Regent Hall Theater (est. 1898) and wandering crowds of homeless
Young New Yorkers observe the gutted remains of a two-story shoppe in Yorkville
'Fog of Tragedy' photo taken by William T. Jenkins along Park Avenue and 34th Street, night after the quake
The newly homeless congregate in ruins of Lenox Hill for food and shelter, 3 days after
Marcus Ghast's balloon view the day after, pencil drawing from memory
*In the current day, the Rusto Fault Line lies dormant. For now…