Elizabeth Street I

Even on the drawing board, this early rendering of Grace Church was awe inspiring.  The astounding steeple height would be the church's crowning glory.

Construction began in 1864 toward the end of the Civil War, but was not completed until 1875.  A shortage of funds dogged the project.  You can see the unfinished steeple in the stereotype photo of a parade celebrating the end of the War in 1865.

Close up of the parade photo. The white-faced building near the center of the photo is the familiar "cornered" structure on the southeast Busy Corner.  The photographer is in the area of Franklin Square, possibly atop the wedge shaped Devereux Building.

 

 

 Photo taken from atop City Hall.




  
Next door to Grace Church was the Butterfield House, a fine hotel.

 
Standing in front of Grace Church looking north.  Early 1950s.

 

 
 Below, similar shot four or five decades earlier.

 Postmark March 16, 1917

Locke is a small town five miles south of Moravia at the southern end of Owasco Lake.


Here's another view north from Elizabeth and Genesee Streets. From a photographer's point of view, it may have been safer a hundred years ago to stand in the middle of Genesee Street.  And of course it was more safe for the "colorist" who painted the black and white photo in brilliant colors.

There’s a thread about Grace Church on Clipper’s Busy Corner, a Proboards forum. Here’s the url:

http://clipper220.proboards.com/thread/2926/grace-church?page=1

And the church has its own web site with lots of interesting information.  It’s at:

http://www.gracechurchutica.org/



In our day the other pillar at the west end of Elizabeth Street is "the bank building."

 I know, I know.  If you never looked up, you knew this place as Kresge's in the 1950s.  

I always thought the difference in the building's facing was for aesthetic reasons and never knew the bank built their home on top of the Parker building.








Also on Elizabeth Street is the county court house, one of the most beautiful buildings in the city of Utica, according to me. 

I do remember getting my Draft card in the fall of 1961, but I can't recall where the office was in the City of Utica.  Since it was a Federal process, it might have been in the Post Office or up on Genesee Hill where the Social Security office was located.  But it could also have been at the County Court House.

We know nothing of William Howell Tatem of Camden, New Jersey, except he was born a year before my grandfather.  I would not have guessed Grandpa at his age had to register for the Draft during World War II, but it seems he did.  Grandpa was 63 years old when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, so of course he wasn't called up.   But what a huge specter was the Draft to us young men and our sweethearts so many years ago.

  The Oneida County Court House brings to mind a story of a trial held there in the late 1940s.  I know I have a story for everything, and so it should be no surprise I was captivated by the drama regarding the murder of a Japanese man at Sylvan Beach.  I happened to know the wife of the murderer when I was a teenager. I mowed her lawn.  I fictionalized the tale and called it "Duty."  It appears in my 2007 book of short stories, "A Real Writer,"  under the title "Vengeance."
But you can read it online without buying anything.  Go to:

http://www.windsweptpress.com/duty.pdf          or .doc
Master Story List at http://www.windsweptpress.com/stories.htm


 
In Elizabeth Street II we'll cover the old Utica Fire Department No. 2 Engine house and Central Station.  Also, Post Street behind the fire house has a history I never knew existed, until two friends and myself began to dig into the old newspapers and discovered the short street was the center of Black culture and night life in Utica for many years.  The three of us authored a Proboards thread and called it Post Street Blues.