The Lion in Summer

This past July was the warmest on record after two heat waves, but the 10-day heat wave that scorched New york in 1896 could have the distinction of doing something far more historic: putting Teddy Roosevelt in the White house.

Of course, plenty of other factors helped Roosevelt in his political career, and his success cannot be attributed solely to the weather. But, as Edward P. Kohn asserts in his new book, Hot Time in the Old Town: The Great Heat Wave of 1896 and the Making of Theodore Roosevelt, the Rough Rider’s nearly unprecedented actions during the New york City heat wave exemplified his progressive ideology—one that later became increasingly popular in the city and beyond.

Kohn is currently a professor at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey, and in his book he focuses on the convergence of three entities: the deadly heat, Roosevelt and William Jennings Bryan. The 1896 Democratic presidential nominee who had arrived in New York City during the height of the heat wave, Bryan gave a disastrous speech that may have cost him the presidency. He later lost the election to Republican William McKinley.

Kohn says the book idea came to him while he was studying Roosevelt’s early political career and found a letter from Roosevelt to his sister Anna that mentioned the heat wave and Bryan’s failed speech. The convergence of those two things interested him, he said, so he decided to look at the interplay between them and Roosevelt, whose political horizons were quickly expanding beyond the city limits.

The 1896 heat wave killed nearly 1,500 people in New York City and was particularly fatal among—per usual for natural disasters—workers and the poor. From August 4 to August 14, temperatures stayed well above 90 degrees, with heat index numbers surpassing 100. In the tenements of the Lower East Side, where residents often had no access to light, air or water, temperatures sometimes exceeded 120 degrees.

“This is perhaps the greatest forgotten natural disaster in American history,” Kohn says.

Hot Time in the Old Town describes the desperate measures that New Yorkers took to stay cool, including the dangerous (and sometimes deadly) acts of sleeping on rooftops, window ledges and piers. But it also humanizes the victims of the heat by giving short profiles of some of those who died, from infants to laborers to the elderly.

Some of the saddest passages describe families who lost several members within days—or even hours—of each other.

Unfortunately, the city bureaucrats were largely unresponsive to the crisis. The mayor called an emergency meeting of the department heads a week into the heat wave, when it was nearly over. Although some city officials responded individually to the crisis, only two took substantial action: Department of public Works Commissioner Charles Collis—who hosed down the city streets and adjusted the workday so that workers did not have to labor during the hottest hours—and police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt.

Roosevelt himself actually spent the height of the heat wave on his family’s estate on Long Island, an act that casts a bit of a pall over his heroism and reinforces the fact that for all his populism, he was still very much an aristocrat. But before he left the city on Aug. 10, 1896, Roosevelt had ordered police wagons to perform duties like transporting the sick to hospitals and carting away the dead horses that were quickly filling the streets. On August 14, he supervised the distribution of free ice to city residents. Minor by today’s standards, perhaps, but these actions represented what was a fairly radical idea back then—government responsibility for social welfare.

“Having the city government purchase tons of ice and then give it away—this is unprecedented in New York City history. You don’t give food away. You don’t give ice away to the poor,” Kohn says.

Bryan, in addition to Roosevelt and the omnipresent heat, is the third major character in the book. A lawyer and politician hailing from Nebraska, Bryan had come to New York to win over urban voters and political leaders, who were at odds with him on several major issues, chiefly economic ones. It didn’t help matters that Bryan had called New York “the enemy’s country” shortly before he departed for it.

Bryan and Roosevelt were both populists, albeit very different ones. Bryan represented the people of agrarian, Western America, whereas Roosevelt— despite his later cowboy affectations—was largely an advocate for city dwellers.

“[Roosevelt] always referred to himself as a New Yorker, and when you look at his politics, he is an urban progressive. He was interested in urban reform and civil service reform. He’s not interested in Western populism, like William Jennings Bryan.

He’s not interested in agrarian issues or the farmer. I think it’s his New York background, including his time during the heat wave, that helped shape his politics and the presidency,” Kohn explains.

Ultimately, Roosevelt’s contact with the poor of New York both before, during and after the heat wave influenced many of his later progressive policies as governor of New York, and even as president.

“I think one of the biggest [progressive causes] that came out of the heat wave was housing reform—tenement reform. And Roosevelt while he was governor championed this as well—the idea that the government is responsible for housing… I think there’s a direct line between Roosevelt’s contact with the poor and him being this great champion of housing reform,” Kohn says.

Roosevelt was not the only politician to support housing reform. Within a few years, New York City passed laws requiring new buildings to have windows, running water, and fire safeguards, among other features.

“Within a very short period of time you have this acceptance of the government’s responsibility at the city level, the state level, and the federal level, to do something. And that something includes taking care of the nation’s most vulnerable people,” Kohn says. “And that’s who the victims of the heat wave were: the poorest, most vulnerable people in New York City.”

Hot Time in the Old Town: The Great Heat Wave of 1896 and the Making of Theodore Roosevelt by Edward p. Kohn, 304 pages, Basic Books, $27.95. ------

Kohn will be discussing his book and the 1896 heat wave at the Tenement Museum, Aug. 12, at 6:30.