USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Pittsfield > The history of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 1916-1955 > Part 13
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42
Then came the principal speakers of the day-the United States Attorney General, a native of neighboring Vermont, John G. Sargent, sent by President Coolidge as his personal repre- sentative; Governor Alvan T. Fuller of Massachusetts; and the Reverend George S. L. Connor, formerly of St. Joseph's in Pitts- field and wartime chaplain of the 104th Infantry, of which the city's honored Company F was a part.
Led by Commander Frank E. Crippen, the American Legion post, with other veterans' organizations participating, conducted the dedication of the monument, which was blessed by the post's chaplain, the Reverend Leo E. Laviolette of Notre Dame Church. The ceremony concluded with the blowing of "taps" for those who had died in the war, and the placing of wreaths and flowers. In 1928, a tall steel flagpole was erected to com- plete the Memorial.
Pittsfield dedicated another memorial park in 1926, the Zenas Crane Memorial Park, a roughly triangular plot of several acres in front of the Union Station on West Street, a few blocks down from Park Square. Occupied by dilapidated buildings, the plot had been an eyesore for years. In 1923, Daniel England bought it, with the purpose of holding it off the market until
143
PITTSFIELD IN THE TWENTIES
it was decided what to do about this shabby entrance to the city for those arriving by train.
The municipality soon purchased the plot for $22,500, the price England had paid for it, and spent some $12,000 to im- prove it, deciding to name it for the deceased Zenas Crane, of Dalton, one of Pittsfield's staunchest friends and more generous benefactors.
The naming was especially appropriate because Crane, as a director of the Boston and Albany Railroad, had been instru- mental in obtaining for Pittsfield an ample new Union Station, built in 1914 at a cost of $400,000. The commemorative boulder in the park, with a bronze plaque set into it, was given by those -160 of them-who had worked with Crane or under him at the Bay State paper mill in Dalton. Beside the boulder they planted a Pittsfield elm as an additional tribute to their friend.
Prosperity brought more church building. Under the Rev- erend M. Stephen James, the First Methodist Church on Fenn Street was so thoroughly remodeled and redecorated that it was rededicated on March 22, 1925, with Bishop Adna Wright Leonard preaching the dedicatory sermon.
In 1926, the First Baptist congregation sold its church and property on North Street for $145,000, and began building its present large church on South Street, at the corner of Church Street. Completed in 1930, Georgian Colonial in style, the church was already under construction when it was discovered that the plans made no provision for an absolute essential of a Baptist church-a baptistry. As a consequence, the plans had to be altered to make room for this. The chancel was shortened several feet, which produced, as a pastor of the church noted, "an appearance of stubbiness in the chancel itself, and in the sanctuary as a whole."
In 1927, the First Church of Christ, Scientist, moved from South Street to a new church on Wendell Avenue, near East Street, built at a cost of $135,000.
Across Wendell Avenue, almost opposite this church, was built a courthouse annex, or Hall of Records, to provide more space for county offices. The main building, completed in 1871,
144
THE HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS
had become intolerably overcrowded. Financed by a $175,000 bond issue, the new two-storied structure of yellowish brick was dedicated in 1928, and into it was moved the registry of deeds, the county treasury, and the district court of central Berkshire. A "bridge of sighs" connects the two county buildings.
Pittsfield's facilities for caring for the sick were greatly ex- panded in 1926 with the opening of the new $400,000 St. Luke's Hospital on East Street, a large five-storied brick struc- ture. Conducted by the Sisters of Providence, the new hospital incorporated the best of modern design and equipment. The former St. Luke's hospital, the old Allen mansion adjoining on East Street, became the home of the nuns.
With a bequest of $150,000 from Z. Marshall Crane, of Dal- ton, son of Zenas Crane who had founded the club, a large new building was added to the Boys' Club to provide a swim- ming pool, an auditorium, and many additional facilities.
Contrary to the general expansive pattern, school construction lagged, creating a serious problem in view of a growing popu- lation and a rising birth rate. A new Pontoosuc School was completed in 1920, and the Hibbard School in 1924. A third story was added to Tucker School in 1926. With that, perma- nent school construction ended for the decade.
In many schools, pupils were so numerous that they had to attend in two shifts. To help remedy this, the city resorted to the expedient of providing temporary "portable" schoolhouses -at Plunkett and Stearnsville schools in 1925, at Dawes School in 1927, and at Bartlett, Hibbard, and Crane schools in 1929. These temporary structures left much to be desired, especially in regard to heat and ventilation during typical Berkshire win- ters. Most of the older school buildings were sadly in need of painting and repair.
The overcrowding in the high school remained serious, be- coming more acute than ever in 1928 when the high school annex in the old Read School, the Pittsfield High School of Commerce, was abolished. The students there were moved back to the main building on the Common, necessitating the intro- duction of a two-platoon system.
145
PITTSFIELD IN THE TWENTIES
One platoon attended classes from eight in the morning to 12:30; the second, from 12:45 to 5:15 in the afternoon. Pitts- field was still debating whether to enlarge the old building, con- struct a new one, or do nothing in the matter. The city at length decided in 1928 to attack seriously the many tangled problems involved in providing a new $1,000,000 high school.
During the late Twenties, with the improvement of roads and automobiles and the increasingly wide adoption of the five- day work week, tourism in general and the long roaming week- end in particular became national pastimes, the base of a major industry. More and more people came to motor through the Berkshires and enjoy the "Purple Hills," staying in Pittsfield and other communities overnight or for longer periods. In 1928, the Berkshire Hills Conference estimated that resort and recreational property in the area represented an investment of $22,000,000, making it one of the largest of Berkshire indus- tries.
Partly influenced by its many visitors, especially by its gay "summer people," Pittsfield was becoming "very metropolitan," it was noted. Most people approved of this, though feelings were mixed.
"Today," wrote a reporter in the summer of 1928, "a bare- legged maiden paraded down North Street, as boldly as you please." Accentuating her bareness, she was wearing bright green shoes, bright green ankle-length socks, a short tan skirt that "responded sensitively to the playful breeze," and a tight and well-modeled sweater of tan and bright green.
A "pretty sight," the reporter admitted, but somewhat daring perhaps, for such costumes had hitherto been confined to sum- mer camps and "other obscure places." The bare-legged maiden was allowed to go her way unmolested, suffering nothing more than some masculine growls, many hard feminine stares, and a few exclamatory whistles.
Times had certainly changed, even since the previous sum- mer, when Chief of Police Sullivan had gone into the lobby of a respectable hotel and arrested four young women for appear- ing in public with their stockings rolled below the knees and
146
THE HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS
their bloomers rolled above, warning that Pittsfield would not tolerate bare knees or "any of that stuff."
With the approach of the 1928 presidential election, Pitts- field was deeply stirred by the campaign. It was one of the bit- terest in our history, with the "Great Engineer," Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, matched against the "Happy War- rior," Governor Alfred E. ("Al") Smith of New York.
As a Roman Catholic and an outspoken opponent of national prohibition, Smith was subjected to the most violent abuse and the nastiest clandestine gossip, inspired in large part by the forces behind the Anti-Saloon League and the anti-Catholic, anti-Negro, anti-Jewish, and anti-foreigner Ku Klux Klan.
After the war, the Klan had experienced a great resurgence, capturing political control in many states, not only in the South, but in the North and West. Its membership and influence were declining in 1928, but it was still a power in many communities.
There was a Klan in Pittsfield which occasionally made an- nouncements as "Berkshire Klan, No. 9," with no names signed. The local press castigated the Klan, and most people in Pitts- field applauded when a prominent citizen, Thomas F. Cassidy, formerly a state senator, publicly attacked it as the "menace of the moron."
Though a few crosses were burned in the city as a warning to "undesirables," the local "nightshirts" were not much in evi· dence, and Pittsfield was spared the violent clashes between Klansmen and their opponents such as occurred elsewhere in the state-notably, at Lancaster, Haverhill, and Shrewsbury.
As the 1928 campaign proceeded, a new political catch-all phrase, which some still find useful, began to appear frequent- ly in the press and on the platform. Governor Smith favored public power development, liberal farm relief, labor's right to collective bargaining, and state control and sale of liquor. Hoover and the Republicans denounced these policies as "state socialism."
But Pittsfield was not much impressed, and when the Gov- ernor's train passed slowly through the city during the cam- paign, some 15,000 people-the largest political demonstration
147
PITTSFIELD IN THE TWENTIES
up to then in Pittsfield's history-gathered at the station and along the tracks to cheer "good old Al" as he stood on the back platform waving his familiar brown derby, which the more fashionable found repulsive, absolutely abhorrent. A brown derby in the White House! they snorted, finding another reason to blast Smith.
For the fourth time neighboring New Ashford was the first precinct in the country to report its complete presidential re- turns-by 6:26 a.m., less than a half hour after the polls opened. By private radio established on the spot, the Eagle flashed the news to the world-28 votes for Hoover, 3 for Smith. Pittsfield and Massachusetts did not follow New Ash- ford in this, both giving Smith a majority. Indeed, Massachu- setts was one of the two states outside of the South-the other was Rhode Island-that voted for Smith, who even lost much of the Solid South.
Hoover's election released another wave of speculation and sent the already inflated stock market soaring to new heights. Two weeks after the election, with buying orders flooding in, Wall Street had its "wildest market day in history."
The Pittsfield office of Western Union announced plans for installing new stock-ticker machines twice as fast as the old, so that local people could keep up with the market. General Elec- tric stock went up $11 a share in a day. The quoted value of the company's shares had quadrupled since 1921. GE was pay- ing extra dividends, which profited many officials and workers in the local plant, as well as many investors in Pittsfield.
The city entered 1929 with the greatest confidence. The General Electric plant was humming. More large orders for transformers and capacitors came in. The lightning arrester and voltage regulator sales headquarters of General Electric were moved to Pittsfield. By the summer of 1929, the plant was em- ploying 8,000 people, an increase of 1,500 within a year. Other local businesses and industries were flourishing.
The future looked golden, like a dream-and dream it was. Within twenty years, by 1950, so experts advised, Pittsfield
148
THE HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS
would be a city of 90,000 and should begin planning ac- cordingly.
Plans were drawn for a big new hotel, the Longfellow, to be built on South Street, at the corner of West Housatonic. There was talk of enlarging the Maplewood Hotel, and of adding four stories to the Park Hotel, now the Allen. The feeling in Pittsfield was general that "our biggest, brightest, and best days are just ahead."
But underneath the glittering surface there were ominous rumblings, as there had been for some time. Not all had shared in the booming prosperity of the late Twenties. Agriculture and textiles remained two depressed industries, never having fully recovered from their post-war slump. With incomes steadily declining, farmers were restless as their financial troubles grew progressively worse. Rural banks throughout the country began to fail. A widening and ever more dangerous gap opened be- tween commodity prices and soaring security prices. While in- dustrial production continued to increase, so did unemployment. Bread lines began to form in many cities.
The New England textile industry had been particularly hard hit, faced as it was with sharp and growing competition from the South, to which many of its cotton and woolen mills had moved.
The textile depression adversely affected Pittsfield. In the summer of 1925, with the general boom well under way, the Berkshire woolen mills cut wages 10 per cent, which precipitat- ed a strike with about 3,000 people involved. The mill workers in Pittsfield and neighboring communities organized, affiliating their locals with the national organization of United Textile Workers. The issues of the strike went to arbitration. The deci- sion was against the strikers, who returned to work at reduced wages, and their union broke up.
But wage reductions did not solve the local problems. In March 1927 the Taconic and the Bel Air mills suspended opera- tions, throwing several hundred out of work. After being idle for some time, the Pontoosuc mills began operating again in 1928 under new owners, L. Bachman and Company of New
149
PITTSFIELD IN THE TWENTIES
York, who renamed the plant the Pascoag Woolen Mills. For the first time in 103 years Pittsfield was without a Pontoosuc mill.
Late in 1928, the Kinney Worsted plant, which had been closed for four months, reopened as the Elmvale Worsted Com- pany, organized by Bertram W. Spencer, Walter N. Cooper, and Carey R. Kinney, all local men. Other textile mills, notably those of the Berkshire Woolen and the Rice Silk company, were operating at or near capacity. But unemployment in the city was increasing.
Then came the great stock market crash of October and November 1929, with reverberations felt around the world. Within a few weeks, the value of stocks fell more than 30 billions, wiping out the margins of small investors. All stocks, even the best, suffered in the calamitous decline. Brokerage houses began to go to the wall, unable to meet their obligations.
Pittsfield shared the impression throughout the country that nothing very serious had happened. The crash had merely shaken "speculators" out of the market. Fundamentally, the economy was "sound." The only thing needed was a return of "confidence." With that, things would go on much as before. Few realized that the Good Old Days were gone forever, that the country was on the eve of profound change in its institu- tional patterns and habits of thinking, brought about by one of the great peaceful revolutions in history.
Pittsfield had emerged from the vicissitudes of the Twenties with the feeling, phrased by Mayor Jay P. Barnes, that it had been, "on the whole, a decade of achievement."
Between 1920 and 1930, the city's population had increased from 41,751 to 49,578-a growth of almost 25 per cent, one of the highest rates of growth in Massachusetts and all of New England.
The General Electric plant had been expanding and in 1929 enjoyed the busiest year in its history, employing more workers than ever. Many substantial orders were on hand to assure con- tinued high employment for some months.
150
THE HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS
While most of the local textile mills were in difficulties, the Chamber of Commerce and the Pittsfield Industrial Develop- ment Company were striving to bring new industries to Pitts- field to increase the city's weekly payroll. Local merchants, bankers, and businessmen in general agreed that 1930 should be almost, if not quite, as active and bustling as 1929, an opinion shared by Chief of Police Sullivan.
"With regard to the New Year," said the Chief, showing himself a shrewder prophet than most, "I expect it to be big- ger and better than ever, from a police angle."
151
VII
Pittsfield in the Great Depression First Phase: 1930-1933
A' NOTHER MILESTONE, THE YEAR 1930 marked the tercen- tenary of the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The world had greatly changed, New England especially, since the day three hundred years before when Governor John Win- throp had put in at Salem with the first large Puritan company, soon founding Boston .*
Winthrop and his associates had brought with them the Great Charter under which, from the start, Massachusetts assert- ed its right to self-government. As they interpreted the charter, a reading to which the Crown never agreed, these men denied the right of the English Parliament to legislate for the colony and, adopting the dangerous "heresy" of the Pilgrims, set up a church of their own. They utterly repudiated the official Church of England to which under the law all subjects had to belong under penalty of fines, imprisonment, or even hanging for fail- ure to conform. The Pilgrims and the Puritans contributed as much as any, and more than most, to America's tradition of dissent and its deep passion for temporal and spiritual inde- pendence.
Pittsfield celebrated the tercentenary with an elaborate pageant at Wahconah Park. Thousands attended as a cast of
*The Pilgrims had founded Plymouth in 1620, ten years before the Winthrop company arrived. But Plymouth was a separate and distinct colony, remaining so down to 1692 when it was absorbed, much against its will, by the Massachusetts colony.
152
THE HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS
five hundred presented, in costumes of the day, a number of colorful scenes from the history of the community, back to the day of its founding.
Previously, as part of the observance, an engraving of Wil- liam Pitt had been presented to the city by Robert T. Francis, a well-known painter of New York who had been born in Pitts- field. Placed in City Hall, the engraving was a copy of the orig- inal oil done from life by Richard Brompton, a painting which hangs in the Tate, Britain's national art gallery.
But the city, at the moment, was less interested in the past than in the troubled present and cloudy future. The stock mar- ket crash was not affecting speculators alone. All business was falling off. Unemployment rose rapidly as factories slowed down. More and more small banks closed their doors. The crash was not the cause of this, merely the barometer registering grave disorders in the economy. Many businessmen were still opti- mistic, saying that the trouble was only "in the head"-merely psychological-a matter of "confidence."
"Face the facts," warned Roger Babson and other business experts, "instead of glossing over the situation with Pollyanna stories about how good trade is." Early in 1930 trade was already 10 per cent below the year before, and falling fast. The stock market continued to tumble.
In Pittsfield, the onset of the Great Depression was not felt as sharply as in most communities for several reasons. The Gen- eral Electric plant, for one thing, had many large orders on hand, which slowed down the layoff of workers. Also, it under- took considerable construction, erecting a new $50,000 trans- former building, a $27,000 nitrogen-oxygen gas plant, and a $1,000,000 transformer tank shop. Contemplating a five-year expansion program, it started the largest excavation job in Pittsfield's history, levelling and grading a large part of the old Allen Farm it had bought for future development.
Other construction went forward. The telephone company erected a new $1,250,000 office building and exchange at the corner of Wendell Avenue Extension and Federal Street, and began installing dial telephones. The Agricultural National
153
PITTSFIELD IN THE GREAT DEPRESSION - FIRST PHASE: 1930 - 1933
Bank spent $400,000 in improving and enlarging its building on North Street. The post office was enlarged with a $135,000 marble addition. Some work was done in restoring the Peace Party House. The Pittsfield Country Club spent $25,000 in making its golf course "less tiring." All of this kept men at work.
The city provided the largest building project. After years of delay and repetitious debate, Pittsfield had finally decided in the flush days of 1929 that it could afford a large new high school building. Almost all agreed, but the choice of site aroused lively controversy.
Having considered and rejected other possible sites, the Com- mittee on the New High School made the recommendation, and the authorities approved, that it should be built on East Street a few blocks down from Park Square, at the corner of Appleton Avenue. This was a convenient central location, certainly. But it meant the destruction of three of Pittsfield's oldest, finest, and most historic houses.
The most renowned of these was the Plunkett House, for- merly and better known as the Longfellow House, still earlier as the Gold-Appleton House. Built as a farmhouse in 1790, it had been bought in 1800 by Thomas Gold, a prosperous lawyer, later the first president of the Agricultural Bank. Gold added to the farmhouse and transformed it into a spacious and hand- some mansion. Upon his death it went to his daughter, the wife of Nathan Appleton, a Brahmin and rich merchant of Boston. It was here that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow came in 1840 in pursuit of the Appleton's daughter, Frances, who became the poet's wife.
Though Longfellow never lived permanently in the house, he often spent long visits there, lovingly describing it as an "old-fashioned country seat" sitting on a wooded knoll "some- what back from the village street." On the landing of the stairs in the large central hall stood a tall grandfather clock, the in- spiration of the poet's "Old Clock on the Stairs."
The second of the doomed houses stood next to the Plunkett House. Large and well-designed, it dated back to 1820 when
154
THE HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS
Thomas Gold had built it for his son. The third house had been built in 1881 by James W. Hull, for many years president of the Berkshire Life Insurance Company.
The owner-occupants of the houses publicly voiced objections to losing their homes, and there were many in the city who felt that the old houses should be preserved for their historic value, pointing out that the neighborhood offered other con- venient sites for the high school.
If their voices could have been heard, none would have been louder in protest than the children of the neighborhood. For generations, the slopes of the Plunkett House knoll had been their favorite winter playground. Here, when snow and ice came, they went sliding, sitting in a pie tin or using the seat of their pants, though some preferred going down headfirst in a belly-flopper.
Individual protests and rather wide public criticism were of no avail, being brushed aside with some impatience. In retro- spect it would seem that the authorities might have been not quite so dogmatic in deciding that the site chosen, and only that site, would serve. In any case, the old houses came down and steamshovels began levelling the knoll.
Early in 1930, on a cold March day, the students of the high school marched two abreast from the old building on the Com- mon down First Street and out East Street to the corner at Ap- pleton Avenue, where they laid the cornerstone of their new $1,300,000 building. Though construction was delayed some- what by a series of strikes, the building was completed in good time, a large and attractive four-storied brick structure with a white tower, "erected by the City of Pittsfield," reads the in- scription in the lobby, "that her youth may here acquire the knowledge which makes for larger life."
At the opening of the school year in 1931, almost 1,500 stu- dents came to classes in the building to enjoy there a new sense of space with plenty of light and air. Unfortunately, it became apparent within a few years that the new building was not large enough, that it had already been outgrown in some respects. The auditorium could not seat all of the students, so that school
155
PITTSFIELD IN THE GREAT DEPRESSION - FIRST PHASE: 1930 - 1933
assemblies had to be held in two sections. The old building on the Common became the Central Junior High School.
As the year 1930 wore on, the unemployment situation in the city became progressively worse. The General Electric plant reduced its working schedules. The Tillotson mills closed down, throwing three hundred or more out of work. Other local in- dustries were operating only part time. Those fortunate enough to have jobs had their wages cut, and then cut again. As cash customers declined and credit accounts went unpaid, many small and even some larger retail stores went bankrupt.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.