Actually, the protest included several women including Mrs. Lorraine Ruprecht who was an art director and the first female to don a mask and Blaise Recca, a production manager for a publishing firm who made the placard. Other commuters who wore a gas-mask included a Greenburgh councilman, a Wall Street broker, an electrical engineer and various others who worked in the insurance and publishing fields.
When the train reached the station, the gas-masked commuters boarded the train from the snow-swept station where they were subsequently joined by two college students from Briarcliff Manor who joined in the uprising and donned gas-masks. Later that evening, the group wore their gas-masks on the return trip home.
What was this gas-masked brigade event all about?
As explained in several newspaper accounts of the event, the Ardsley commuters (who resided in Ardsley, Dobbs Ferry, Greenburgh and other nearby towns) were objecting to the gasoline engine powered trains the railroad was using on its Putnam Division runs whose fumes made the riders nauseous. Heat was provided by a coal burning stove which added to the misery of the railroad's irate customers.
As reported in the February 6, 1939 edition of The New York Times under an article entitled "Gas Mask Brigade to Invade Trains," the train invasion was part of a plan to embarrass the railroad into providing steam trains as was done on the earlier "Workers' Special" which left at 8:02 a.m.
As we get set for the upcoming Wednesday, February 10, 2016 second scoping session on The Jefferson which begins at 7:30 pm at Greenburgh Town Hall, let us recall our Ardsley forerunners who stood up seventy seven years ago in February (see picture below) to oppose the gasoline powered machinery of that era as we are doing in 2016 by opposing JPI/TDI's Auto-Oriented Development on Lawrence Street with its 438 parking spaces.
Despite their attempt to spin their 272 unit development as beneficial for our community, JPI/TDI cannot mask the truth that their project is, as the Village of Hastings on Hudson recently indicated in its comments to the proposed scoping document, not only too large by a factor of 300%, but, one that guarantees further burdening of the already strained Saw Mill River Parkway. In a word, the project, as proposed, just like the Putnam Division's 8:31 a.m. gasoline powered train, stinks!
