It's the Bowery Boys Season of Mysteries through September and October.

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And tell Your Friends. Ida Wood had a plan. On a spring day in

1907, Ida, nearly 70 years old, marched into the marble lobby of her bank, the Morton Trust Company,

at three Broad Street in Lower Manhattan, and stepped up to the teller.

I'd like to withdraw it all in cash. But certainly that wasn't possible, the

teller responded. That would be nearly a million wouldn't be prudent. Ida's money.

Ida's money would be safer and she would grow even wealthier if it stayed right there in the bank.

Ida was no fool and her instincts had served her well for decades. Her name had appeared

throughout the Guilded Age in the society Pages, attending balls, hosting dignitaries, and

witnessing history as the wife of Benjamin Wood, who had served in Congress and for decades

was the publisher of the New York Daily News.

He was also the brother of the notorious mayor, Fernando Wood, who had sided with the South

during the Civil War.

Since her husband's death seven years earlier, Ida had been calling the shots.

The bank managers at the Morin Trust Company on that day in 1907 didn't intimidate her.

And so she threatened them.

If they didn't hand over her money, she told them, I'll go to every newspaper in town and tell them that the Morton Trust Company either will

not or cannot meet its obligations.

The men huddled, grumbled, and minutes later Ida emerged onto Broad Street with nearly a million dollars stuffed inside her purse.

And then Ida, her sister Mary and her daughter Emma, checked into a two-roomed

suite on the fifth floor of the Herald Square Hotel on West 34th Street.

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