We'll begin right up the block from Hopper and Court Streets. Probably anyone living in Utica today knows more about the Stanley Theater than I do, so I won't bore you with my meager knowledge of its history. I haven't been sharing history as much as my memories anyway, and if that bores you please skip the text and just look at the pictures. You'll find between the photos and post cards I tend to dither around in my head and drift off track. If you don't find it interesting ... and there's no compelling reason why you should ... just look at the photos.
I am not used to depending upon photos. When I read my prose in public I like to draw pictures in the audience's mind, a craft I enjoy. The more imaginative the audience, the more fun we have. I would turn down an offer to read for an group of accountants, who would probably not follow my writer's voice, meaning the way I use language. I love to read to children, but am seldom asked. My topics are thought to be beyond them. But many adults would be amazed at what children can understand. They spend enough time with adults to figure it all out. At least one reader recently gave the following story to a youngster and she was said to identify very well with it:
Regarding the Stanley, and starting at the beginning, first they dug a hole. I believe construction began in 1927. Here's a picture of the hole they dug and the equipment used for the task.
There was lots of iron work, of course. Steel frame buildings were then becoming popular. In fact, it was steel construction that allowed the heights of the new skyscrapers going up in New York City and elsewhere.
The construction took just over a year and it resulted in a stunning building with an opulent interior. Photo below shows what it looks like today, the decor restored to a fine finish.
Exterior, 1940s
Early 1950s
OK, let's continue upstream. The building below should be a familiar sight to anyone from Utica because it has been there for a long time on the corner of Genesee and South Streets. And in my memory it has always been a Firestone store.
The photo below is taken from Google Street View.
By the way, South Street got its name when it ran along the southern border of the city, just north of Cornhill. When the Cornhill area was annexed to the city of Utica, Pleasant Street (closely paralleled by Proctor's "Parkway" over to Genesee St.) became the new border.
Does anyone remember the Toddle House diner? There were a few hundred of them in the United States. Each was built to look like a small brick cottage, a popular design before WW II for small buildings used as lunch spots, gas station offices and wayside bars. The design spoke to Ameria's enthrallment with neat and tidy.
There was a Toddle House just up the hill from the Stanley on the opposite side of Genesee Street at the foot of Dakin Street. I could find no photos of it, but below is a drawing of their signature design.
Toddle House Restaurants were built on site of brick or made in factories of porcelain coated steel, impressed to look like white painted brick. The basic size was only 12 by 24 feet with a serving counter (no tables or booths) and ten stools bolted to the floor. Some Toddle Houses didn't follow the basic design, but all of them displayed the sign common to the company's logo. Toddle Houses were also built in larger sizes.
You could squeeze a Toddle House in practically any imaginable spot. Some are still in use years after the Toddle House company went out of business. I don't know why my Uncle Jack didn't think to put one in his driveway in my story when he thought he was inventng the "Beer Battered PBJ."
A brand new Toddle House arriving in the neighborhood. I wonder if the people in the house are expecting it. Picture them coming out to get the newspaper in the morning and finding one squeezed in between their house and a neighbor's.
This shot reminds me of the days when as kids we would almost take over the White Tower near King Cole Ice Cream in South Utica.
A Toddle House innovation was the Cashier Machine. Billed as an implementation of the honor system, it allowed the attendant to keep cooking and serving and not have to simultaneously play cashier. Typical all-inclusive lunch prices were less than a dollar and the customer placed the coins in the glass sided box near the door as he left. He was supposed to wait for an OK from the attendant, who could see the cash via a system of mirrors. The attendant evidently saw the coins well enough to count them, said "Thank You Sir" (or Ma'm) and operated the foot lever to drop the coins into a lock box below. In this way the attendant never handled any money. Only the owner could come in and take the cash and it was thus safe from robbery during the wee hours of the night, unless the robber had a crow bar. When use of the Cashier Machine ceased sometime in the 1940's, some customers were insulted to no longer have the "honor system." With the mirrors it doesn't sound very honor-like, but in practical terms it may have been so because cheating would have been fairly easy.
Below, a Toddle House in Memphis, Tennessee. You could run next door for a cup of coffee during the sermon. (Say, Amen.)
Below, in Rock Hill, IL, a suburb of Chicago. I didn't know they had articulated buses (Twin Coaches they were called) as long ago as the 1950s. I first saw these beasts in Ottawa in the late 1980s.
This MIGHT have been where the Utica Toddle House was located. I remember it was somewhere around here, but I thought it was more set back from the street. Maybe, maybe not.
Genesee Street, west side, between South and Dakin Streets.
A larger, later model Toddle House now used by Five Guys hamburgers.
And here's an abandoned one, or maybe someone is using it as a home.
If you'd like to read some of the sources, go to these web addresses:
Or Google "Toddle House" for lots more references.
Well ... I'd say we spent enough time on the Toddle House. My predilection toward small buildings got the best of me. At one time I was kind of a master playhouse builder. The kids enjoyed them and I made sure at least one door was large enough for me to pay an occasional visit.
I would make two quick and final points regarding the Toddle House. First, I never went into the diner in Utica until I had to travel back to the city one night in my twenties and arrived at about 4 in the morning looking for a cup of coffee. The coffee and pie were unremarkable. Also, the legend of how The Toddle House got its name is in one of the references above, but supposedly someone noticed the little manufactured diner would toddle on the flatbed truck or trailer and mentioned it to the person who began the company. The businessman realized he had a unique name and he ran with it.
One of the nice aspects of viewing old Utica maps is the street names have for the most part not changed very much. Mr. Proctor may be forgiven for renaming Pleasant Street since he paid for the Parkway to connect the parks he gave the city. I don't know why or when Perkins Avenue changed to Sunset Avenue, but I believe it had something to do with the Sunset Home for Aged Couples, the old wooden building across from the current Faxton Hospital. The home was torn down in the late 1950s. I delivered papers there in the summer of 1957.
Many cities use a street naming convention I call memorialization. Frankly, I'd rather live on River Street than McNulty Street. I'd even rather live on Crooked Street than Nixon Lane. In the last town I lived in up north (for 35 years) the town fathers of yesteryear went so far as to use both the given and surname to some roads. E.g., John Smith Road. Believe it or not about a mile from me was one end of Clark Van Vlierdan Junior Road. (Those of us who were non-natives used to joke that town families were so intermarried that last names were in short supply, necessitating the use of both first and last names.)
If you slow down a bit on your drive up Genesee Street you'll see fine old residences, today used by physicians and various small businesses. This style of architecture has lately been mixed in with more commercial designs. Along with churches, old stylish residences continue all the way to the Parkway.
The following are from around 1900. Near Avery Place on Genesee Street.
Below may have been two residents. Perhpas I shouldn't comment since I don't have much hair left ... never had much, actually ... but I wonder if it was difficult to wear the style of the woman seated. Without glue, that is. Wouldn't it fall apart all the time?
Avery Place and Genesee Street
Faxton Street at Genesee Street.
We're getting ahead of ourselves. Below is the Knights of Columbus building near the Public Library at the top of the hill on the same side of Genesee Street. My father as a young man was quite involved with the K of C. After he married and sired three boys, he no doubt had enough to do in life and his interest in the Knights waned. He spent his spare time informally visiting those who needed help with one thing or another. He was also a member of the men's auxiliary of the Legion of Mary and he put a lot of time into going places the women wished not to go ... jails, the Utica General Hospital when it was open, the old Broad Acres, etc. He was a good man. My favorite story about him is a Christmas Story called "Perfection":
My other favorite story about him is "Jack's Family."
Here's the K of C building. I don't know if it still exists or if the K of C is still there. I'm too far away to do a field check. Help is appreciated.
Sep 14, 2014
Alan Q. wrote:
And here is where I first fell in love with Librarians. I have a number of views of Utica's Public Library (another gift from T.R. Proctor,) but chose this card because the person who wrote on it had so much to say.
Call me a romantic if you will, but I have had a life-long semi-obsession with women who smell like books. I met my wife in a library, come to think of it. Actually, in the park behind the New York City Public Library. Bryant Park, where Dorothy Day, the Catholic self-styled Fool for Christ, and Peter Maurin (called by some the Apostle to The World, or at least by Miss Day) sat all day once each year to protest The Bomb until they were cordially hauled off to jail by the NYPD as the sun set and the street lights winked on.
Bryant Park has been re-gentrified, so to speak. It was nice when my wife and I met, but later turned ugly with addicts and petty criminals. And then a New York City mayor ... I forget which ... said, "What the hell is going on in a city park directly behind the most famous library in the world?" Good question. Millions had been wondering the same for years.
But anyway, the future Mrs. Dave worked nearby and would sometimes in fine weather take her lunch down the street to the park and sit on a bench. I happened to be crossing the park at noon one day in 1964 on my way somewhere. I was always on my way somewhere. That's true today, too, but now I sometimes forget where I'm going. I thought I recognized her and sat down to inquire.
"Hi," I said. (The only successful introductory line I ever learned.)
"You're the guy, "she said, "who worked in the library at Mohawk." (Valley Community College.)
"Yes," I replied, "and I've come all the way to Manhattan looking for you to collect the 65 cents overdue fee you never paid."
"You know," she said, "that's funny. But what's scary is I think I believe you would do that."
"Why would you believe it?" I said.
"Because when you worked in the library, you seemed awfully serious about your job, stamping the books out."
"I took my time," I said.
"Yes, you did. You took the longest time."
"Only for you," I said, now feeling bold wearing a suit and wing tip shoes. "I wanted you to spend more time with me getting stamped out."
"Getting stamped ..."
"I mean ... you know."
"Why didn't you ask me out."
"I hadn't bought these wing tips yet. All I had were those orange shoes from State Street Mill."
"I figured that's where you got them," she said.
"Would you have gone out with a man in orange shoes?" I asked.
"I don't know. Maybe if we went swimming."
"I see your point," I said. "For swimming I'd probably take them off."
"Probably?"
"OK, for sure I'd take them off. Unless the lake bottom was rocky."
It's hard to believe but we got on famously after that. More important, I had set the tone for our next fifty years. Never take anything I've said too seriously.
The Utica Public Library was a beautiful building and I spent a great deal of time there between roughly 4th and 9th grades. After that I got more interested in hanging out with kids my age and that's when my studies began to suffer, too. Luckily, I recovered sometime during college. Anyway, I still remember the vaulted interior's architecture, the windows and the glass-like floors around the stacks of books. And that great smell of books.
Next door to the library was St. Francis de Sales School. The high school was co-educational, but unlike UCA the boys and girls were kept separated in different classrooms. Things would get worse in the fall of 1960 when all the city's Catholic high school boys and girls wound up in separate buildings.
I don't ever remember being in the school with one notable exception. During the school year, a dance was held for high school students on one Friday night each month. This was the chance to hopefully find that girl you were watching in school. But she never left her group of friends during the school day and was all but unapproachable.
You couldn't just walk up to her at a dance and start talking when she was with her friends. The only alternative was to ask her to dance. The chance to put one's arms around a girl was usually balanced by one's negative view of one's abilities ... no boy thought he could dance very well. But when he eventually got up the nerve to ask, finally reaching the conclusion it was ask or plan to become a monk, she would disappear. Off she'd go to the girls' room with half of the girls in the junior class.
I never understood why girls went to the bathroom in packs. It seemed odd the entire group of young women were all on the same fluids regimen and bathroom schedule. They must have started synchronizing themselves in the afternoon before the dance, calling each other up on the phone and announcing, "OK, we're all going to try to go potty at 4 o'clock, and only one glass of water with supper."
But the moment would come when the right slow song started on the PA system, the girl was on the edge of the pack looking bored and you were tired of standing around just trying to look cool. You walked over and asked her to dance. If this was your first time ever asking a girl to dance, there was a surreal feeling of doing something illegal. You stepped out on the floor, very gingerly took her hand and then swung around so the two of you stood chest to chest. You slid you arm around her and put your hand on her back. That felt brazen and intimate, but everyone around you was doing the same and so far no one had been arrested.
What a terrific thing to put one's arms around a woman. In dancing it's treated as commonplace. But it isn't, not really. You came into his space, he smelled your sweetness and each felt the other's warmth for the length of "A Summer Place" or "Over The Mountains, Across The Sea" or "The Wind and the Rain In Your Hair." God invented slow songs when He decided He wanted more of us.
Standing here looking up at the facade of St. Francis de Sales school, I can feel the looks of my betters behind me and across the street. I don't remember where they all lived, but the Munsons, the Williams and the Proctors are immortalized in the museum behind us.
There it is, evidently the main building of the Munson, Williams Proctor Institute. Done in an architectural fashion no doubt considered timeless in the 1960s, the style has (in my mind, at least) fared no better than other blips on the cultural radar from that decade. Just remember, the folks who designed the MWP building were related by spirit to the fashion designers who suggested these flight attendant outfits for the 1960s. It's rumored that the fabric for these outfits came from the table cloth counter at Woolworth's.
I'll let the MWP museum tell you about themselves here:
http://www.mwpai.org/
Let's move on to Oneida Square.
This may sound dumb, but I never realized Utica's Park Avenue was so named because it cut a diagonal straight line across the city's streets to connect three parks: Chancellor, Steuben and Oneida, the latter also called Oneida Square because as time went on it sported less grass and more macadam. Today Oneida Square has the controversial (in some quarters) roundabout, but for the first time in years one can approach the Soldiers and Sailors monument without fear of being run down by a fast moving automobile, probably a foreign one at that. Below are photographs of the monument from around 1900. They're followed by a rendering of the new Oneida Square n which you'll see the monument may now be more easily accessed on foot.
Below is a shot from around 1900.
Above, the trolley headed up Park Avenue is almost in front of the fire station that housed the No. 1 engine. This was a steam powered pump on four wheels, pulled by horses.
I believe that somewhere near Oneida Square was the Eureka Mower Company of Utica. Its probable location would have been west or north off State Street somewhere. These were what I call sulky mowers with either sickle bars or rotating blades such as the model to the left. Utica was known for manufacturing and a number of farm implement companies were located in the city, as well as down the valley in Frankfort. Quite a large plow company was located on Main Street in Frankfort as late as the 1950s. I remember riding by it as a kid.
A later addition to Oneida Square was the Kewpee Hamburger restaurant, but I don't know the date.
I'm not sure this photo is from Utica. In any event, there were many such delivery vehicles in Utica, bringing hot foods and groceries direct to your door.
We'll leave Oneida Square and continue up (south) Genesee Street. I have only a few more photos.
Above is the Oneida Flats. Seems to me it was on Genesee Street at the corner of Hobart. Fiona can help us with the location and background.
And although not very many people know of it's existence, The Nurse's Candlelight Park is in the 1400 block of Genesee Street. I searched the Internet for background and could find nothing. I would appreciate anyone posting some information.
I don't know the limits of what was called Genesee Hill (perhaps Fiona will enlighten us) but I think it began as the road rose up going south when passing the Kanateenah and the Genesee Flats on Genesee Street (the latter burned down in 1895 and was immediately replaced by a similar building, but more fireproofed and five stories instead of seven.) It's called the Olbiston Apartments.
Here's an overiew shot of the Kanateenah Apartments, followed by a super enlargement you've seen before of young girls outside with two women. The roads are a light color and I wonder if they were sand. If so, they would have been a lot less dusty than dirt and would have been lightly scraped to remove and fill in wagon wheel ruts. There was a kind of light colored cement that came into use, but not until 1920 or so, I believe.
Kanateenah in the neighborhood.
A fire destroyed the Kanateenah in 1994. Full coverage may be seen at the MoreStories Forum:
http://morestories.proboards.com/thread/235
And finally, below, postcards and photos of the Olbiston Apartments on the corner of Genesee Street and Clinton Place. You may view the complete saga of the Genesee Flats Fire on the Busy Corner Proboards Forum here:
http://clipper220.proboards.com/thread/2238/history-genesee-flats-fire
Additional information is available here at the MoreStories Forum:
http://morestories.proboards.com/thread/226/genesee-flats-olbiston-lecture?page=5
A dramatic presentation which will someday become a novel or whatever has begun work. Fiona and myself, assisted by the late Jon Hynes, put a lot of thought and work into the research and writing done so far. Today Fiona and I take stabs at the project when time permits. You may view our notebook here:
http://www.windsweptpress.com/ogh1.htm
Master Story List at http://www.windsweptpress.com/stories.htm
Below, the original Genesee Flats. Note it is two stories higher than the Olbiston which replaced it after the fire. Seven stories was unfortunately too high for UFD's ladders. So would five stories have been, because a major obstacle in positioning the wagon with the new telescoping ladder close enough to the building was the three foot high pipe fence surrounding the front of the building out near the public sidewalk.
The fire escape plan was unique. In the photo above you can see the small balconies that were each shared by two apartments. In the event of a fire, residents on each floor were expected to open their doors. When every apartment door was open, a path was formed down the length of the front of the building on each floor. You left your apartment and walked out on to the balcony, entered the next apartment through their balcony door, back out, into the next apartment and back out again and again until you reached the end of the building away from the fire. You then went through this last apartment and out its back door and down a stairway at the end of the building. But people who would never use their balcony stacked furniture against their balcony door, or quickly left their apartment for the back hallway and didn't unlock their balcony door for others. It's a wonder only four were killed.
http://clipper220.proboards.com/thread/2238/history-genesee-flats-fire
The above is not a true depiction or actual photograph of the Genesee Flats fire. I "photoshopped" it based on newspaper reports.
One of the people lost in the fire was an older woman who fell while descending a rope made of sheets as she tried to escape the fire. There was mention of a newspaper boy named William Foley in one of the news accounts. He was credited with pulling the fire alarm at the box on the corner of Genesee and Clinton Place. This resulted in more fire apparatus finally arriving to fight the fire. I wrote two piece of fiction concerning the boy:"Billy Foley's Morning" and an expanded version called "Blame" where I took liberties in entering the boy's head and in my imagination found a lot of guilt. The stories are here:
http://www.windsweptpress.com/foley.pdf (Billy Foley's Morning)
http://www.windsweptpress.com/blame.pdf (Blame)
Master Story List at http://www.windsweptpress.com/stories.htm
By today's fire safety standards, however, some have worried the Olbiston is not the safest building in Utica.
The Olbiston, then and now.
I should point out that the Citgo Sign is across the street and not attached to the Olbiston.
I'm done with Genesee Street. I'll do one more chapter, "Trolleys and Buses" and maybe "Cornhill."
Please send comments, photos, suggestions, whatever you have. Regarding comments, please indicate if you want them to appear here or not.
dave@windsweptpress.com or via FaceBook
Thanks for all the Likes!
Master Story List at http://www.windsweptpress.com/stories.htm
