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The Broadway Bomb: 200 skateboarders have a death wish on Saturday
Published on 10/10/08
Published on 9/30/08
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Best remembered as the spot where George Washington bade farewell to his troops, Fraunces Tavern, 54 Pearl Street at Broad Street, has seen plenty of catastrophes over the its 289-year history: A cannonball burst through the roof in 1775 (courtesy of the HMS Asia), several fires caused serious structural damage in the 1830s and Zagat zinged it with less-than-stellar ratings in the 1990s. But one of the most tragic chapters in the storied saloon’s past occurred on January 24, 1975, when a bomb tore through the main dining room, killing four patrons and injuring more than 50 others. (The explosive device had been placed near an unused exit next door, at the Anglers and Tarpon Club.) There were no immediate suspects, but a few months later the Puerto Rican nationalist group Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional (FALN) took credit for the incident in a communique left at a nearby phone booth. While FALN was linked to more than 100 terrorist bombings in the 1970s and ’80s—including assaults on Foley Square and One Police Plaza—no one was ever prosecuted for the tavern attack.
—Erin Clements
