USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Pittsfield > The history of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, from the year 1876 to the year 1916 > Part 18
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The presidency of Samuel G. Colt was followed by that of William J. Raybold, who is now in office. The present treasurer, George Shipton, has for twenty-nine years so served the associa- tion. The ability of Edward N. Huntress, the present general secretary, has been, sinee 1902, of marked help to the organiza- tion. Of the other officers and directors, whose eo-operation has been especially valuable, a long list might be made, for the asso- ciation has engaged the active support of many men; eonspieu- ous among them have been Alexander Kennedy, Joseph E. Peirson, Irving D. Ferrey, William H. Chamberlin, Allen H. Bagg, William A. Whittlesey, Charles L. Hibbard, Charles Me- Kernon, and George H. Cooper.
Father Pureell, the beloved priest of St. Joseph's for many years, was apparently a plaeid, easy-going man, but he was able to animate the priests who from time to time assisted him with a spirit of unusual activity. His assistant in 1874 was Rev. Thomas N. Smythe. Father Smythe, devoting himself in par- tieular to the younger people of the ehureh, was a firm believer in organization; and the strong impulse created by a recent temperanee mission gave him the opportunity to form the Pitts-
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field Catholic Total Abstinence and Benevolent Society. The first meeting was held in February, 1874, and the first president was Clement Coogan. The society had about 400 members-a men's association of a size then without example in the village.
Father Smythe left Pittsfield in the following June. Perhaps the society was deprived too soon of the inspiring direction of its founder; perhaps the scheme of organization, which included a modest system of insurance against illness and death, was too unwieldy; perhaps the hard times of the period affected the col- lection of dues. At any rate, the membership list began to shrink. In August, 1877, the decision was made to abandon the system of pecuniary benefits and to change the name of the association to the Father Mathew Total Abstinence Society. In 1878 the number of members had dwindled to twenty-five. The society was probably on the point of extinction, and that it survived this crisis was owing in chief to the efforts of William J. Cullen, Daniel W. Devanney, and William Nugent. A series of entertainments was devised, the hospitable aid of the ladies of the parish was enlisted, meetings were enlivened by good speeches and songs, and the association was revivified. The Father Mathew Ladies' Aid Society was formed in 1880, and has been from the beginning a helpful institution, both to its own members and to the F. M. T. A.
In 1879 the F. M. T. A., under the presidency of William Nugent, had its home in the Martin block on Park Square, and in 1885 was established in the Gamwell block on Columbus Avenue. Thence the society journeyed up and down North Street until 1908, when it moved into quarters in the City Sav- ings Bank block, at the corner of North and Fenn Streets. The presidents during this period of migration and growth were William Nugent, James E. Murphy, Frank Larkin, T. J. Nelli- gan, William J. Cullen, Edward H. Cullen, William A. Fahey, James F. McCue, James Farrell, John H. Kelly, and Robert F. Stanton. William Nugent and William A. Fahey were the treasurers of longest service. While many thoughtful men and women of Pittsfield by no means lacked appreciation at this time of the moral and social value to the community of the work of the F. M. T. A., interest was aroused among the general, and
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especially the youthful, populace by the corps of cadcts, or- ganized by the members of the society in 1883. The proficiency in drill, acquired under tlic instruction of William H. Marshall, won much distinction for the corps throughout Massachusetts, for it was then the custom of the various Father Mathew Socie- ties in each diocese to celebrate an annual ficld day, of which the principal event was a competitive drill by their cadet companies.
The F. M. T. A. diocesan field day in Pittsfield in September, 1890, was a noteworthy local festival of the period. The streets were decorated along the line of march of the parade, wherein were counted twenty bands and drum corps and over 2,000 mem- bers of Father Mathew Societies from the five western counties of the state. A dinner at the fair grounds on Wahconah Street refreshed the paraders, and there they listened to addresses, watched the drill, a baseball game, and a balloon ascension, and marveled at an exhibition by Hudson Maxim of a newly invented machine gun using smokeless powder. A more impressive ex- hibit seems to have been the numbers and demeanor of the assembled young men.
Beginning in 1893, the growth of St. Joseph's was such that the parish was divided again and again, and of course this growth broadened correspondingly the possible field of usefulness of the local F. M. T. A. The society was so circumstanced, however, that even the most earnest members could hardly en- courage themselves for several years in the hope of erecting a building which would enable them to make the most of their in- creasing opportunities. Nevertheless, a building fund was slowly and laboriously accumulated, and at length, in 1896, a lot was purchased on the south side of Melville Street. Meanwhile, not only was the society gaining strength, but also the people of the city were becoming wider awake to the fact that worthy associa- tional work among young men and boys safeguards the welfare of the entire community. In the spring of 1911 the officers of the society determined to present their case to the public at large, and to solicit subscriptions to their building fund. The president was then Robert F. Stanton, the treasurer was Wil- liam A. Fahey, and upon the board of governors were Rev. Michael J. O'Connell, Bartley Cummings, James Henchcy,
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George E. Haynes, Daniel F. Farrell, Fred Volin, John H. Kelly, James W. Synan and T. J. Nelligan. Their zeal was rewarded. The ten-days' campaign produced a fund of $47,000, to which about 3,500 persons contributed, without regard to affiliation of any sort whatever. The result was striking evidence of the popular estimate of the society's work, and evidence no less striking of the popular solidarity of Pittsfield in the support of good causes.
The brick F. M. T. A. building of three stories on Melville Street was completed in 1913 and dedicated on March twenty- second of that year. The third floor, with parlors, dining hall, and kitchen, was assigned to the Ladies' Aid Society. The sec- ond floor was planned for the use of the senior members of the F. M. T. A., providing an assembly hall, a library, and recreation rooms. The offices of the society, and the accommodations for junior members, were arranged on the street floor; and the basement contained bathrooms and locker rooms, bowling alleys, and handball courts. The gymnasium, with a height of two stories, had a floor space of 3,750 square feet. The cost of the building, furnished and equipped, was computed to be $65,000. The architect was George E. Haynes of Pittsfield.
In 1914, the presidency of Robert F. Stanton was succeeded by that of William A. Fahey, who then served for two years, after which Mr. Stanton was again chosen. The membership in 1915 was approximately 800, and the Ladies' Aid Society had about 200 members. A general secretary was engaged when the new building was occupied; and religious, social, educational, and athletic activities are successfully carried on, along the lines best approved in modern associational work. An important branch of the association, of recent development, is the junior section, numbering about 200 boys. The educational privileges offered to the members of the Ladies' Aid Society in their pleasant rooms have been so extended as to include instruction in modern languages, cooking, current events, physical culture, and sewing.
The local organizations whose history this chapter has now briefly narrated have many counterparts in other cities, but the Pittsfield institution about to be described is in many respects unique in New England, if not in the United States.
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Boys' clubs on a small scale were known in Pittsfield soon after 1880; and in 1888 Joseph E. Peirson read a paper on the subject before the Monday Evening Club. A few years later, a boys' club was formed by the Union for Home Work, and con- ducted by some of the volunteer officers of that Pittsfield charity and their friends in its house on Fenn Street. The enrolment, in 1896, was about 200, but lack of room prohibited the attendance of members except in small detachments. Under these circum- stances, no systematic or purposeful work could even be at- tempted, and the undertaking was soon abandoned.
The boys' club idea, however, had been firmly planted in the larger cities; and the National Boys' Club Association had been organized, a philanthropic enterprise now extinct, which had headquarters in Springfield. Under the nominal auspices of this association, but actually initiated and supported by Zenas Crane of Dalton, a boys' club was opened in Pittsfield, on March fifth, 1900, in a room in the Renne building on Fenn Street. For this club were obtained the services, as local treasurer, of Henry A. Brewster, and, as superintendent, of Prentice A. Jordan, who then came to Pittsfield from Salem, Massachusetts, where he had acquired some experience in a similar position. The possible value of the club to the city was perceived by several business men. They met on June fifth, 1900, incorporated themselves under the name of the Boys' Club of Pittsfield, and chose William C. Stevenson, John McQuaid, Henry A. Brewster, Henry R. Peirson, William D. MacInnes, and Arthur A. Mills to serve on the board of directors. Mr. Stevenson was elected president.
In the following September, the club, having an enrolment of 600 boys, rented additional rooms in the Renne building, and was ready to experiment with a venture which has since become its most distinctive and vital function-that is to say, vocational training. During the next five years, classes were organized, each under an efficient instructor, in light carpentry, mechanical drawing, sign lettering, shoemaking, free-hand drawing, and clay modeling. Chiefly of their own volition, the boys flocked to the classrooms. Their self-inspired eagerness was significant. It was ascribable, of course, to the natural desire of the average boy "to do things", and to do things better than the other fellow
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does them. The characteristic and peculiar feature of the devel- opment of the Pittsfield Boys' Club was that this desire, the proper means of its gratification having been supplied, was left in great part to itself. Thus the club was developed in response to the wholesome demands of the boys themselves, and sought neither to prove nor to disprove any cut and dried theory of sociological pundits.
No fees were charged, and the club was dependent wholly upon current donations for financial support. An appeal, how- ever, to the central office of the National Boys' Club Association was always answered by a liberal contribution from an unknown donor. In 1905 his identity was disclosed, when Zenas Crane offered to erect and to give to the club a building, with funds sufficient for its maintenance, upon the sole condition that boys of the town of Dalton should share the privileges of membership with the boys of Pittsfield. The club had then been in existence only five years. That in this brief period it had made its merit sufficiently apparent to justify a gift of this character was not the least creditable of its achievements.
Messrs. Harding and Seaver of Pittsfield were the architects of the three-story brick building, which was erected on the south side of Melville Street and dedicated on March nineteenth, 1906. The building contained an auditorium, with a seating capacity of 500, a library and recreation rooms, eight classrooms, a gymna- sium, bowling alleys and bathrooms. It was believed that the land, construction, and equipment represented an outlay of about $50,000. In the rear of the original building, Mr. Crane later provided a gymnasium, with floor dimensions of forty-five by eighty feet. This was opened in 1910, and allowed the devo- tion of more space in the main building to vocational training. Such space soon became necessary.
Established in its new quarters, the club raised its enrolment to 1,600 in 1915. The branches of free instruction offered in the Fenn Street rooms were continued with greatly bettered and of course enlarged facilities, and classes in typewriting and elec- trical fitting were added. The school of music, a department of the club supported and guided by Mrs. Frederic S. Coolidge, gained steadily in value. For the younger boys, a story-telling
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section was organized. A "Round Table Club" and a "Lyceum Society" were institutcd, giving their members the advantage of listening to counsel preparatory to the selection of a trade or pro- fession, and with the object of adjusting their abilities to social and economic necds. Above all, adherence was maintained to the fundamental principle of the club, that its activities should express the healthful aspirations of the boys themselves. The fact that the club thus became with increasing effect a free school where a boy might learn a trade and, what is more, where he might learn the direction of that natural ability for some trade which most boys possess, was due primarily to the boys' own wish.
Annually, in the summer and the autumn, the management of the club forms leagues of bascball and football teams, repre- senting the different public schools of the city of grammar school grade, and cach series of games is played under its supervision. Contests in basketball and bowling are arranged during the winter in the gymnasium, where skilled athletic instructors are employed, and where it is sought, as in the other departments of the club, to satisfy every wholesome desire of average, normal boyhood. It was with this object in view that a farm was ac- quired in 1909 on the southeastern border of Richmond Pond; and a summer camp was opened for the enjoyment and profit of the club members. A bequest from Franklin W. Russell to the club was largely devoted to this purpose, and his name was thereforc given to the farm and the camp, which in 1915 utilized about 200 acres of land.
But, after all, vocational training, without cost to the learners or to the municipal treasury, remains the chief and practical benefit which the development of the Boys' Club has secured to the community of Pittsfield. Supported by yearly subscribers and by the generosity of Zenas Crane, the club has become a free school of thrift, of which the tendency is to make the rational choice of a trade, and the learning of the rudiments of that trade, not only possible but attractive. Furthermore, the club serves to fuse not inconsiderably the varying racial and sectarian ele- ments of the youthful population, for the membership is unre- stricted, and the enrolment begins entirely anew every autumn.
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Nor does the influence of the institution over those who have shared its advantages cease when they have been graduated by age from active membership. An alumni association was volun- tarily formed in 1914, and from this have been chosen officers of the directorate and instructors for the classrooms.
William C. Stevenson, now the president, has continuously served in that capacity since the organization of the club. The successive treasurers have been Henry A. Brewster, Edward B. Hull, Frank Bonney, and Charles F. Reid, Jr. Besides Mr. Stevenson, the only director now in office who was on the original board is John McQuaid, chairman of the house committee. Prentice A. Jordan, the present superintendent, has served the club also from its birth, and with a lively understanding of boy- hood and rare devotion to purpose has wrought a great part of its success.
While the social and educational results accomplished in Pittsfield for their members by the Working Girls' Club and the Business Women's Club may be likened to those effected by the three organizations which have been named in this chapter, and may therefore permit a certain classification with them, a sharp distinction is to be drawn between the two groups so far as their methods of maintenance are concerned. The Working Girls' Club and the Business Women's Club, being in essence private associations, have been self-governing and self-reliant, have never appealed to the community for any financial assistance, and have been supported democratically by their members, share and share alike.
The Working Girls' Club was formed on November fifteenth, 1890, according to a plan suggested by Miss Grace Dodge of New York, an authority of experience with similar associations, who was invited to Pittsfield to explain such organizations by the members of the Winter Nights Club. The local Working Girls' Club began with 125 members and in rooms in the Backus build- ing, on Bank Row. Classes were maintained in stenography, dressmaking, physical culture, and other branches; and the membership fee was twenty-five cents a month. The club en- countered early vicissitudes. In 1894, when times were hard and employment was scarce, the number of members was reduced
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to forty. Nevertheless, they clung fast to the principle, as they have ever done, that the club should be self-sustaining, and should never circulate a public subscription paper. When the rent was too large for the girls themselves to pay, the accommo- dations were reduced, and no wealthy friend was permitted to replenish the treasury. The club was maintained and conducted by, and not for, its young women.
The membership list showed seventy names in 1895, when classes werc added in English literature, cooking, dancing, and vocal music, and after that year the club grew steadily and healthfully. Rooms in the Backus building were occupied by the club during the first two years of its career, and the next twelve were spent in the wooden Wollison building, on North Street. The club moved to the Blatchford building on North Street in 1904. There the club was enabled to make more at- tractive its social life and to indicate more emphatically the possibilities of an associational center for the wage-earning girls of the city.
In 1910 several Pittsfield men and women, whom these pos- sibilities impressed, incorporated themselves under the name of the Young Women's Home Association, for the purpose of pro- viding better quarters for leasing to the Working Girls' Club and to any kindred organizations which might be formed in the future. The Young Women's Home Association, of which the president has been William C. Stevenson since its incorporation, at once refitted the third floor of the former Backus block, now the Park Building, and in 1910 became the landlord of the Work- ing Girls' Club, which thus found itself on the twentieth anni- versary of its birth again in its birthplace, and with the oppor- tunities of enjoyment and benefit for its members greatly ex- tended. Some of the officers to whom much of the credit for the hard-won success of the Working Girls' Club must be as- cribed have been Miss Martha G. B. Clapp, Miss Mary J. Lin- ton, and Miss Ara M. West.
Meanwhile had been formed the Business Women's Club. It was organized on January sixteenth, 1909, by fourteen young women of the Methodist Church, meeting at the parsonage with Mrs. C. L. Leonard, who was the first president. The member-
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ship, upon which no sectarian restrictions were placed, increased rapidly. In 1910 the club had its rooms in the Wright building on North Street, and its purpose was like that of the Working Girls' Club, to which it was akin also in the democratic principle of self-reliance and self-support.
The Young Women's Home Association offered a home to the Business Women's Club in the summer of 1910, and the latter, in the fall of that year, was installed in rooms on the third floor of the Park Building, which were partly occupied by its sister society, the Working Girls' Club. Early in 1911 the Home As- sociation leased the upper floor of the adjacent Martin block on Bank Row, connected it with the third floor of the Park Building, and equipped it for use by the two clubs. In these commodious quarters both organizations prospered immediately and amicably. During the month of February of 1911, for example, the total attendance was 2,605, and forty-nine classes were well patronized, in domestic science, current events, giving first aid to the in- jured, gymnastics, dancing, sewing, and millinery. A dramatic club was formed. The parlors and reading room, and a res- taurant under the supervision of a housekeeper, were pleasant attractions. The officers whose efforts were of especial value in guiding the affairs of the Business Women's Club were Mrs. C. L. Leonard, Mrs. J. L. Gilmore, Mrs. H. L. Dawes, and Dr. Mary Anna Wood.
An informal but successful attempt made in 1911 by members of both clubs to interest girls of the public schools in gymnastics and folk dancing caused the organization in January, 1913, of the Girls' League, to which the Home Association allotted rooms on the second floor of the Park Building. Miss Gertrude A. J. Peaslee was employed as general secretary for this league of younger girls, and in addition to the instruction offered in danc- ing and physical culture, a class was formed for nature study, and a cooking school was organized. The league was initiated by and under the direction of the Young Women's Home Associa- tion.
It was on February twenty-second, 1914, that the ultimate intention of the association was revealed. Announcement was then made, to an enthusiastic audience gathered in the assembly
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hall in the Park Building, that an unnamed, and now a still un- named, donor had made the association owner of a lot on the east corner of East and First Streets, in dimensions about 130 by 190 feet, and of a sum of money sufficient to erect an adequate build- ing thereon for occupancy by the Working Girls' Club, the Busi- ness Women's Club, and the Girls' League.
The possession of this land and this fund by the Young Women's Home Association may be said, if one is inclined to discount the future a trifle, to complete Pittsfield's equipment for promoting the social, physical, industrial, and moral welfare of boys and girls, and of young men and young women. The thought and conscientious effort which have been rewarded by the provision of this equipment, and some of which are suggested in the foregoing pages, have been other than ordinary. The thought and the effort have constituted, during the first quarter- century of the city's existence, an important part of the city's domestic life, and a record of them and their results are a part not unimportant of the city's history.
CHAPTER XIV
THE HOUSE OF MERCY
T HE charitable desire to establish a public hospital in Pitts- field was first made practically manifest in 1872, when Mrs. Thomas S. O'Sullivan placed $100 for such a purpose in the hands of Rev. John Todd of the First Church. The gift was an immediate response to a suggestion made by Dr. Todd in a Thanksgiving Day sermon, and it was followed by the offer of the same sum by William Durant, whose Pittsfield property then included a section of pasture land near the present line of Second Street.
It is not to be supposed, of course, that before this time the needs of the sick, to whom the straits of circumstance denied a proper care, were disregarded by the good people of the village. There were always many Pittsfield women of whose daily oc- cupations a part was a visit to some humble invalids, nor were the Pittsfield physicians of former generations less generously heedful to the call of distress than are the doctors of today. Dr. Henry H. Childs, in the ante-bellum era when flourished the medical college on South Street, had urged the establishment of a hos- pital in connection with the free clinics at the school. Later, in 1871, the Eagle was authorized to say that "a gentleman of wealth, a resident of the county and a graduate of the Berkshire Medical Institute, has offered to give $50,000 toward the estab- lishment of a county hospital, provided as much more can be raised." But a public hospital necessarily meant then to the American layman a large and an expensive institution. This country possessed no charitable hospitals except in the great cities. The notion that one could be supported by a small com- munity seemed, in 1872, utterly chimerical. The popular mind vaguely conceived organized hospital relief on the vast and tragic scale exhibited in the Civil War. When Mrs. O'Sullivan and
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