I have no idea who these lovely young ladies are, but my notes say they were from Utica. What a beautiful crowd of daughters. Check out the gorgeous eyes on the littlest. They must be sisters. The tallest and probably oldest at the top of the photo couldn't possibly be the mother. She certainly doesn't look like she delivered seven children. I wonder who they are. I don't know the date of the photo, but although it's unlikely, I suppose the little girl with the big eyes could still be with us.
Other women, below:
I've enlarged some of the photos beyond the margins so you can see more detail. Simply slide the horizontal scroll bar at the bottom of the screen to see the right side of the photo.
Here is a heart throb and that is indeed a swim suit. One of the racier versions at the time, no doubt. Not in her day, but today she could wear it to church and be considered over dressed.
Below, bathing beauties assemble for the swim suit competition. Heaven forbid you appear on the beach or go in the water without your boots.
The three panels below are from the graphic novel "Cornhill Days."
For some reason, I doubt if the photo session was the boy's idea.
Above, in front of the Kanateenah Apartments, down the street from the Olbiston Apartments on the corner of Clinton Place and Genesee Streets. This is from a glass plate negative and is a super enlargement of one tiny part of the photo.
Undated. I can't find John Kohler
Dry Goods in the 1913 Utica City Directory. There was a Kohler's Meat
Market on Huntington Street, deep in the heart of old West Utica,
north of Court Street and west of today's North-South Arterial. Perhaps
John was the father of a man who took up the butcher trade and used his father's dry goods store to do his work.
Above, I don't know where these women are from, but I couldn't resist including them here. The date appears to be circa World War II.
Here are your rough and tumble neighborhood boys. My notes say they are newspaper carriers and you can see their bags. Around 1900.
These two photos are of boys hanging around outside of the St. James Hotel in Utica. They might earn a few pennies by carrying someone's bags or taking a message to the telegraph office or running other errands.
Again, these are super enlargements from glass negatives which have superlative resolution. The fuzziness is not from lack of focus but rather the slow emulsion speeds of film a hundred years ago. Anything moving quickly produced a blur.
Above is a group of Jewish boys playing outside their Yeshiva school. Fiona and I think these kids and the scene are somewhere in West Utica.
My notes say "Utica vicinity" is the home of this basketball team. The young men look old enough to be college students and I wonder if the "H" is for Hamilton.
Below, older boys ... young men, actually ... from down in the Valley. The Frankfort Drum Corps.
Below is Jweid's on South Street. I'm sure you could find boys hanging out here when the photo was taken in the 1930s, just like we did at other stores twenty years later. They were probably shooed away when the photo was taken.
Don't know where this photo was taken. Undated and no notes.
I know, I used this in a spoof, but couldn't resist using it again. Gives me the opportunity to say I have no date or notes regarding it. But the young women don't look sick and in this wider version you can see the blackboard. I think it's a classroom.
The kids are from St. Mary's parish school in Pittston, PA. On top is the class of 1928. I just wanted to show you what a class of 13 year olds in that era looked like dressed in their best. Down on the right is a photo I found of today's students from the same St. Mary's school. This group is in early high school.
Above, from Utica's Observer Dispatch. (Scroll right to see entire clipping.) The photo was taken on Oriskany Boulevard. You can see the Hotel Martin close in the background and the upper floors of the Hotel Utica farther away. A happy day for boys who might now expect their fathers, older brothers and uncles to return home safely.
On The Job:
On the right, a worker assembles fishing reels, just as he would if he worked at Horrocks-Ibotson's on Whitesboro Street instead of a company in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Many people used gas piped into their homes for lighting before moving up to electricity. When I was a kid there were gaslight sconces that had been converted to electric on the walls of some homes in lower Cornhill (below Square Street, arbitrarily.) And of course, coal gas was used for cooking. The gas was a byproduct from burning soft coal to run the steam generators that produced electricity for Utica. Coke was another result of that process. Customers found coke didn't burn as well as coal, but it was cheaper. Eventually most people switched to electric lights and bought other appliances that used electricity, such as radios and washing machines and refrigerators. Later ... just before WW II, I think ... Natural Gas was piped in from states to the south of New York and coal gas went out of favor.
Here's a crew from the telephone company, specifically New York Telephone Company if you can read the lettering on the side of the van. The architectural details on the homes in the background remind me of houses on and near Eagle Street. Not so much the board-and-batten siding of the house on the right, but the window detail on the left is very reminiscent of the late 1800's.
I'm hoping someone will recognize this guy and identify him. He does look familiar. With Berger's Deparment Store in the background, he is either on Columbia Street or in the vicinity. The autos indicate the early 1950s.
Kit Temple answered my plea and wrote with the following information: "His name was Fred Marron. I ran into Freddy a few times over the years and he always had a smile and pleasant words to share with everyone.
"Freddy and a fellow named Bob Jones were both motorcycle cops for the Utica Police Dept. Their bikes were specially equipped Harley Davidsons. They used to stop in at Glista Bros Shell gas station on Oriskany Blvd (on the corner of State St.) around lunchtime every day, and sometimes have a cup of coffee. Kenny Aikin, the guitar player in my band 'The Nitecaps' worked at Glista Bros. at the time. Freddy also had a side business selling advertising items and we bought the band's first business cards from him in 1963. They were gray lettering on a transparent blue material."
Thanks very much, Kit.
We certainly want to mention writers and editors when speaking of Utica's working folks. Printers too, because at one time Utica was an important publishing center in the easern United States. That got started when missionaries wanted Bibles and religious books printed for the Native American people in phonetic representations of their language. At the time Utica was on the frontier and therefore closest to the audiences. But job printing and book publishing provided many jobs up into the 20th century.
Teamsters may have made up the single largest group of workmen in the city of Utica. Most of the products manufactured in Utica had to be moved to the canal, the trains, the roads leading out of town.
Above, I know of at least one person who believes the fireman in this photo is her father. But I think she's wrong, because he looks exactly like my Dad. All the available fireman helped roll up the hoses after a fire. A messy job. Back breaking, too, especially in winter when snow and ice adhering to the hose made it twice as heavy.
The number of small businessmen in Utica would have been quite large. From barbers to dry cleaners and tailors to gas stations and grocery stores, quite a few Uticans preferred to work for themselves. Few made the fortune they hoped for.
Hardly anyone escaped some amount of physical labor, even if it was changing the oil in the family car in the driveway.
Miscellaneous:
Below is the old Wittig's restaurant, before it moved to the Parkway at Oneida Street.
A nice depiction of Chancellor Square. My notes say 1906. Quite a difference between then and now.
Postmark: Galena, Illinois
Galena, Ill
Dec. 21
3 PM
Miss Bertha W. Sachre
Jackson, Mo.
Hello (Daisa,?)
I sent you a rememerance for Xmas and hope you get it all OK,
I will write to your mamma later. I have been on the sick list, was home for a week.
I expect to spend Xmas at theatre. Lou is coming home.
With love,
Merry Xmas to all.
(Best? Bert? Bill?)
Galena, Ill
Dec. 21
3 PM
Miss Bertha W. Sachre
Jackson, Mo.
Hello (Daisa,?)
I sent you a rememerance for Xmas and hope you get it all OK,
I will write to your mamma later. I have been on the sick list, was home for a week.
I expect to spend Xmas at theatre. Lou is coming home.
With love,
Merry Xmas to all.
(Best? Bert? Bill?)
We don't know why Bill didn't use the postcard before he reached Galena, IL one night and decided to send it along to Miss Daisa (if I'm reading his writing correctly)
Accordng to a least one source, the photo below is of "The Big Dapple" at Summit Park. This very popular park with ponds, swimming and picnic facilities in Oriskany could be accessed by trolley from the Busy Corner. I don't remember when it closed, but I believe my parents went there in the late 1920s and early 30s.
Left, students at Utica College's buildings near Oneida Square in Utica in the 1950s.
The busy intersection shown here is of Hart and Plant Streets. Most of the buildings shown are gone today, except for the house with white windowed galleries in the upper right hand corner of the photo. It can be seen on Google Maps.
Below, shoppers on Genesee Street just down the block from the City National Bank, the tallest building in Utica at one time.
This scene is a composite of various peices of artwork (and a very little original art) to represent a backyard workshop on Conkling Ave. on Cornhill. The shed became an art studio in my story, "War Wounds." It's been published in a few journals and won an award from Stone Voices, a literature and art magazine covering southern Maine.
See: http://windsweptjournal.blogspot.com
Master Stories List at http://www.windsweptpress.com/stories.htm
You can see Kristen and Brian's complete set of outdoor wedding photos at:
Readers' Chance
Send in Grandma's photo or Uncle Harry asleep on the front porch. We'll append them here to The People of Utica.
Harry Simmonds
(submitted
by Kit Temple)
This young
man is Harry Simmonds. The photo was
taken around 1881 or 82 in Watley's End, England, just before he immigrated with
his uncles to Dudley Ave. in east Utica. *
Harry's
mother Matilda had not married. The pregnancy was the result of an illicit
union between Matilda and her father's brother, which is definitely a 'no-no'. Also, the family believes the union was
against her will, which is a very big 'no-no.'
At any
rate, because of this scandal, Harry was adopted by Matilda's father, John
Simmonds. This created a very
confusing situation. Due to the
adoption, Harry's mother Matilda became his sister. Her brothers (Harry's uncles) became his
brothers. Harry's grandparents
were now also his parents, and Harry became his own uncle as well as his own
nephew. A complicated situation, to be
sure. Are your eyes crossed yet?
As
Harry was growing up, he met and fell in love with a pretty young gal named
Rose Sacher whose mother's family had immigrated from Germany in 1854. Harry and Rose were married in 1902. In 1928 they moved to Richardson Ave. in south Utica and were among the founders of the
South Church Congregational on the corner of Beverly Place and Genesee St. (The building still exists but is now
the Castle Recording Studio)
Harry and
Rose had 5 children, one of whom was named Esther. Harry and Rose were my grandparents and
Esther was my mother.
* Editor: I still can't get used to calling Cornhill east Utica. So I don't. To me, from Rutger to the Parkway, from Mohawk to Oneida I call Cornhill. And everyone who lived there defined it as such.
