Gilded Age · event 12 of 14

12 March 1888

The Great Blizzard. Forty inches of snow and hurricane-force winds bury the city for days, bringing down every telegraph and telephone wire and stopping all surface transport. The disaster wins the long-running argument for putting the railways underground and the wires below street level.

The Gilded Age era

  1. 30 April 1789
  2. 1799
  3. 1811
  4. 26 October 1825
  5. 16 December 1835
  6. 14 October 1842
  7. 1845
  8. 1857
  9. 13 July 1863
  10. 24 May 1883
  11. 28 October 1886
  12. 12 March 1888
  13. 1 January 1892
  14. 1 January 1898

See the full timeline or read the history of New York.