USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Pittsfield > The history of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 1916-1955 > Part 35
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depressed business conditions, but the company weathered these trying years.
With the economic picture brightening, it embarked upon an expansion program. In 1925-1926, a new carding and spinning building was erected at a cost of $350,000. In 1928, $250,000 was spent on the construction of a new weave room. This out- lay, followed by the collapse of the stock market in 1929, was more than the company could bear and marked the end of the Pontoosuc Woolen Manufacturing Company after more than a century of business.
The Francis name, so closely associated with the mill, re- mains before the public in the person of Kay Francis, celebrated actress and former wife of one of the mill's executives.
Wyandotte Worsted Company
After the crash of 1929 and the depression that followed, a company purchasing additional facilities for manufacturing was the exception rather than the rule. Wyandotte was one of the exceptions. In 1930, Nat Barrows, Edwin W. McGowan, and John H. McGowan leased the facilities of the Pontoosuc Com- pany from the Berkshire County Savings Bank, buying the prop- erty from the bank in 1933 for $100,000. In a period when many woolen mills were closing or moving south, Wyandotte not only continued operations, but could point to black ink in the ledger in every one of the lean years of the 1930s. Despite depressed conditions in the textile industry, the company felt confident of better times and went ahead with a program of modernizing and renovating the Pittsfield mill.
During World War II the company produced millions of yards of army cloth and blankets for the armed forces. In 1942, the plant was organized by the Textile Workers of America, CIO. Recognition of each other's problems has led to harmo- nious relations between the company and the local union.
At the close of the war, the company resumed production for civilian needs, concentrating on medium-priced women's coat- ing material with which it had had much success. The Korean conflict brought a partial conversion to army shirting cloth and
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blankets. In 1951-52, a modernization program was under- taken, designed to put the company in a better position to meet southern competition. Millions were spent on the latest types of machinery, conveyors, air conditioning, and building im- provement.
Pittsfield Co-operative Bank
The Pittsfield Co-operative Bank was organized in 1889. One of the founders was W. Murray Crane of Dalton, soon to become governor of Massachusetts and later United States Senator. Co-operative banks in Massachusetts had first been formed in 1877 to provide an easier way for employees to finance buying of homes and to make systematic savings out of income. Having operated for years in the private office of Rollin H. Cooke, clerk and secretary of the corporation, the Pittsfield Co-operative Bank in 1906 established offices on Fenn Street. In 1932 it moved to its present location opposite the post office.
By 1918, more than 2,000 families were represented among the shareholders in the bank. Its assets, which at the end of its first year totalled $7,500.01, had climbed to almost $1,500,000. During the boom days of the 1920s, with much building con- struction in Pittsfield, the bank's assets increased to more than $2,500,000.
Through the depression years the bank continued to grow. By October 1938, its assets totalled approximately $3,390,000, owned by 2,756 shareholders. The latter had received during the previous decade more than $1,000,000 in dividends, the largest for any decade in the bank's history-and this at a time when virtually no corporations were paying dividends, being chiefly worried about climbing out of the "red."
Since 1938, the shares of all co-operative banks in the Com- monwealth have been insured in full under Massachusetts law, through the agency of a special fund administered by the Co- operative Central Bank of Massachusetts. This and other factors stimulated its growth and in August 1955, it reported assets of almost $13,170,000.
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Henry R. Peirson was president of the bank from 1903 to his death in 1918. His successors in office have been Arthur W. Plumb (1918-1931), John Barker (1931), Richard H. Gam- well (1931-1954), and Walter L. Guiltinan (1954-).
City Savings Bank
The City Savings Bank was chartered in 1893, with Francis W. Rockwell as president. It began business in part of a store in a block at North and Summer streets. In 1899, it moved to the corner of North Street and Eagle Square. It bought the building at the corner of North and Fenn streets in 1906, its present location, and two years later remodeled it to provide more con- venient banking facilities. In 1930, its quarters were again im- proved and enlarged.
Upon his death in 1917, Rockwell was succeeded as president by Clement F. Coogan, who had been one of the corporation's trustees. Coogan died in 1942, and his successor was Clifford F. Martin, the current president, who had been successively assistant treasurer, treasurer, trustee, and vice president of the bank.
Between November 1915 and July 1955, City Savings' de- posits increased from some $3,260,000 to almost $24,000,000; its assets, from almost $3,400,000 to more than $27,000,000; the number of its accounts, from 10,164 to more than 19,500.
Berkshire Trust Company
The Berkshire Trust Company began life in 1895 as the Berk- shire Loan and Trust Company, with Dr. Franklin K. Paddock as president. By 1916, the bank had assets of almost $1,600,000 and capital funds of $286,000. At the time, the institution oc- cupied quarters in the Berkshire County Savings Bank building at the corner of North Street and Park Square. In 1923, it moved to its present quarters in the limestone building it erected at the corner of North and School streets. For the first time, a savings department was established. Six years later, the bank adopted its present name.
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Charles E. Hibbard was president of the bank from 1907 until he was succeeded by his son, Charles L. Hibbard, in 1922. In this year, William A. Whittlesey 2nd became a director and in 1955 was the senior director, having served 33 years.
The Depression struck the Berkshire Trust hard, as it did banks throughout the country. With the reorganization of the board of directors, Cummings C. Chesney became president. Late in 1933, the bank joined the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
The following years were ones of renewed growth, reflecting improved business conditions. In 1939, Harry S. Watson was named president. During World War II, deposits continued to rise until they reached a new high of almost $8,000,000 at the end of 1945. Everett M. Holden became president in 1950.
Three years later, banking quarters were completely renovat- ed and rearranged. Early in 1955, an installment loan depart- ment was established to meet the growing demand for personal loans and consumer credit. When the Berkshire Trust closed its books at the end of 1955, it had $7,260,000 of deposits, and capital funds and reserves of $1,143,000-a ratio of net worth to deposits almost double the national average.
Union Federal Savings and Loan Association
Pittsfield's youngest bank, the Union Federal Savings and Loan Association, organized in 1911 as the Union Co-operative Bank, is now in point of assets the second largest banking in- stitution in Berkshire County. It grew out of a meeting of prom- inent local business leaders called together by Henry F. Ryan, an attorney and a director in two real estate firms with extensive property holdings along North Street. The founders desired to "encourage savings and to provide a flexible and modern home- financing program for residents of Pittsfield and neighboring communities."
Chartered by the state as a cooperative bank, Union Federal opened offices in the Berkshire County Savings Bank building. William H. Eaton was the first president, serving until 1917 when he was called to active duty as a captain in the Army.
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His successor was Clifford Francis, who served until his death in 1927. George H. Cooper was then president for a year.
By 1923, the bank had assets of $431,000 and had outgrown its offices in the Berkshire County Savings building, moving to the former Blatchford building on North Street. Henry Ryan continued to be the driving force behind the institution's growth down to his death in 1930.
Ryan's close friend and associate, Robert F. Stanton, became president in 1928, serving till his death in 1939. During his regime, the bank turned back its state charter and affiliated itself with the Federal Savings and Loan Association. In 1931, the bank acquired larger and permanent quarters, moving to the Edwards Block on North Street, which it purchased in 1940 and where it has since remained. The institution's name was changed to Union Federal Savings and Loan Association in 1937.
Edward N. Huntress, the association's first full-time treasur- er, was chosen as president in 1939 and served until he became chairman of the board in 1947, being succeeded by J. Donald Codey, the current president.
Going farther afield, Union Federal in 1950 established a branch bank in Springfield. By 1955, the institution had more than $35,000,000 in resources, with $29,000,000 of this sum invested in homes.
Hotels and Apartment Houses
During the past 40 years, Pittsfield's hotels have undergone marked changes resulting from the public's altered traveling habits brought about largely by the wider ownership and in- creasing use of family automobiles. When on vacation, Ameri- cans have become transients, seldom staying at one place.
Long a fashionable and well patronized summer hotel, the Maplewood on upper North Street, originally the Maplewood Young Ladies' Institute, was operated by Arthur W. Plumb until his death in 1931. By 1936 its faithful clientele had so declined that it closed its doors. Part of the building was razed
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late that year; the remainder was made into the Maplewood Apartments.
At the corner of South and West streets, overlooking Park Square, stands the city's largest hotel, now again known as the Wendell. Built and owned by Samuel W. Bowerman, it was opened in 1898. The next year, Arthur W. Plumb and George W. Clark of the American House leased the hotel from John P. Doyle and Company, the first managers. The firm of Hamilton and Cunningham acquired the lease in 1900. After his partner's retirement, Ryland Hamilton continued to operate the Wendell until 1905 when Luke J. Minahan became manager. On the lat- ter's death in 1913, the Wendell Hotel Company conducted the hotel until 1922, when Napoleon A. Campbell acquired control.
Among extensive changes made by Campbell were the addi- tion of 65 rooms, a ballroom, a cafeteria, and five new shops in 1924; a solarium in 1925; and the south wing with 105 rooms in 1929. Campbell sold the hotel in 1944 to the Sheraton Hotel Corporation of Boston, owners of 17 other hotels, and it became known as the Wendell-Sheraton. The "Wendell" was dropped in 1945. In 1954, the Sherwood Hotel Corporation of New York purchased the Sheraton for more than $1,000,000. After a brief period as the Wendell-Sherwood, the name was changed back to the Wendell, honoring Colonel Jacob Wendell, asso- ciated with the founding of Pittsfield. Having nearly 300 rooms, the hotel accommodates about 500 guests.
The New American House, built in 1899 at the corner of North Street and Columbus Avenue, was long the headquarters of commercial travelers. Local hotelmen identified with it in- cluded Arthur W. Plumb, Joseph A. McNamara, and George W. Clark. Closing in 1937, the American House was razed to make room for stores. Other long established hotels are the Allen on Wendell Avenue Extension, and the Berkshire on North Street.
The principal apartment houses are the South Street Inn and the Livingston Apartments on East Street. Numerous motels and tourist homes in the city and environs illustrate the change that has occurred in travelers' accommodations since the days
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when hotels and boarding-houses offered the only transient shelter.
Early Newspapers
In Pittsfield, as in most American cities, the story of journal- ism during the first half of the 20th century was, in part, a story of transition from several to a single local newspaper. At the start of World War I, Pittsfield had three newspapers. The Berkshire Evening Eagle and the Evening Journal were dailies and there was the Sunday Morning Call. Within a few years, rising production costs and the widening circulation range of metropolitan newspapers had taken their toll.
The Call expired in 1915. The Journal, Democratic in pol- itics, became in 1916 the Daily News. The latter closed up shop two years later, leaving the Eagle as Pittsfield's only daily pub- lication.
The Berkshire Evening Eagle
In time, this development contributed to an important transi- tion in the surviving paper. Traditionally and staunchly Repub- lican in politics, the Eagle retained its loyalty to the party for some 25 years after it became a local monopoly. By the end of that period, its partisan fervor had been modified by the trend of national events, by the city's adoption of a non-partisan char- ter in 1932, and by its broadened obligations as the city's only editorial voice.
In 1944, it formally declared its political independence. To the consternation of its more conservative readers, it confirmed its new status by supporting that year Franklin D. Roosevelt's bid for a fourth term in the White House. In 1952, it was one of the few papers in the Northeast to support Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic nominee for president.
During this transition period, the Eagle grew rapidly with the city and county, both in physical size and in the scope of its editorial coverage. Its circulation, barely 14,000 at the close of World War I, rose steadily to a high of 27,600 in 1955. Its
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payroll increased from 50 employees to 141, including part- time help.
The size of the paper, which rarely exceeded 10 pages daily in 1916, rose to an average of nearly 30 pages. Its price climbed from two cents to five. In 1955, some 1,754 tons of newsprint rolled through its presses.
Accompanying this growth was a steady expansion of the paper's physical plant. In 1926, its flat-iron building, erected in 1904, was extensively remodeled and enlarged. In 1950, a dras- tic overhaul rebuilt the structure's face, moved the overcrowded news and editorial departments upstairs to spacious quarters covering the entire second floor, and provided basement space for storing newsprint. An underground tunnel and elevators were installed for transporting newsprint to the press room.
In the same year, a six-unit Hoe press, purchased from the Atlanta (Georgia) Journal, was installed in a newly excavated sub-basement, providing double the printing capacity of the previous sextuple press in use since 1925.
Many changes have been made in the appearance and con- tent of the Eagle. A United Press wire was added to its Asso- ciated Press service in 1937. Headline dress was changed the following year. The size of body type was increased from seven to eight-point in 1954. Wire-photo service was instituted during World War II. Teletype service to the newsroom in Pittsfield from the Eagle's correspondents in Great Barrington, North Adams, and Lee was established in the 1950s. Associated Press and United Press tele-typesetter service, permitting the casting of type directly from perforated tapes, was installed in 1952.
Of more direct interest to the average Eagle reader was a parallel growth in the thoroughness and variety of the paper's news coverage. The reporter who, in the 1920s, was of necessity a jack-of-all-beats, had become by the end of World War II something of a specialist. Covering City Hall in the morning, a baseball game in the afternoon, and a fire at night was no longer one man's work. The paper became more departmental- ized, less provincial, and more polished in style and editing.
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After World War II, when television began competing for readers' time and attention, there was a steady expansion in the variety of local columns and regular features. A building and real estate section was incorporated in the Saturday edition in 1936. A Saturday picture page, initiated by staff reporter-pho- tographer William H. Tague under the title "The Eagle Eye," began in 1952. A localized weekly women's page was added the following year.
The expansion of columns of local interest began in 1940 with "Our Berkshires" department. Four days a week it featured contributions by Berkshire writers-among them, former New York drama critic and Yale University drama professor Wal- ter Prichard Eaton of Sheffield. Weekly columns of comment on municipal problems and on local ramifications of State House and Washington political issues soon followed. "Notes and Footnotes," a daily editorial-page feature by staff member Richard V. Happel, was launched in 1949. A semi-weekly col- umn on the entertainment field-"The Lively Arts," by Milton R. Bass-followed in 1952. By 1955, the paper had some 20 columnists of its own, either staff members or outside con- tributors.
Meanwhile, many critics-mostly staffers doubling in brass -passed judgment in the Eagle's pages on every significant of- fering of the county's rapidly expanding summer cultural events in the world of art, music, theatre, and the dance.
The most ambitious innovation came in 1954 with the estab- lishment, under the editorship of Robert B. Kimball, of a week- ly summer Saturday supplement of pictures and feature articles on Berkshire history, personalities, tourist attractions, and spe- cial events. Appealing to the interests of summer visitors as well as year-round subscribers, the supplement was expanded in 1955 under the title "Berkshire Week" and was given supplementary free distribution in hotels and tourist places, bringing its total circulation to an average of more than 35,000 copies weekly.
In addition, the Eagle issued during the 1915-1955 period a number of significant special editions and supplements. Perhaps the biggest of these came in 1939 in the form of a monumental
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150th anniversary number, which ran to 72 pages. It was print- ed entirely in rotogravure, consumed 16 tons of newsprint, and included some 600 pictures.
Other notable supplements, published as a public service, in- cluded a 16-page digest of the Engelhardt report on Pittsfield's school building needs in 1949, and a 20-page digest of the Pittsfield Social Service Survey of 1954.
One type of special edition vanished entirely from the local scene during this period, however. Until the middle 1930s, the Eagle customarily published "extras" on big stories of national or local interest-including most local elections, and such national events as the World War I armistice and the Lindbergh baby kidnapping.
But with the advent of local radio broadcasting in 1938, the newspaper "extra" was doomed. Radio could present spot news more quickly and far more cheaply than the newspapers. It could also deliver it to the home instead of to the newsstand. After 1938, the only "extra" to come off the Eagle presses was on the night in August 1945, when the Japanese capitulation brought an end to World War II.
Another casualty of the radio was an Eagle service of a more indigenous nature. In the 1920s and early 1930s, play-by-play accounts of World Series baseball games and blow-by-blow ac- counts of important prize fights were "broadcast" on a sort of town-crier basis by an announcer shouting through a mega- phone from the porch of the American House, or from a win- dow of the Miller Building across North Street. The informa- tion was transmitted to him by telephone from the Eagle office, which received it by Morse wire.
From 1921 until the practice was discontinued in 1932, the broadcasts were made by Robert F. Munger, alderman and later fireman, whose stentorian voice won him the nickname of "Old Leather Lungs." It was not unusual for a crowd of a thousand or more to congregate before his megaphone, impeding traffic for several blocks. National election returns were also "broad- cast," but visually, by means of a screen and stereopticon.
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Still another casualty of time was the Eagle's weekly edition, which had been published every Wednesday since the paper be- came a daily in 1892. This edition, containing weekly corre- spondence from the smaller Berkshire towns and a compen- dium of local and county news stories printed during the preceding week, was primarily a mail-away service for readers in outlying districts and ex-Berkshire residents who had emi- grated to other parts.
ยท. During World War' II, when many servicemen subscribed, its circulation climbed to 1,700. But it declined rapidly to 525 by 1953, when it was suspended both because of mounting costs and because its function had been partly superseded by the ex- pansion of the Eagle's Saturday edition to include round-up columns dealing with the week's news highlights. .
Despite high costs and competing media, one adjunct of the Eagle remained a North Street fixture throughout the period. This was the newspaper's bulletin board, installed in 1915 on the North Street railroad bridge to transmit news bulletins from the Eagle newsroom to the street by means of an ingenious and temperamental system of gears and electric circuits.
Crowds gathered before it at election time to read the returns. Amateur firemen consulted it to learn the scene of action when the hook-and-ladder took off; sporting fans made a nightly pil- grimage to it to find out the day's scores before retiring. By 1951, when its mechanism grew too creaky to maintain, its au- dience had been considerably whittled down by radio news and the increasing tendency of citizens to stay home of an evening.
Many hands helped shape the character and content of the Eagle over the first half of the 20th century, but the individual whose personality it reflected beyond any others was Kelton B. Miller, owner and editor from 1894 until his death on Decem- ber 2, 1941, at the age of 81.
Born in New Baltimore, New York, he came to Pittsfield at the age of eight to be reared by an aunt and uncle following the death of his mother. He was graduated from Pittsfield High School in 1876 and, after eight years in the grocery business, acquired a financial interest in the Eagle, following his election
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as Pittsfield's first city clerk in 1891. Three years later, he re- signed as clerk to take over active management of the paper, though he returned to City Hall to serve two one-year terms as Republican mayor in 1911 and 1912.
A man with a warm sense of humor, a common touch, and a deep sense of fair play, Miller was held in general respect and affection by the community even though his editorial policies were unswervingly Republican in an era when the city was lean- ing more and more toward the Democrats. As the Springfield Republican observed, "those who differed with him politically and otherwise never questioned the honesty and sincerity of his convictions."
Upon Miller's death, control of the paper came into the hands of his sons, Lawrence K. Miller, who took over the duties of editor, and Donald B. Miller, who became publisher. Under their management, the paper became politically independent and, in keeping with the times, less provincial in flavor and less conservative in make-up and style.
But the basic principles remained unchanged. Locally, the paper remained an undeviating champion of the non-partisan charter which Kelton Miller had' done so much to establish. Regionally, it retained his interest in sound conservation meas- ures, in preserving the county's natural heritage, and in en- couraging at every turn its growing role as a mecca for tourists and a center for summer cultural activities.
Of the many other names associated with the Eagle during this period, none was better known to the public than that of Joseph Hollister (1877-1946), who came to the paper in 1898 from the Great Barrington weekly Courier, served as reporter and later associate editor, and became sole proprietor of "The Note Book," a daily column of random comment on the local scene. At the time of his retirement and death 48 years later, "The Note Book" had been continuously published under one byline longer than any other daily newspaper column in the country.
Another Eagle figure of extraordinarily long service was Dennis J. Haylon (1868-1939), who spent 50 years on the
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staff, notably as managing editor, while still finding time for community activities ranging from the bicycle club, his first love, to the presidency of the Pittsfield Hillies professional baseball club, the presidency of the parent Eastern League in 1926, and two decades of service on the Park Commission.
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