USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Pittsfield > The history of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 1916-1955 > Part 8
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The growth of the congregation was slow, however. Twenty years passed before, in 1864, work began on St. Joseph's, the large Gothic stone church still in use on North Street. Many difficulties, chiefly want of funds, delayed construction. But the building was finally completed in 1889, largely through the untiring energy of the pastor, the Reverend Edward H. Purcell.
Born in Donoughmore, Ireland, Father Purcell came to Pittsfield in 1854 and devotedly served the parish for almost forty years, till his death in 1891. Under his successors the Sis-
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THE HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS
ters of St. Joseph built, just south of the church, a convent in which they opened a small academy, the beginning of the new extensive St. Joseph's Parochial schools.
The number of worshippers at St. Joseph's soon stretched the capacity of the church, large as it was. The parish was divided in 1893 and a new one created, St. Charles, which in 1894 built a brick church in the northwestern part of the city, on Briggs Avenue. Another division of the parish occurred in 1913 when St. Mark's chapel, a temporary structure, was built on West Street, at Onota. Still another division occurred in 1915 when the parish of St. Mary was set off in the Morningside district where a church was built at the corner of Tyler and Plunkett streets.
French Roman Catholics in Pittsfield, having long wor- shipped in the original St. Joseph's on Melville Street, tore down that old wooden structure in 1895 and on the site erected a spacious Romanesque brick church, Notre Dame de Bon Conseil.
Protestant
New churches of various denominations appeared. The Pil- grim Memorial Church, the outgrowth of a Sunday School established by the First Church in a school house on Peck's Road, was organized in 1897 and built a stone church on the west side of Wahconah Street. A Sunday school mission estab- lished by the First Baptist church at Morningside became in 1896 the Morningside Baptist Church. In 1913, it built a large brick church on Tyler Street, at Grove. An Episcopalian mission at Morningside developed in 1909 into St. Martin's Church on Woodlawn Avenue. Another church appeared in Morningside in 1914 when the Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church was or- ganized, the parish worshipping in a wooden chapel on Tyler Street.
The Unitarian Church, the first in Berkshire County, was organized in 1887, having as its first pastor the Reverend W. W. Fenn, later dean of the Harvard Divinity School. Hav- ing built a house of worship on North Street in 1890, the Unity
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PITTSFIELD: 1861 - 1915
Church moved in 1912 to a large home on Linden Street. The Protestant German Evangelical Church, formed in 1859, be- came in 1892 Zion's Evangelical Lutheran Church and soon built a new brick church on First Street.
The Second Adventist Christian Church began holding meet- ings in rooms on Park Square in 1888, building a church on Fenn Street two years later. Organized in 1905 with twenty- two members, the First Church of Christ, Scientist, met in a hall on North Street until 1907 when it bought a residence on South Street for use as a church and a reading room.
Jewish
The heads of several Jewish families, largely from Germany, organized in 1869 the local Society Anshe Amonim (Men of Faith). They held their meetings at the houses of members for many years, establishing themselves after 1900 in rooms on North Street.
Another Jewish congregation, Knesses Israel (Gathering of Israel) was formed in 1893. It met on Robbins Avenue until 1908 when it built a synagogue on Linden Street. A third Jewish congregation, Ahavath Sholom (Love of Peace), organized in 1911, built a synagogue on Dewey Avenue.
Clubs and Organizations
With the expansion of the city came a growth of clubs and organizations of many kinds-social, educational, religious, fraternal, recreational, and patriotic.
A local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution was founded in 1896; of the Sons of the American Revolution, in 1897. Though declining in numbers as death claimed their members, the Rockwell and Berkshire posts of the Grand Army of the Republic were still active. The veterans of the Spanish- American War of 1898 formed an organization, though few from Pittsfield had seen active service during that war.
With more facilities needed for the city's youth, the Pitts- field Young Men's Christian Association completed in 1910 a large four-storied brick building, its present quarters, on North
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THE HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS
Street at the corner of Melville. A Catholic organization, the Father Mathew Total Abstinence Society, dating back to 1877, provided greatly enlarged social and recreational facilities for its 800 members by building on Melville Street in 1913 a three- storied brick structure with a large gymnasium. The Working Girls' Club (1890), the Business Women's Club (1909), the Young Women's Home Association (1910), and the Girls' League (1913) were brought together in new quarters on Bank Row in 1915.
Pittsfield's outstanding Boys' Club was organized in 1900, soon having 600 members. It directed its program chiefly toward vocational training. A few years later, Zenas Crane, of Dalton, offered to give the club a building, with funds to main- tain it, if Dalton boys were allowed the privilege of member- ship, an offer that was quickly and gratefully accepted.
Erected on Melville Street, opened in 1906 and still in use, the building contained eight classrooms, a large auditorium, a library, bowling alleys, and recreation rooms. Later, in 1910, again through the generosity of Crane, a large gymnasium and other facilities were added at the back of the building. In 1915, the club had 1,600 members, being a lively and fruitful center of community youth life.
On the more social side there was likewise expansion and proliferation. The Pittsfield Country Club established itself on lower South Street in 1899, buying Broadhall, the historic mansion built in 1781 by Henry Van Schaack, later the home of Elkanah Watson and Thomas Melville, still later a summer boarding house at which Longfellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville had stayed. On the ample grounds around the old mansion, which was remodeled and subsequent- ly enlarged, the country club laid out a golf course, tennis courts, a baseball diamond, and other playgrounds for its members.
As the new game of whacking a little white pellet into and out of the rough became more popular, the club extended its golf course from nine to eighteen holes. It had long had a very popular "nineteenth hole."
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PITTSFIELD: 1861 - 1915
Descended from the intrepid Berkshire County Wheelmen of the 1880s, the Pittsfield Bicycle Club still met regularly at its club rooms on North Street. The Pittsfield Boat Club en- larged its quarters at Point of Pines on Pontoosuc Lake. A Masonic Temple was built on South Street in 1912. In the same year the Elks constructed a clubhouse on Union Street. The Eagles built theirs on First Street in 1915.
For men of a more literary and philosophic turn of mind, there was the Monday Evening Club, founded in 1869, and for the women the Wednesday Morning Club, founded ten years later. The Wednesday Morning Club was so called, it was said, because it never met on Wednesday mornings.
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Berkshire Eagle
Present-day Pittsfield from the air
Berkshire Athenaeum
William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, 1708-1778, for whom Pittsfield is named
Berkshire Athenaeum
Park Square in 1830
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Buel
The "Wide-Awakes" stage a Lincoln rally on North Street, 1860
The Academy of Music, 1873
Kennedy
Berkshire Eagle
World War I-Company F leaves for camp, 1917
P. W.A
Berkshire Eagle
The Depression-PWA clears ground for the new municipal building, winter of 1938
Berkshire Eagle
Trolley tracks at Park Square-Laying them down (1901) and picking them up (1942)
Berkshire Eagle-Plouffe
World War II-A tired band plays on after the victory parade, 1945
Berkshire Eagle-Tague
School's out at North Junior High
Berkshire Eagle-Tague
The round barn of the Shaker Family in Hancock, just across the Pittsfield line
Kalischer
Temple of Chamber Music, South Mountain
Berkshire Eagle-Tague
On the ski slopes at Bousquet's
1899
pası
1264
2050
Berkshire Eagle-Tague
Sailboat race, Pontoosuc Lake
General Electric Co.
One of the areas for testing and finishing large power transformers at GE's Morningside plant
BROS.H
T
RRY GO. ES
Berkshire Eagle-Tague
North Street, Saturday afternoon
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V
World War I Years
T HE YEAR 1916 OPENED quietly in Pittsfield with the observ- ance of two anniversaries. Early on New Year's day, with some no doubt feeling the ill effects of their gaiety the night before, hundreds were up and out of their houses before dawn, making their way in the frosty dark toward Park Square to attend the New Year's sunrise prayer meeting at the First Church. Long part of the Pittsfield tradition, it was the 100th anniversary of this service, which went back to the days when people came from miles around on horseback or in jingling sleighs to greet the year's first sunrise by praying together in the old wooden meetinghouse, later congregating in the Park, then a simple village green, for talk and the ringing exchange of "Happy New Year."
The centennial of the sunrise prayer meeting was attended by more than 800 people, men and women of many denomina- tions, who crowded into the First Church to bow their heads as the pastor, the Reverend James E. Gregg, led the prayers. Min- isters of other churches spoke from the pulpit-the Reverends Charles P. MacGregor of the First Baptist Church, Warren S. Archibald of the Pilgrim Memorial Church, Werner L. Genz- mer of the German Lutheran Church, and Earl C. Davis of the Unity Church. Messages of congratulation from almost all of
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WORLD WAR I YEARS
the city's churches were read in a happy manifestation of Christian love and brotherhood not always so apparent.
Two days later, on January 3, a large crowd gathered in the Colonial Theatre on South Street to celebrate Pittsfield's 25th anniversary as a city. The principal speakers were Charles E. Hibbard, first mayor of the city, and ex-mayors John C. Crosby and Walter F. Hawkins. Reviewing the city's rapid growth and major accomplishments since 1891, the speakers seemed to agree, in the spirit of the occasion, that with faith and hard work Pittsfield's possibilities were practically limitless.
In his address, Hibbard took occasion to remark that it was time to begin thinking again about a change in the frame of government-a reform that would not come for many years. The 1891 charter was already "out of date and wholly inade- quate," Hibbard declared, saying that he favored a city man- ager type of government.
At the meeting, Mayor George W. Faulkner was inducted into office for his second term and spoke on the community's immediate problems and concerns. The city debt, he reported, stood at $2,847,577, having been reduced more than $65,000 within a year. On every street-or at least, on one side of every street-there should be good sidewalks of stone, brick, or cement. A new and much larger high school building was urg- ently needed-a constantly recurring theme in Pittsfield's annals.
The Mayor might also have mentioned the need of a new city hall to replace the old town hall built in 1832. A new police station was also badly needed. The old lockup on School Street, as an increasing number complained, was a scandal, "a demoral- izing element in the community." Men locked up for being drunk were constantly shouting out the windows "all sorts of vile things at each other and at passersby" as school children gathered to enjoy the fun and watch the "Black Maria" drive up to disgorge its occupants on the street for all to see, no matter what their condition.
But the most urgent problem, most citizens agreed, was pre- sented by the state of Pittsfield's streets and roads. The streets,
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THE HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS
even the main streets, were "in a deplorable condition .. . ridiculed by everybody using them," Mayor Faulkner declared in pointing to the need of a paving program. As a start, he recommended that South, East, and Tyler streets be paved. But the Council did not agree, and the matter was shelved for the moment.
A few blocks along North Street had been paved, but this "improvement" left much to be desired. The pavement kept cracking up under increasingly heavy traffic, leaving big holes that rattled the teeth of motorists and wagoners when their vehicles hit them, as they could not help doing, the holes being so large and numerous.
For better or worse, the day of the automobile had arrived. Motor vehicles in rapidly mounting numbers rolled along the streets and highways as the revolutionary new techniques of assembly-line production went into high gear, led by the old Model-T Ford, ugly and rather uncomfortable, without any frills at all, but usually reliable when the going got rough, which was often. On South Street, in the beginning of Automo- bile Row, one could buy a Model-T for $375, or fancier models at a higher price-an Overland touring car, say, for $615.
The city saw its first automobile show in February 1916. Sponsored by the newly formed Berkshire County Automobile Association, it was held for three days in the Armory, where "25 or more machines" were polished up, along with the sales- men, and placed on view. Thousands from Pittsfield and neigh- boring towns attended this "creditable affair," at which a few machines were sold.
Though by today's standard there were relatively few cars, they were already creating all kinds of new problems. Town streets and country highways had not been built for the auto- mobile. Chief of Police John L. Sullivan was constantly warn- ing citizens against traffic and worse hazards.
"The list of automobile accidents published day by day is a disgrace," observed the local press. "The Monday morning. newspapers, with their record of Sunday maiming and slaugh -.
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WORLD WAR I YEARS
ter, sound like a dispatch from bloody Belgium. Speed limits should be strictly enforced and held to 30 miles an hour."
Unemployment was a more local and serious concern. The outbreak of World War I, with repercussions felt round the globe, had affected Pittsfield adversely for a time. The war disrupted normal channels of trade. American business general- ly faced grave uncertainties. Lacking orders, local factories slowed down, throwing thousands out of work. This, in turn, affected retail trade and other business.
New building construction, a fairly reliable index of general economic conditions, fell off sharply in Pittsfield during 1915, declining to a mere $670,000, less than half the figure for the year before and only a quarter of what it had been in 1911. The local unemployment rate at the end of 1915 was the high- est for any city in the state, reaching almost 15 per cent, a wide difference from Brockton's low of 2 per cent.
A rapid recovery in prosperity occurred early in 1916 when war orders, largely financed by American loans, began to flood in from Europe-for guns, ammunition, machinery, woolens for uniforms and blankets, food, fuel, and other items. Local woolen mills resumed full operation and were soon running overtime with all-night shifts. Officials at the General Electric plant reported that their business, while not back to normal, was ten times better than a year before. By April 1916 the plant was employing 5,300 people; by the end of the year, almost 7,500, who were taking home a record payroll of more than $125,000 a week.
To hold workers and recruit new ones, the textile mills- the Berkshire, Pontoosuc, Russell, Tillotson, and others-vol- untarily raised wages 5 per cent and reduced hours from 55 to 50 a week. Within a few months, they again offered a wage increase, this time of 10 per cent, granting another 10 per cent increase a short time later. The General Electric increased wage rates and expanded its plant to take care of the growing de- mands upon it.
The war boom was on, with wages and profits soaring, and prices along with them, exciting loud and general complaints
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against "extortion" and "profiteering." The local price of an- thracite coal shot up to $10.50 a ton, almost twice what it had been the year before. Pittsfield was paying $1.75 for a bushel of potatoes, which, not so long before, had been selling at four bushels for a dollar. Even so, one could still get at local markets a choice sirloin steak at 22 cents a pound, and fresh country eggs at 17 cents a dozen.
With labor in great demand, the war boom precipitated a rather curious social crisis that ultimately transformed millions of American homes, drastically upsetting the traditional divi- sion of labor between the sexes. Attracted by higher wages and greater personal independence, girls and women began going into the factories in large numbers for the first time, causing matrons in Pittsfield, as elsewhere, to moan about "the servant problem." It was almost impossible to get anyone to work as a housemaid or cook. Those willing to do so were asking fab- ulous wages-as much as $6 a week, plus a night off and other privileges. Well, came the chant over the tea cups, what was the world coming to!
A local editor, in a philosophic mood, supplied a realistic answer: "When a girl can enter a factory and earn $8 to $10 a week, she is slow to go into a home and take $3 a week. . . Servants are luxuries today. Where they formerly jumped at $3 a week, they often ask double that sum." Housewives were hav- ing to don the apron. And let husbands not think it below their dignity "to help clean house, or wipe the dishes," said the ed- itor, gratuitously adding the sop that the "saving is substantial and may be the foundation of a fortune."
Two other questions were vexing the sexes in Pittsfield and throughout the land-prohibition and woman suffrage. Many determined Pittsfield women were very active in the local chapter of the Equal Suffrage Association, a nationwide or- ganization with 125,000 members in Massachusetts. The Suf- fragettes were becoming increasingly militant-''very un-lady- like," the more conventional fumed-picketing the White House and putting heavy pressure on President Wilson to sponsor an equal suffrage amendment to the Federal constitu-
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WORLD WAR I YEARS
tion. Twelve states had already granted women the right to vote, and in 1917 New York joined their ranks, adopting woman suffrage by a decisive majority, which encouraged those in Pittsfield who felt that "government of all the people by half the people is a contradiction in terms."
There was even more violent debate, often quite fanatical, on the "liquor question," with the "wets" and the "drys" each seizing every opportunity to consign the other to the nethermost depths of hell. A concerted drive against Demon Rum had started in 1874 with the organization of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, which adopted a white ribbon as its badge. The campaign had become bi-sexual when the Anti-Saloon League was formed in Ohio in 1893, becoming a national or- ganization two years later, having the strong support of the Protestant Evangelical churches. The White Ribbon campaign in Pittsfield dated back more than forty years, to the founding of a WCTU chapter in 1875.
By 1916, nineteen states had prohibited the making, trans- portation, and sale of alcoholic drink within their confines, and the Berkshires were beginning to dry up. Lenox had just voted to join the prohibition ranks, and the White Ribboners in Pitts- field and other Berkshire towns were very hopeful, with good reason. Their "no license" campaign soon won in North Adams, closing all saloons and bars there. It almost won in Pittsfield, losing by only 99 votes-3,337 to 3,436.
In the spring of 1916, a new word began to be stressed in dispatches from Washington-"Preparedness." It seemed to be a good idea in a troubled world, but some asked for specifica- tions-preparedness against what? Against invasion by Ger- many, which seemed to be fully occupied along two long battle- fronts, east and west? Against trouble with Mexico, from which no serious threat to our security could be expected ? Pitts- field shared the official views of the administration and the general feeling of the country, that, if possible, we should not get embroiled in the fighting in Europe, or anywhere. In any case, on June 8, 1916, Pittsfield staged a large preparedness parade, with some 3,000 marchers in line.
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THE HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS
A national citizens committee sponsored by Major General Leonard Wood began organizing military camps for the train- ing of officers. Some thirty men from Pittsfield attended the camp held at Plattsburg, New York, in the spring and summer of 1916. These camps helped to relieve the dearth of officers as the Army expanded.
Meantime, trouble had broken out with Mexico, which had been in revolution for years. Anti-American feeling ran high among all parties there because the United States had inter- vened with armed force more than once. Fighting was still going on. When one of the rebel chieftains, Pancho Villa, led raids into Texas and New Mexico with the loss of American lives, Washington dispatched an expeditionary force to the Border under the command of General John J. ("Black Jack") Pershing, with orders to take Villa "dead or alive."
The Massachusetts National Guard quickly received a call to mobilize for service on the Mexican border. By dawn on June 19, 1916, within four hours of receiving the call, the city's militia company, Company F of the 2nd Massachusetts Regi- ment, was assembled in the Armory on Summer Street.
Two days later, "amid cheers and tears," with flags flying and bands playing, Company F marched to the station and en- trained for the mobilization point at South Framingham, having 83 men in line under the command of Captain Ambrose Clogher, not being up to its full strength of 142 men.
The Board of Trade, under President George A. Newman, appointed a special committee "to learn if any of the families of the militiamen are suffering financial hardship, and to devise ways of relieving it." Hardship was bound to be involved, for the pay of militiamen at that time-and that of regulars, too- was $15 a month. The General Electric gave two weeks' pay to help the dependents of its employees serving in Company F.
After a week at South Framingham, Company F departed for the Border. There it was assigned to guarding General Pershing's supply depot at Columbus, New Mexico. The Berk- shire men did not like the Southwest desert, finding it "hot, windy, and sultry." The tedium of camp was relieved in part,
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WORLD WAR I YEARS
and contact with home maintained, by the special Border edi- tion of the Eagle which arrived daily for free distribution among the Berkshire men on the Villa front.
Some months later, the troops of the 2nd Massachusetts were reviewed by General Pershing. "Excellent," he pronounced them-quickly adding, however, that they were not yet ready for combat. Company F was rated second in efficiency among the Massachusetts National Guard units. Without having seen any fighting, Company F was back home and mustered out early in November.
Meantime, trouble had developed on the Pittsfield front. Early in August 1916, the spinners in the woolen mills walked out in a dispute about hours and piece rates. The strike con- tinued for more than two months, seriously cutting production.
At this time, the trade unions in the city had a membership of 1,156, organized in fourteen locals, most of them being craft unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. Pitts- field had the distinction of being the only city in the state where the beer wagon drivers were organized, in the Bottlers' Union. Of all enterprises in the city, only the publishers could say, as they often did, that they had "100 per cent union offices."
On the heels of the spinners' walk-out came a great strike at the General Electric plant. Conflict began when the company announced, in offering a 5 per cent pay increase, that if any employees had complaints or grievances, the management was willing to talk with them as individuals or through committees chosen from their ranks, but would not deal with any trade unions as such. Officers of two national unions-of the Car- penters and Joiners, and of the Patternmakers-came to Pitts- field and set up headquarters in the Eagles' building on First Street.
The strike began on September 2, when some 5,000 workers, including about 600 women, walked out and organized a great demonstration that was not soon forgotten. Though conducted with exemplary order, this first large labor demonstration in Pittsfield, as old-timers still recall, sent "shivers" down many a spine.
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THE HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS
Assembling on Kellogg Street, the strikers marched two abreast, in almost complete silence, down North Street, around Park Square, along East Street, and up First Street to the Com- mon where speakers, mounted on big packing boxes as a ros- trum, addressed them for an hour or more, urging them to stand fast, remain orderly, and keep away from the saloons.
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