Dreaming of a White Easter: How a Surprise Snowstorm in April 1915 was Immortalized by an American Realist Painter

 This painting is entitled Easter Snow.  It is from the year 1915.  It is a peaceful, idyllic; almost Norman Rockwell-esque painting in the simplistic Americana that it depicts--the seeming innocence and simplicity of ordinary families trudging unexpectedly through surprising snow drifts on their way to a springtime Easter church service.

Though this painting by famed realist American artist George Wesley Bellows is iconic and serene, the historical event that Bellows depicted with his rich brush-strokes in this image, was in reality, anything but peaceful and serene.

To those on the east coast of the United States who lived through the great Easter Blizzard, sometimes referred to as the Easter Nor’easter of April 3-4, 1915 the singular storm that Bellows iconically depicted in his painting was both shocking and terrifying.

The forecast for Saturday, April 3, 1915 printed in Friday’s edition of the Philadelphia Enquirer said only that there would be, “[P]eriods of unsettled weather with rain likely.”

As it turned out, in reference to the Easter Blizzard of 1915, the editors at the Philadelphia Enquirer more often known for their blaring headlines and salacious stories proved that they also possessed a gift for sublime understatement when it came to forecasting the weather.

On Monday, less than three days later, the same newspaper would report that on Saturday, April 3, 1915, “A tremendous storm began sweeping up the eastern seaboard and lasted through the weekend.”

Before all was said and done, the unprecedented easter blizzard of 1915, left a full nineteen inches of snow in downtown Philadelphia, and it set a record for snowfall in April that lasts to this very day of 10+ inches having fallen in New York City’s Central Park.

1915 Easter Blizzard in Philadelphia

The day before Easter, Saturday April 3, 1915, saw twelve hours of unremitting snowfall of about an inch an hour, and Easter Sunday itself, saw an additional half inch of snow fall on the Big Apple when temperatures once again plunged below freezing during the evening and late afternoon hours.

The New York Times recorded the weather thus on Easter Sunday 1915, “A snowstorm that began at 8:30 yesterday morning and continued throughout the day, and early part of the night, with a sixty mile an hour gale lashing it to greater fury, broke the record for Spring blizzards.”

Of course, in Manhattan on the day after Easter Sunday the temperature did reach into the upper fifties.

Snow Removal Lower Manhattan 1915

However, the Easter Blizzard of 1915 didn’t just affect cosmopolitan Philadelphians and New Yorkers, who are at least used to dealing with frigid windblown snow during the winter months, it impacted the entire eastern seaboard of the United States.

The Great Easter Nor’easter of 1915 began on Good Friday in central Georgia at the foothills of the Appalachians, where near hurricane force winds in excess of sixty miles an hour mixed with icy sleet and drifting snow.

As the storm moved northward into the Carolinas and Virginia the hurricane force winds continued but the sleet and freezing rain turned to wet and heavy snow that buried normally warm southern cities like Raleigh, North Carolina and Richmond, Virginia under over a foot of snow.

Power lines snapped, roofs collapsed and the southeastern United States became almost completely cut off from the outside world through means of communication.  

The local paper in Raleigh, North Carolina, The Raleigh News Observer which had been unable to print an actual Easter edition due to the damaging winds and high snowdrifts in the city reported on the Monday after Easter that:

“The scene that greeted Raleigh’s citizens that Saturday morning was one of devastation on all sides…broken wires made walking laborious and dangerous; the usual Easter fashion parade as well as church services were suspended for at least a week.”

In Richmond Virginia The Virginia Gazette simply reported that the Easter Blizzard of 1915 was, “The worst storm to hit the area since the great Typhoon of 1888.  We’re all just lucky to have made it through.”

Downtown Raleigh NC after the Easter Blizzard

What The Virginia Gazette refers to as “The Great Typhoon of 1888” often called the Blizzard of 1888 was a crippling snowstorm that dumped two feet of wind driven snow on the northeast United States and brought transportation to a standstill across the country.

Unlike that storm in 1888, due to advances in technology and rapidly increasing spring temperatures twenty-seven years later, the Easter Blizzard of 1915 did not halt all transportation from the east coast for weeks on end as its earlier predecessor did in March of 1888.

Also, with the advent of affordable and portable photography by the turn of the twentieth century, including the so-called Kodak “Vest-Pocket” camera, which during the First World War was carried in the field by hundreds of thousands of soldiers on both sides of the battleline, the surprise Easter Blizzard of 1915, instantly became one of the most well documented weather events in American history up to that time.

The storm produced many fascinating images including sweepers clearing snow from the Atlantic City boardwalk in New Jersey, desolate snow swept streets in Raleigh, North Carolina and the use of early gasoline powered heavy machinery being used to clear the snow from New York City’s streets.  All of these photos are shown in this article.

Sweeping Snow from the Atlantic City Boardwalk April 1915

Still, despite all of the advances in technology; despite the harrowing accounts of all the newspapers up and down the east coast of the United States, and despite the shocking and unprecedented nature of the Easter Blizzard of 1915, the storm’s most enduring image is the one simply and quaintly named Easter Snow and painted by realist artist George Wesley Bellows.

George Wesely Bellows was born in Columbus, Ohio in the year 1882 to blue collar working class parents.  Right away, from the age of three, young George showed an affinity for art and he began making paintings and realistic looking drawings almost from the time that he could walk.

As a student, young George Wesley Bellows, would entertain his teachers and classmates alike by decorating chalkboards with elaborate murals during each holiday.

He worked for a time as a commercial illustrator making drawings for magazines, turned down an opportunity to play professional baseball, and instead traveled to New York City to pursue his passion for painting.

George Wesley Bellows had a passion for painting and drawing the things that he saw around him.  He wished to depict the lives of ordinary Americans like those of his working class mother and father, and through the medium of painting, through realism, he sought to bring out the beauty in their everyday struggles.

George Wesley Bellows

American realism in art, literature and music grew out of the writings of the romantics like Melville, Thoreau and Emerson and it was brought to fruition in the swinging ragtime and early jazz tunes of the fist part of the twentieth century.

Bellows became a member of the group of realist painters in New York, somewhat derisively called the “Ashcan School” at first, for their depictions of ordinary, even lowbrow subject matter.  Eventually, Bellows and the other members of the Ashcan School in New York would become many of the most respected artists in America.

And Easter Snow, though perhaps not as well remembered, or even as well known today as many of Bellows other paintings have become, is an interesting case study in history for all of us today.

The last time that there was any appreciable snowfall in April in New York City was in 2018.  At that time, the press in New York spoke of a “Snow-pocalypse” and mentioned the rarity and shocking nature of a measurable snowfall (there were 3 inches in Central Park) over a full two weeks into spring.

As proof of how out of place the whole thing was, many papers and websites ran a picture of a barren and deserted snow covered Yankee Stadium to drive home their point.  The articles spoke of accidents from unexpectedly icy roads and of money lost from canceled baseball games.  In 2018 the unexpected event of April snow was presented as a shocking occurrence of doom and gloom, almost in a way, as a portent to the end of the world--a true “Snow-pocalyse”.

Snow at Yankee Stadium April 2018

Contrast that with the Easter Blizzard of 1915, and the quaint idyllic realism of George Wesley Bellows Easter Snow.  In that painting, which Bellows painted while residing in New York, we see families trudging yes, struggling through unexpected snowdrifts, but we see beautiful colors; people dressed in their Easter Sunday best and a warm almost glowing sense of color and beauty surrounding it all.

The Easter Blizzard of 1915 may have been scary to those who lived through it, it was definitely a shock to New Yorkers and Philadelphians who woke up that Easter Sunday to see their springtime world blanketed white, but through it all the Easter Blizzard was a memorable and remarkable event in American history that we are all lucky enough to have had immortalized by a true American realist artist such as George Wesley Bellows.