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At 12:01 PM on Thursday, September 16, 1920, a large explosion went off in the heart of America’s financial industry.
30 people were killed instantly, another eight people died later from wounds, and 150 others were seriously injured.
No one was ever brought to justice for this attack, leading people to wonder who the culprit or culprits are to this day.
Learn about the 1920 Wall Street bombing on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
In the late 19th and early 20th century, violent attacks by anarchists were becoming commonplace. They targeted heads of state like U.S. President William McKinley, as well as symbols of bourgeois society, like the French Chamber of Deputies, which was the victim of a bombing in 1893.
These violent anarchists were part of a radical fringe of the anarchist movement.
Anarchism rejects coercive hierarchies, especially the state, and favors voluntary cooperation and self-governance. Anarchists generally argue that society can be organized through decentralized communities, mutual aid, and freely formed associations rather than centralized authority.
Many anarchists view capitalism as an evil system that operates off of threatened coercion. They believe that private property and wage labor exploit the workers and the masses.
Anarchists at the time also promoted what was known as “propaganda of the deed”, a type of direct action intended to influence public opinion. The idea is that a person’s action serves as an example for others to follow.
This is most commonly manifested in acts of violence. The theory is that people witnessing bombings and assassinations aimed at the state or the ruling class would be inspired to perpetuate this violence themselves, catalyzing social revolution.
Wall Street represents the pinnacle of American and global capitalism, corporate power, and the financial industry, all of which anarchists wanted to destroy.
Also, Wall Street had strong connections to the government. With the state’s involvement in major financial firms, anarchists believed the state showed how deeply intertwined it was with capitalism.
For many anarchists, this connection was a political threat, as financial power translates into political control. With that political control, financial firms could influence policymaking, completely neutralizing the country’s democratic systems.
At noon on September 16, 1920, a horse-drawn wagon passed crowds on Wall Street and stopped across the street from J.P. Morgan and Co. Bank.
Located at 23 Wall Street, the bank sat on the Financial District’s busiest corner. Around lunchtime, many people left work for their break, making it a perfect target.
Inside the horse-drawn wagon were 100 pounds of dynamite and 500 pounds of cast-iron sash window weights. These weights were designed to act as shrapnel, to injure as many people as possible. These were set to explode on a timer, sending the weights tearing through the air.
When the explosion went off at 12:01, the horse and the wagon were obliterated; however, the driver escaped the vehicle unharmed.
There were 30 people who were killed immediately, and 8 more died of their injuries later on. Most of these fatalities were young people who worked as brokers, clerks, stenographers, and messengers. These were not the high-level power brokers on Wall Street. The victims were common, regular people who just happened to have jobs on Wall Street.
143 people suffered serious injuries, and hundreds more had minor injuries.
In addition to its impact on the public, the bomb caused $2 million in damage in 1920s money. This was equivalent to $32.1 million today. The bomb also destroyed most of the interior of the JP Morgan building.
In the minutes following the explosion, New York Stock Exchange President William H. Remnick suspended trading to prevent panic. Meanwhile, rescuers arrived at the scene, trying to transport the wounded to the hospital as quickly as possible.
One of the day’s heroes was James Saul, a 17-year-old messenger. He took control of a parked car and brought 30 people to a nearby hospital. Those at the scene did their best to help. Police officers arrived, providing first aid to the injured and turning nearby cars and other vehicles into emergency transport.
Following the explosion, officials began an investigation. Initially, it wasn’t obvious that it was an intentional act of terrorism. They explored the possibility that it was an accident.
They were suspicious that it might have been an accident because the explosion appeared to have no clear target. The nearby buildings had superficial, non-structural damage, leading investigators to suspect that something may have gone off accidentally.
The police contacted nearby businesses that had transported or sold explosives in the past.
While this was occurring, the board of governors of the New York Stock Exchange met around 3:30 PM. During that meeting, they decided it was okay to open for business the next day.
To allow business to resume, cleanup crews arrived overnight to remove the damage. By cleaning up the scene, they likely destroyed physical evidence that would have been crucial for investigators to identify the perpetrator and solve the crime.
The next morning, Wall Street returned to normal. The broken windows were draped in canvas, and many of the workers arrived in bandages, but everyone went back to functioning as normal.
While life for people working on Wall Street appeared normal, the New York police, fire departments, Secret Service, and the Bureau of Investigation, the precursor to the FBI, worked to solve the crime. Each group pursued leads, interviewing hundreds of people who had been in the area before, during, and after the explosion.
Despite the extensive interviews, they found little information of value. Those who saw the driver in the wagon had essentially useless information.
The only real progress came from the New York Police Department, which was able to reconstruct the bomb and the fuse mechanism. However, knowing the bomb’s construction did little to narrow down who could’ve done it, as all the materials were commonly available.
The New York district attorney believed that, due to the timing, location, and method of the explosion, the target was Wall Street generally and JP Morgan in particular.
Because the bomb was packed full of shrapnel and was set off during the lunch hour, investigators determined that it was highly likely that the purpose of the explosion was to cause as many casualties as possible.
The investigation focused on radical groups in the US, such as Bolsheviks, communists, militant socialists, and anarchists.
Officials eventually concluded that anarchists were at fault for the Wall Street bombing. The media framed the attack as an act of war, and it led to a more intense effort by federal investigators and the police to track the activities of foreign radicals.
Suspicion toward anarchists grew as the investigation continued. One of the best leads came from a letter carrier who found four printed flyers in the area before the explosion. The flyers were put up by a group known as the “American Anarchist Fighters,” who were demanding that political prisoners be released.
After investigators heard about the flyers, their suspicion that the explosion was purposeful was further confirmed. Investigators concluded that the anarchist group flyers and the explosion were highly unlikely to have been a coincidence.
Investigators attempted to follow every lead possible. This included attempting to locate the owner of the stable where the horse came from. They also went to blacksmiths and asked for any information they might have about the horse or the cart.
Despite this, the case stalled. Even though there were occasional arrests, no indictment was ever issued. There was suspicion that the bombing could be connected to an earlier campaign carried out by Italian anarchists. Suspicion fell on an Italian anarchist named Luigi Galleani and his followers.
The members were known as Galleanists, who were a group of militant Italian immigrants who believed that destroying government and capital systems would be best done through immediate violent action.
They were previously suspected in a series of package bombs in 1919 that were sent to politicians and businessmen.
The investigators eventually settled on another Italian Immigrant as their primary suspect: Mario Buda.
Buda was arrested for robbery and murder, and is suspected by many historians to be the man who is most likely to have planted the bomb. They believed that Buda may have committed the bombing in revenge.
Buda was a close associate of two other Italian anarchists, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, who had just been arrested for murder a few months before. Buda, wanting to free his associates and frustrated by the authorities, may have channeled that frustration into a bomb.
Buda’s prospects as the perpetrator were further bolstered by known associates and family members. Suspicion of Buda increased after his nephew made statements confirming his involvement. Additionally, other known anarchists made statements in 1955 about his propensity for developing bombs, and claimed that he was likely the culprit.
Anarchists said that Buda had previous experience using dynamite and other explosives. He was also known to use Sash weight in his bombs. He was also believed to have been the main constructor of several of the largest package bombs used the previous year. However, the police never arrested or questioned him.
Buda actually went back to Italy and never returned to the United States. However, many Galleanists still resided in the United States and continued to attempt bombing and assassination plots for the next 12 years.
Despite heavy suspicion of Buda and the Galleanists, no one was ever formally identified as the bomber by the police.
Despite never finding out who was responsible for the 1920 Wall Street bombing, there were still wide-reaching impacts.
Its most immediate legacy was to intensify the First Red Scare. The bombing seemed to confirm widespread fears that anarchists, communists, and other radicals posed a violent threat to the United States.
It reinforced public support for aggressive government measures already underway, including deportations, surveillance, raids on radical organizations, and tighter restrictions on immigration.
The attack also contributed to the development of modern American counterterrorism and domestic intelligence practices. Federal and local authorities expanded efforts to track political radicals, share information, infiltrate organizations, and investigate ideological violence. These efforts eventually became part of the broader institutional growth of the Bureau of Investigation, the predecessor of the FBI.
The attack began to change anarchists’ attitude towards Terrorism, as they realised it didn’t advance the goals of their movement. If anything, it backfired spectacularly.
Damage from the explosion is still visible on the facade of 23 Wall Street, the former J.P. Morgan headquarters, today. The marks were deliberately left unrepaired, making a physical testament to the events of September 16, 1920.
The Wall Street bombing of 1920 remains one of the biggest unsolved acts of terrorism in American history. It killed dozens, injured hundreds, deepened the fears of the First Red Scare, and helped justify a broader government crackdown on political radicals.