Remembering the 1926 Farmers Bank Building Bombing

A policeman examines a mangled teller's cage

This year marks the 100th anniversary of one of the most remarkable events to rock downtown Pittsburgh-- the bombing of the iconic Farmers Bank Building on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Wood Street by an eccentric would-be robber from Wisconsin with a shadowy past. What follows are eyewitness accounts of the explosion, the heroic exploits of ordinary citizens, and the strange investigation which almost led to an erroneous identification of the culprit.

Shortly after three o'clock on the Tuesday afternoon of August 24, 1926, a thundering explosion rattled buildings and pedestrians alike on Pittsburgh's Fifth Avenue. It was a busy afternoon in the heart of the Steel City's downtown, and the blast sent thousands scurrying in every direction. Some dashed blindly into the nearest shop or office building, others ran madly into the streets. Still others, attracted to the scene by ear-piercing screams, raced toward the billowing smoke desperate to discover the cause of the mayhem. What they saw after they elbowed their way through the hysterical crowd was a bare space in front of the 25-story Farmers Bank Building on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Wood Street, and three people lying in a concrete and asphalt field of splintered glass.

At one end of the clearing a woman could be seen leaning on a young man for support as blood streamed from her face. She too a few wobbly steps then slumped to the sidewalk, where she was grabbed by several strangers who rushed her into a taxi which sped away toward the nearest hospital. Meanwhile, other men and women tottered beneath the building's facade like sleepy children, dazed, not yet aware of the cuts and gashes inflicted by flying glass. One man was seen emerging from the bank, bleeding profusely, his suit torn to ribbons, while a young girl exited the building, unaided and alone, her face unrecognizable beneath a mask of blood and matted hair. An acrid ammonia-like odor lingered in the air.

Police quickly arrived on the scene, just as two of the bodies on the ground staggered to their feet. They, too, were ushered into cabs by unknown hands as the piercing wail of sirens cut through the thick, grey veil of smoke and confusion. Ambulances and fire trucks lined up along Fifth Avenue and Wood Street, and several stretchers were taken into the smoke-filled lobby of the bank. By now, police had managed to restore some semblance of order as the shrieking chaos turned to murmuring confusion.

But out of the confusion arose one fact that no one could dispute: A bomb had been set off inside the Farmers Deposit Savings Bank.

Witnesses Describe Horror

Charles Kammer, a 27-year-old Sharpsburg resident, was walking down Fifth Avenue when the explosion occurred. The force of the blast hurled him against the Grand Theater building. "In front of me the people were knocked to the pavement, machines bumped in the street and glass was flying like rain," he recalled. "Getting within viewing distance of the bank lobby, I saw a man lying face down on the floor. Police did not hesitate to pick him up, supposing him dead, and rushed over his body to carry others to safety. The man at the door was covered in blood and his skull appeared crushed."

Kammer said that he saw men running around inside the bank with revolvers, gathering money that had been strewn about. And as the smoke cleared, he noticed several more bodies on the floor. "it was the most gruesome sight one could imagine," he declared.

James A. Lynch, superintendent of the Cameo Theater Building, was the first pedestrian to enter the bank after the blast. "In the corridor I saw seven bodies gruesomely strewn over the floor," said Lynch. "The smoke was pouring out the doors in dense clouds. Getting down on my hands and knees I crawled in to investigate."

The first body he encountered was that of a man whose clothing had been ripped to shreds. Lynch rolled him over and saw that his face was covered in blood. "Apparently he met the explosion full force," he stated. "His head was crushed." Lynch dragged the man into the street and flagged down an automobile, which took him to the hospital. The victim turned out to be George Conrad Ortmann, a 52-year-old police officer employed by the bank. Ortmann died just moments after arriving at Mercy Hospital.

George Ortmann

Lynch went back into the bank and assisted in carrying four more victims outside and into waiting ambulances. When he went back in for the last time, he ran into a shell-shocked bank employee who was pointing the muzzle of a revolver at him with extremely shaky hands. Fortunately, a police officer took the weapon from the bank employee and escorted him to the street. 

"He would have shot with least pretext," remarked Lynch. "Money was scattered everywhere. The floor was literally strewn with bank notes and silver... Scooping the money into their arms these two men and three cashiers carried thousands of dollars into the vault. No one attempted to interfere with the gathering of the money."

One of the most interesting eyewitness accounts came from Fred Fischer or McCandless Avenue. Fischer and his wife had gone into the dime store directly across the street from the bank, and while his wife was still inside checking out a counter display, Fischer opened the door to leave, only to step into the shockwave of the explosion.

"I was struck full on the face with a tremendous rush of air," he recalled. "The bank building seemed to raise about a foot. Then came the explosion, which was indescribably loud. My head almost burst."

 At that point, Fischer saw a middle-aged man dressed in a dark blue suit run out of the bank carrying a small black satchel. Unfortunately, Fischer leaped into action to provide aid to a young woman bleeding from a head wound before he could see where the mysterious man had gone.

"Before the explosion there was a dark sedan parked in front of the bank entrance. When I next looked across the street, the car had gone."

Detectives gathering statements outside the bank

The Teller's Tale

The Farmers National Bank was busy that afternoon when a man carrying a black satchel walked up to the teller's window and thrust a note into the hands of P.L. Adams, which read: "Please give me $2,000 or I'll blow the bank up." Adams called over a vice president, M.A. Kendall, who stalled for time by referring the stranger to the Farmers Deposit Savings Bank, which was located on the east side of the building. Kendall sounded a silent alarm as the robber crossed the corridor, attracting the attention of bank policemen George Ortmann and Albert Anderson. The officers, accompanied by Kendall and assistant cashier, J.L. Luther, followed the man as he approached the window of paying teller Everett Jones. Once again, the man pushed the note under the window.

When Jones received the note he looked up, into the face of a man he described as a foreigner with a seemingly calm demeanor but a strange glimmer in his eyes. "Just a moment while I call the vice president," said Jones to the robber. While he moved toward the phone Jones signaled a teller in the next cage, John Brogan, to keep the man calm with conversation.

"Will I get the money?" asked the robber.

"Sure you will," replied Brogan reassuringly while making eye contact with Officer Ortman, who was hovering in the background. The robber grew nervous and said that the teller was taking too long. "The vice president is probably busy on another line," assured Brogan. "Don't worry. Two thousand dollars is a mere trifle to this bank."

But now something changed. The robber's composure started to slip. He began fidgeting, and Brogan later stated that the robber must've seen Ortmann approaching from his peripheral vision. He jumped like a fear-crazed animal as Ortmann reached out, though it will never be known if the officer was reaching out for the robber or the black satchel that was in his hand. An insane laugh echoed through the bank, just a moment before the bomb exploded.

Police gathered this pile of clothing blown from the bodies of the victims

Forewarned by an Ursine Dream

In the confused minutes and hours after the explosion, rumors and stories circulated while authorities attempted to search for clues leading to the bomber's identity. Unfortunately for detectives, the detonation hadn't left much of the perpetrator; all that remained intact was the victim's torso and the one arm that was still attached to it. Everything else had been reduced to pulp.

Police interviewed dozens of witnesses, and were told that, just hours earlier, a man in a tan overcoat with similar features to the bomber had been seen acting strangely in another downtown bank. The man appeared "greatly befuddled" and was immediately accosted by guards, who led him out of the bank without resistance. It was never determined if this man had anything to do with the Farmers Deposit Savings Bank bombing, just as it'll never be known if the man Fred Fischer had seen step into a waiting automobile with a black satchel immediately before the blast played any role in the caper. In all likelihood, they were probably just two of the tens of thousands of ordinary individuals going about their day on August 24, 1926.

Some of those who were going about their day gave statements to the press that made for interesting stories. One such person was Rodger Smith, the star defenseman of the Pittsburgh Pirates (who had wrapped up their inaugural season in the NHL a few months earlier). Smith was in a restaurant across the street and was about to be served when the explosion occurred. "Before I realized what had happened, I was astonished to see the plate fly out of the waitress' hands and my meat order fly up and hit her in the face," he recalled. 

Rodger Smith, who played part of five seasons with the Pittsburgh Pirates

And, of course, there was at least one witness who had a premonition of impending doom. Bank solicitor E.L. Williams narrowly escaped injury, and it wasn't the first time he had come close to death's doorstep. According to Williams, each of these brushes with death occurred after having a dream of bears.

"Sunday night I again dreamed of bears and all day Monday I was uneasy," stated Williams. "So great a hold had the idea on my mind Monday that I awoke at five o'clock, which is very unusual for me." Monday and Tuesday morning passed uneventfully and Williams thought his "dream hoodoo", as he called it, was finally broken. Then came the explosion.

"I noticed the fellow with the bag talking to the teller, and it couldn't have been more than two minutes after I passed him before I heard a roar and felt myself falling. What else happened, I do not know-- I woke up in a taxicab."

Counting the Casualties

By Wednesday morning, the death toll stood at just two-- bank policeman Ortmann and the unidentified bomber. Sixteen persons had been taken to Mercy Hospital, where four remained in serious condition. Eight more had been taken to Allegheny General Hospital, where all but two victims were treated and released. 

That morning, the Pittsburgh Gazette-Times was the the first to offer a reward, in the amount of $1,000, for information leading to the bomber's identification. By Wednesday afternoon, authorities had only been able to find a few promising clues; a pocketwatch the bomber had been carrying, part of a homemade hernia truss the bomber had been wearing which had been made from the inner tube of a tire, and a phone number found in the bomber's pocket at the city morgue. The number, Homestead 2522-R, belonged to a contractor from Munhall named George Chili. Chili went to the morgue to view the body, but was unable to make an identification. 

The pocketwatch, however, held an interesting clue-- it had been stopped at 2:22, while George Ortmann's watch had been stopped at 3:16, which was the exact time of the explosion. Since Pittsburgh was outside the boundaries of Eastern Standard Time in 1926, this led detectives to believe that the perpetrator had come from east of Pittsburgh. The watch was turned over to Coroner McGregor while the investigation continued. Meanwhile, experts concluded that the bomb had been fashioned from fifty sticks of dynamite. With the bank as crowded as it was at the time of the blast, it is nothing short of miraculous that only two lives were lost.

Top Row: Ortmann, Rebecca Deakter, J.V. Brogan, Edward Williams. Bottom: Nicholas Carlo, Herbert Dodd, R.H. Grinley, C.E. Woods.

Identification Made, But Doubts Linger

Despite the lack of clues and the obliteration of the suspect, it was announced on Sunday, August 29, that an identification had been made from fingerprints obtained from the thumb and index finger of the perpetrator's right arm. The left arm, which had been mangled by the explosion, was unusable. The prints, which had been forwarded to the National Bureau of Identification in Washington, D.C., were determined to be those of William Chowick, an eccentric Russian-Pole criminal from Milwaukee who had served time at Waupun State Prison in Wisconsin for burglary. On multiple occasions he had also been confined to the Central Hospital for the Criminally Insane and other mental hospitals. Throughout Wisconsin, Chowick's antics were frequently chronicled by newspapers, who dubbed him the "Belfry Dweller" after he took up residence in the belltower of the Reformed Church in Juneau after escaping from a mental asylum.

Chowick was something of an enigma. He possessed an uncanny knack for tinkering with mechanical objects and was said to be able to take apart and fix the most complex watches in mere seconds. He was also an expert locksmith. The Dodge County (WI) Independent wrote, after his burglary arrest: No bolts or bars can hold him if he has any kind of material from which to fashion a key. Give him a piece of maple wood and a jack-knife and he can make a key to fit the most complicated lock in existence. But Chowick's real passion was perpetual motion; during his various terms of incarceration he worked in the prison's power plant, and he spent his free time making elaborate contrivances out of whatever material he could find, with the goal of breaking the laws of thermodynamics.

Chowick also holds the distinction of being the first prisoner in the history of Wisconsin to break in to prison. On September 8, 1920, Chowick's seven-year-sentence at Waupun expired. He returned a week later with a grappling hook and rope, scaled the walls, and demanded an audience with the assistant warden. "I have worked many years in the power plant of this penitentiary," he told the assistant warden. "I have almost completed a perpetual motion machine. If I am given two weeks more time I am sure I can solve the problem." 

Chowick was promptly committed to an insane asylum, and how, when, or why he came to Pittsburgh remains a mystery. However, about forty miles to the north in Ellwood City, Chief of Police M.J. Teater and Lieutenant Walter Reheiser believed they knew the answer. 

Chief Teater and Lieutenant Reheiser noticed that William Chowick's physical description closely matched that of a socialist anarchist they had been keeping tabs on in Lawrence County, a man named James Rabick. Like the bank bomber, Rabick was also a Russian-Pole of about 40 years of age, but, even more remarkably, Rabick also had a hernia and wore a homemade truss fashioned from the inner tube of a tire. Teaters and Reheiser had kept Rabick under surveillance after he had been heard threatening to blow up his enemies and espousing violent anarchist rhetoric in local I.W.W. circles, of which he claimed to be a member.

Facsimile of the robber's note

 
The Crackpot Anarchist

At the time of the Pittsburgh bank bombing, the Industrial Workers of the World, a Chicago-based labor union, was known for its radical socialist viewpoints. But, in Ellwood City, even other I.W.W. members found Rabick's statements a little too extreme for their liking. In the years leading up to the bombing of the Farmers Bank Building, "Wobblies" (as the members called themselves) had been executed for murder (Joe Hill of Utah, 1915); they had been tarred and feathered by vigilantes (the "Tulsa Outrage of 1917"); they had been lynched by angry mobs (Wesley Everett in Centralia, Washington, 1919) and dozens of their meeting halls had been raided by the federal government. By the late 1920s, after a schism had separated the more level-headed members from the militant rabble-rousers, the I.W.W. gained a large measure of respectability and the sympathy of blue-collar workers from Western Pennsylvania. 

Unfortunately for James Rabick, he found himself on the wrong side of the socialist aisle and it wasn't long before his unpopular opinions and peculiar statements aroused suspicion. When Lieutenant Reheiser and Chief of Police Teater traveled to the Pittsburgh morgue to view the remnants of the bombers shoes and clothing, they immediately recognized them, and declared that William Chowick and James Rabick were one and the same.

Virtually nothing was known of Rabick's early life. He was a stranger when he drifted into Ellwood City several years earlier and resided in an unfurnished attic in a boardinghouse at 100 Glen Avenue. Though he appeared to be able-bodied, he never bothered to seek employment and was often overheard making threats against his enemies, both real and imagined. Locals initially wrote Chowick off as a crackpot, but Chief of Police Teater had his concerns.

"He was a constant source of worry to me," said Teater. "I feared that he would get into some sort of trouble or cause death and destruction so I had him watched day and night... He was always talking about blowing up somebody or some place."

According to Teater, his patience wore thin. "Four weeks ago I ordered a policeman: 'Bring that bum to me.' I questioned him at length but he refused to give me a satisfactory explanation. I ordered him out of town. He was wearing identical clothing then, which I just examined at the morgue."

Described by Ellwood City residents as "the town half-wit", Rabick would beg members of the community for food, clothing and money-- and then threaten them with violence if their offerings weren't up to snuff. The owner of the boardinghouse eventually had enough and evicted Rabick from the property. Afterwards, he found shelter in a shed on the Krause farm, about a half mile from town. He was booted from the farm as well, and was known to bed down for the night any place with a flat surface to lay his head-- every front porch, outhouse or garage was fair game.

Yet Ellwood City Patrolman Roy King differed in his opinion of Rabick. He did not believe that the man was as unintelligent as everyone claimed. On the contrary, King believed he was very highly educated. Once, after getting booted from the attic on Glen Avenue, Rabick dropped by the police station to accuse his former benefactors of being moonshiners. The supposed half-wit wrote a very thorough and balanced report, much to the patrolman's surprise. "I'm a smart man, I am," he once told Patrolman King. "Nobody with brains has to work."

Perhaps, more than anything else, James Rabick was just as much an enigma as William Chowick. Though Rabick claimed to like Patrolman King, the patrolman happened to be cleaning out Rabick's cell after releasing him for a minor infraction and found a length of rubber hose filled with iron bolts. Rabick sheepishly admitted to the patrolman that he had planned to attack him with it.

Even Rabick's own family history was shrouded in mystery. In Ellwood City, he once told people that he was Russian. Or, at least, he had been Russian once. "Russians drink too much whiskey," he declared. "I don't like anyone who drinks whiskey. That's why I turned Polish." Just like William Chowick, no one knew anything about Rabick's early life, so it wasn't surprising that newspapers printed stories declaring that Rabick and Chowick were the same person.

But when a photograph of William Chowick finally arrived in Pittsburgh from authorities in Wisconsin, officials in Allegheny County weren't so certain.

William Chowick

The Great Debate

It was Pittsburgh homicide detective Peter Connors who wired Waupun State Prison for a photograph after experts in Washington identified the bomber's fingerprints.  By the time Chowick's photograph was located and mailed to Pittsburgh, it had already been reported that Chowick and Rabick were the same person, but when Ellwood City officials viewed the photograph, they were perplexed. Yes, there were striking similarities, but Chief Teater remembered that Rabick had a slight bald spot on the back of his head, while Chowick's photo showed a full head of hair. Nevertheless, Teater held tight to his belief that the Farmers Bank Building bomber was the same anarchist he had kicked out of Ellwood City. After all, what if the photo had been taken years earlier, before Rabick began losing his hair? And if they weren't the same person, where had Rabick gone?

On the other hand, five bank employees immediately recognized Chowick's photo and signed affidavits declaring him the man who had detonated the explosion. This was enough for Coroner McGregor, who officially declared that the remains being held in the city morgue were those of William Chowick, and that was the name that, for legal purposes, would be attached to the dead man.

Yet, the controversy didn't end there. On August 31, Ellwood City officials claimed that they had uncovered new evidence that would irrefutably prove that Rabick was the bomber. According to Chief Teater, Rabick had once confided to a former landlord that, before emigrating to America, he had fought in the Russian Army and that his area of expertise was making bombs. Furthermore, Rabick had been briefly employed digging a tunnel for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad-- a job that gave him access to dynamite. But the big piece of evidence was that witnesses from Ellwood City said that Rabick, though able-bodied, walked with a peculiar limp which caused him to occasionally drag the instep of his right heel. The shoes which the bank bomber had been wearing showed unusual wear in exactly the same spot.

The Ellwood City home where Rabick lived, as it appears today.

 

Landlord Explodes Theory

Feodosi Loss, proprietor of the boardinghouse on Glen Avenue, and the man to whom Rabick had bragged of his military service, traveled to Pittsburgh to view the photograph of William Chowick. Much to the consternation of Ellwood City police, Loss declared that the man from Milwaukee was not the same man who had lived in his attic. 

However, when questioned about Rabick's shoes, Loss' description perfectly matched the brown shoes the bomber had been wearing on the day of the attempted robbery, right down to the scuffs and the tell-tale wear pattern of the soles. While Pittsburgh authorities no longer believed that Rabick and Chowick were the same person, they were at a complete loss to account for the uncanny coincidences of the brown shoes and homemade hernia truss. But, as fate would have it, the landlord remembered what little Rabick had told him of his early life, and this seemed to finally put the debate to rest.

According to Loss, he had considered James Rabick a friend for several years, before their relationship soured (Rabick had apparently tried to attack him with a cane). He said that Rabick arrived in New York from Russia in 1912 and that he had known him nearly the entire time he was in Pennsylvania. Since there was a long paper trail of William Chowick's life during that period-- numerous arrests and incarcerations and mental hospital commitments-- Rabick and Chowick could not have been the same person.  

Yet, when considering the peculiar coincidences, the eccentricities and personality quirks and the physical similarities, you inevitably wonder if there might not be a family connection. After all, both men had likely originated from the same homeland (Poland didn't regain its independence from Russia until 1918), and had wandered their new country until arriving in the Pittsburgh region. Was it a family connection that had led them here? Or were the similarities just a crazy series of coincidences?

Unanswered Questions 

Unfortunately, not much is known about the period of William Chowick's life between his departure from Wisconsin and his arrival in Pennsylvania. It appears that he was last seen in Wisconsin in May of 1924, when he completed a one-year sentence for a parole violation. Fifteen months later, he would detonate a bomb in Pittsburgh. On the night of September 5, 1926, his remains were cremated at the county morgue by Superintendent John P. Black and his ashes consigned to potter's field.

And as for James Rabick, he was never seen or heard from again after the Farmers Deposit Savings Bank tragedy. Where he went after being run out of town by Ellwood City officials, and whatever became of him, is unknown.

Sources:
Madison (WI) Capital Times, Sept. 20, 1920.
The Milwaukee Journal, Oct. 6, 1920.
Dodge County (WI) Independent, May 4, 1923.
Dodge County (WI) Independent, May 11, 1923.  
Pittsburgh Gazette-Times, Aug. 25, 1926.  
Pittsburgh Gazette-Times, Aug. 26, 1926.
The Pittsburgh Press, Aug. 26, 1926.
The Pittsburgh Press, Aug. 29, 1926.
Pittsburgh Gazette-Times, Aug. 29, 1926.
Pittsburgh Gazette-Times, Aug. 30, 1926.
The Pittsburgh Press, Aug. 31, 1926.
Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, Sept. 1, 1926.
Pittsburgh Gazette-Times, Sept. 6, 1926.