USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Pittsfield > The history of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, from the year 1876 to the year 1916 > Part 2
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The beneficent influence of strongly supported churches and religious societies was exerted potently, faithfully, and amicably. There were nine church edifices in the town. Of these, six re- main ;- the First Congregational, St. Joseph's, the South Con- gregational, the First Baptist, the Methodist Episcopal, and the Second Congregational. Three have disappeared, and have been replaced on nearly the same sites, by the present German Lutheran, St. Stephen's, and Notre Dame Churches, the prede- cessor of the latter having been called originally St. Jean le Baptiste.
Pittsfield at this time was making its first trial of a permanent charity built on lines broadly representative of different religious beliefs. The chief local interest of many Pittsfield women was the new House of Mercy hospital, then established on Francis Avenue. During 1875, the first year of its existence, the House of Mercy cared for twenty-two patients. The usefulness of the hospital was perhaps still to be proved, and abundantly were the years to prove it; but already the institution was powerfully ef-
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HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD
fcctive in bringing together the members of all the churches, as a unit, in a noble field of public service.
Social life was far less elaborately organized than it is now, and social amusements were more spontaneous. Clubs were informal and usually short-lived, although the Berkshire Reading Room Association, which moved into rooms in the Berkshire Life Insurance Company's building in 1871, had an enjoyable existence from 1863 to 1903. The Pleasure Park Association, precursor of a modern country club, had become moribund before 1876, and had leased its race track, stables, and clubhouse on Elm Street, about a mile and a half from the village center. Rooms in the United States Hotel building were occupied by the Park Club of those days, a small and jovial organization, long since extinct. Fraternal orders, however, flourished healthfully; and the quarters of the volunteer fire companies were pleasant and well-ordered clubrooms.
Public balls and masquerades were much in vogue, with music by George Becker's orchestra, or with the assistance of Doring's band of Albany. Especially notable was the annual ball of the George Y. Learned Engine Company; in 1876, it was attended in the Academy of Music, where a dancing-floor was built over the theater-seats, while in a floral bower, supplied by Otto Kaiser, a perfumed fountain played fragrantly.
In sleighing-time, hardly a week passed without an excur- sion of a large party to Lanesborough or Cheshire, Lenox or Lee, for a supper and a dance at the village hotel. It was the custom, too, that a genial descent should be made, sometimes unexpected- ly, upon a hospitable farmhouse in the "North Woods" or the "East Part", and that the visit should be as unexpectedly re- turned, and as hospitably received. Coasting parties, not al- ways youthfully constituted by any means, flocked to Church Street, and Jubilee Hill; while skaters patronized Silver Lake and the West Street meadow, near Center Street.
Among the popular entertainments, lectures were conspicu- ous, although the cult of the New England lyceum was already waning. Amateur theatrical performances seem to have been frequent, especially by the young people of the Catholic benevo- lent societies. Lovers of classical music were gratified by nu-
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PITTSFIELD IN 1876
merous concerts, of which the exceptional merit is still remem- bered, under the supervision often of Benjamin C. Blodgett or James I. Lalor; and at the theater might be seen several of the best actors of the period.
Nor should public amusements of less importance be forgotten -the itinerant Punch-and-Judy shows at the Park, for example, occasionally accompanied by a melancholy bear; the street auctions on West's corner; the traveling circuses, which en- camped on the "town lot", or on the small pasture at the north- east corner of Wendell Avenue and East Housatonic Street; the races and baseball games at the Pleasure Park; the Swiss Bell-ringers and the Bohemian Glass-blowers at West's or Bur- bank's Hall; and the exhibitions, two or three years later, of strange, amusing, and useless toys called the phonograph and the telephone.
Nothing of this sort, however, entertained and excited the town to a greater degree than did the annual fair of the Berkshire Agricultural Society. The grounds and buildings of the society covered thirty acres of a hill on the west side of Wahconah Street, opposite the Bel Air factory. The fair, with all the spirited accessories of a country cattle show, lasted for three days, and attracted most of the population of the central part of Berkshire. A journey to the fair grounds was not always neces- sary to enjoy the humors of cattle show week. Rural horse- trading was volubly conducted on School Street, and the pic- turesque steeds of this Tattersall's exhibited their preposterous paces by circling the Park.
During the summer, popular picnic grounds were the Curtis woods at Morningside, and Pomeroy's grove, nearly opposite the present Pomeroy School on West Housatonic Street. Both branches of the Housatonic afforded clean swimming-holes as well as good boating. Oarsmen frequented Silver Lake; and the waters of Onota were plowed by a steam launch as early as 1869.
The glorious beauty of Berkshire scenery was deeply and strongly appreciated by the men and women of Pittsfield long before it achieved a fame more widely spread; and a summer day's excursion among the hills was always, as always it will be,
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HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD
a favorite pastime. Little journeys of pleasure over the country roads might have been of necessity made in a more leisurely fashion than they are at present, but they were not the less de- lightful. An improved road over Potter Mountain had been recently opened; and an observatory was projected at its highest point. Much was made of every phase of outdoor lifc. Camping parties were often enjoyed. In 1877, many members of the West and Campbell familics in Pittsfield pitched tents for a week beside Ashley Lake, and held a Sunday praise-service, in which they were joined by one hundred people from the town of Washington.
In the Pittsfield directory of 1876, onc citizen is listed by profession as a hunter. The classification was sentimental rather than accurate. Although there were more birds in the woods then than now, and a good many more fish in the streams and lakes, hunting and fishing could hardly have supplied the sole means of livelihood the year around. Nevertheless, not a few mcn partly supported themselves by hunting, under the liberal game laws then in force; and the North Street merchants considered it worth while to advertise that they would pay cash for "raw skins". Trout brooks within easy distance of the vil- lage had not been exhausted. Pontoosuc Lake still justified Dr. Todd's appellation of "the poor man's pork barrel", and numer- ous humble housewives counted on a steady supply of pickerel and bullheads. The Sun complacently recorded in 1876 that the river at Taylor's bridge on South Street having been "blown up with giant powder, several barrels of suckers" were thereupon captured by the bold artillerists.
It does not appear that the legal authorities were moved by this explosive fishery. The regular police force of those days consisted of seven men. Pittsfield was a law-abiding communi- ty, although there was a good deal of complaint of nocturnal disorder in the streets. This was due to a boisterous rather than to a vicious element, but the policemen needed not to suffer from tedium. Jail deliveries at the flimsy wooden lockup on School Street attracted merely casual notice from the local press. One inmate climbed "through the roof" and was seen no morc; an- other, having been liberated by a judicious friend, who "took the key from the peg beside the door and unlocked it", posted
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PITTSFIELD IN 1876
himself across the street from the despicable dungeon, and fre- quently assaulted the night with triumphant outcries. On more serious occasions, when the instrumentalities of the police proved inadequate, the citizens were ready to take the law into their own hands. Thus fifty indignant neighbors wrecked an of- ensive hostelry on Beaver Street, and threw the furniture, crock- ery, and stoves into Silver Lake, and there the matter ended.
The dual form of local government, including that of the town and that of the fire district, was beginning to show de- fects, which will hereafter be discussed; but the visitor to Pitts- field would have found a high grade of citizenship engaged in the administration of public affairs. If he went to a town meeting, he would be impressed by its orderly attention to business, by its intelligent breadth of view, and by the shrewdness and often the eloquence of its debates; six years later, in 1882, the members of the Congressional delegation to the funeral in Pittsfield of Thomas Allen visited a town meeting, which happened to be in session, and emphatically praised its parliamentary ability.
Of the population, one resident in three was a native of the town, while one in four had been born in a foreign country. Every man elected to the office of selectman between 1855 and 1876 was of Berkshire birth. Of the 3,029 foreign-born inhabi- tants, according to the census of 1875, 1,658 were born in Ireland, 464 in Germany, 449 in Canada, 210 in England, twenty-three in Russia, and one in Italy. 562 men were listed as factory operatives, and 491 as farmers and farm laborers. There were 2,052 dwelling houses in the town.
The starting point of our narrative, then, is a prosperous Massachusetts manufacturing town which had reached, ac- cording to its own reasonable opinion, the limit of its substantial growth, and which had not quite outlived its rural characteristics and conservative village ways; a community guided by forceful and intelligent men and women, who had grown up with it; a town wherein the influence of religion, art, and education was strong, active, and well-nurtured, and wherein social intercourse was pleasurable and unrestrained. Its past had been honorable and inspiring. The future was to determine in what manner it would meet confusing problems of rapid material development, and of radical changes in the texture of its social fabric.
CHAPTER II FIFTEEN YEARS OF TOWN LIFE, 1876-1891
A T midnight of the last day of December, 1875, many of the windows in the vicinity of Park Square were illumi- nated, a bonfire was kindled, the church bells were rung, and the faithful little fieldpiece, long known to local fame as the George Y. Learned Battery, roared out a national salute in honor of the advent of the centennial year of the nation's inde- pendence. Pittsfield was not moved to celebrate it otherwise, except by planting in the Park a centennial tree, for which an economical town meeting had appropriated $20. The centenary of George Washington's first inauguration was more appropriate- ly marked by the people of the town, when, on Monday, April thirtieth, 1889, there were services at St. Joseph's and at Notre Dame, a union service at the First Church, and a crowded meeting at the Academy of Music, where John D. Long of Hingham was the distinguished orator of the day. The towns- people had the traditional New England fondness for good public speaking, and the habit of assembling to honor important occa- sions or the memories of important men. When President Gar- field died, in 1881, they gathered twice, once at the Baptist Church, where Thomas A. Oman presided and addresses were made by Joseph Tucker, Jarvis N. Dunham, and Henry W. Taft; and again on the next day, at the Academy of Music, with Rev. J. L. Jenkins as chairman, and Rev. R. S. J. Burke, William B. Rice, and Henry L. Dawes as the speakers. After General Grant's death, in 1885, a memorial meeting of especial impres- siveness was held in the Methodist Church; Rev. Samuel Har- rison offered the prayer, and speeches were made by Morris Schaff, Joseph Tucker, Henry L. Dawes, and James M. Barker.
A dignified and appreciative spirit, also, was characteristic of the dedications, between 1876 and 1891, of four institutions of
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FIFTEEN YEARS OF TOWN LIFE, 1876-1891
lasting value to Pittsfield. The dedicatory exercises in 1876 of the Berkshire Athenaeum included a prayer by Rev. Mark Hop- kins, the venerable and beloved president of Williams College, and addresses by Thomas Allen, William R. Plunkett, Julius Rockwell, and others. The corner stone of the House of Mercy building was laid in 1877 by Mrs. Curtis T. Fenn; and among the speakers were James D. Colt, and Rev. Jonathan L. Jenkins. The Berkshire County Home for Aged Women was dedicated in 1889, when addresses were made by Dr. J. F. A. Adams, Rev. W. W. Newton, Jarvis N. Dunham, and Rev. J. L. Jenkins. In the same year Richard T. Auchmuty of Lenox presided at the dedicatory exercises of the Henry W. Bishop 3rd Memorial Train- ing School for Nurses; and, after the presentation speech by Henry W. Bishop, Joseph H. Choate of New York delivered the principal address.
The community of Pittsfield had never become the recipient and custodian of any considerable amount of private bounty until the establishment of these several institutions. They stim- ulated a local pride, both sober and healthful. Apart from the direct good which they conferred upon the public was the in- direct benefit which they effected in uniting the people of the town by a common possession, and by the responsibility of con- ducting permanent charitable agencies organized on broad and non-sectarian lines.
The celebration of the Fourth of July in 1881 was typical of the period. A burlesque street procession in the morning, called "The Antiques and Horribles", included elaborate travesties of the selectmen, the fire companies, the police force, and of many other local characters and organizations. At noon, the parade of the day was marshaled by Col. H. H. Richardson, and the new Berkshire Germania Band made its debut. Athletic sports were witnessed on Park Square, where a sack race, the climbing of a slippery pole, the pursuit of a greased pig, a tug-of-war, and a hose race by the firemen enlivened a throng estimated to num- ber ten thousand persons; and many in the town marveled at their earliest view of a bicycle race, when four daring youths rode on incredibly balanced, high wheels down South to Broad Street and back to the Park by way of Wendell Avenue. An exhibition
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HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD
of fireworks on the First Street "town lot" completed the diver- sions.
In 1887 the Sarsfield Association celebrated the first Labor Day by a monster picnic at Pontoosuc Lake. The chief attrac- tion was a race between two imported professional oarsmen, who were paraded through the streets in their rowing shells; but the depleted waters of Pontoosuc at that season did not lend them- selves kindly to the event. Another early Labor Day celebra- tion of note in Pittsfield was that of the Father Mathew societies of the five western counties of the state, in 1890.
Pittsfield was rightfully and duly impressed with the signifi- cance, in 1887, of celebrations to mark the twenty-fifth anniver- saries of the departure for the front of the Forty-ninth and Thirty-seventh Massachusetts regiments, which served in the Civil War. The citizens contributed money and effort to make both of these occasions notable. The veterans of the Forty- ninth assembled on September first, 1887, and spent the day on their old camp-ground at the Pleasure Park. The reunion of the Thirty-seventh was held a week later. Hezekiah S. Russell was chairman of the citizens' committee of arrangements, and the regiment listened to an address of welcome at the Park from Rev. J. L. Jenkins, and dined at the Coliseum on North Street, where the town's influential men gathered to honor their guests.
The superbly named Coliseum was an ignoble wooden struct- ure of one story, which had been originally built for a roller skating rink in 1883; it stood on the southern part of the grounds now occupied by St. Joseph's Convent. For several years the Coliseum was the most commodious public hall in Pittsfield, and was the scene of the annual town meeting, and the only polling place for elections. At the national election of 1888, the largest vote cast at a single poll in the United States was recorded there. The building was purchased in 1887 by Rev. Edward H. Purcell of St. Joseph's, and demolished preparatory to the establishment of the convent in 1895.
About the year 1880, the return of the town's material pros- perity was made evident by many new buildings, both for busi- ness and residential purposes. North Street was greatly im- proved by the erection of Central Block in 1881, on the site of
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FIFTEEN YEARS OF TOWN LIFE, 1876-1891
the nest of decrepit tenements which had been destroyed as if providentially by fire in April of that ycar. In November, the Eagle proclaimed with patriotic and fervent pride that "the number of new houses that may be counted in Pittsfield's growth from last November to the present is nearly fifty", and that "Pittsfield's industries were never more fully employed, and every machine is busy to its best capacity". In 1883, Bartlett Avenue and Taconic Street were made available for building lots; new business blocks were erected at the corner of North and Summer Streets, and at Fenn and Pearl; and for the Terry Clock Company a brick shop was built on South Church Street, which was said to be the most completely equipped factory of its kind in the country. The England block on the east side of North Street was constructed in 1884, as well as the second Burbank building, north of the American House; and in 1887 an annex on the west was added to that hotel. The only dwell- ing house remaining on North Street between the Park and the railroad bridge disappeared when the "Milton Whitney house" was razed. It had been known latterly as the Sherman and as the Commercial Hotel, and its removal made way in 1888 for the Wollison block, south of the Academy of Music. The sec- ond Burns block, and the Brackin building on North Street, be- tween Union and Summer Streets, were erected in 1890.
In 1889, the expense of building in the town was half a million dollars, a sum of unprecedented magnitude. It included the cost of two new churches, Unity and St. Stephen's; two new charitable institutions, the Bishop Memorial, and the Home for Aged Women; and two new factories, the shop of the Cheshire Shoe Company, and that of W. E. Tillotson, near Silver Lake. During the year, more than $300,000 had been spent for dwelling houses, and the population had increased by nearly one thousand.
The necessity of building the main village almost entirely anew was at one time barely escaped. The narrow path of the phenomenal hurricane which tore through the valley from west to east in 1879 was less than a mile distant from the thickly set- tled parts of Pittsfield. No storm quite like it has ever been ex- perienced by the town or the city. The day, July sixteenth, 1879, was excessively hot. About two o'clock in the afternoon,
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HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD
the light wind veered rapidly from the south to the northwest, and above the noisy downpour of the tropical rain was heard an ominous sound rare in New England-the peculiar and charac- teristic roar of the tornado. The funnel-shaped whirlwind ap- parently began its work of destruction in Pittsfield near the corner of West and Churchill Streets, whence it swept east to the flinty buttresses of Washington Mountain. The path of its full strength was sixty rods wide, passing south of the central village at the crossing of the Housatonic river by South Street. Several bridges, many buildings, and hundreds of beautiful trees were destroyed. The loss of life was miraculously small; only two persons were killed, one at Pomeroy's factory, and the other on South Street, near the river bridge.
No serious damage to any part of the town was ever threaten- ed by flood, although in December of 1878 an exceptional freshet, which thoroughly alarmed the village of Dalton, submerged lower Fenn Street in Pittsfield, and caused such an overflow of Silver Lake and the neighboring river that travel in that vicinity was suspended for several days.
On April twenty-third, 1881, the business center of the town was menaced by destruction by fire, when the Weller buildings on North Street, opposite the Baptist Church, were burned. The flames were discovered at two o'clock in the afternoon; and, although a strong wind was blowing, the fire department suc- ceeded in confining them to the wooden block. In the evening, the owner of the property arrived from his home in a neighboring state, announced that he would repair rather than rebuild, and went to bed. Early the next morning, however, the firemen, who were watching the smoking ruins, discovered another fire therein, and before they extinguished it, the unsightly structure had been damaged beyond the possibility of restoration. The owner promptly sold out, and the negligent firemen of the early morning received guardedly the covert thanks of the community.
Two factory fires at about this time excited the town. The "lower stone mill" at Barkerville was burned in 1879; the loss was $80,000, and the disaster dealt a blow to the manufacturing interests in that section from which they never fully recovered. The fierce fire which consumed in half-an-hour the main buildings
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FIFTEEN YEARS OF TOWN LIFE, 1876-1891
of the Pomeroy factories, near West Housatonic Street, occurred in December of 1885. Part of the building had been occupied for the purposes of woolen manufacturing since 1814, and the destruction of its tower, whereon a huge gilt ram served as a vane, caused the loss of a familiar landmark.
The old medical college at the foot of South Street was burned on April first, 1876; and, in consequence, the problem of providing accommodations for the high school was the immediate question which confronted the voters. For an adequate solution the period was unpropitious. The stress of hard times was in- sistent; and the growth and prosperity of the town seemed to be at a standstill. The two special town meetings, which were called in the spring of 1876 to determine the location of the new high school, were spirited and earnest. Economy dictated the choice of the medical college site on South Street, already owned by the town; and, in the debate, the contention between "north- enders" and "south-enders", often afterward to appear, was for the first time strongly evident. The discussion engaged the en- ergies of the town's best citizens; of Ensign H. Kellogg, for ex- ample, who wished to have the new school nearer the northern manufacturing villages; of Judge James D. Colt, who argued, with characteristic sentiment, the value of a beautiful view from classroom windows; of hard-headed S. W. Bowerman, who thought that the pupils should not be thereby distracted; of Edward Learned, whose trained surveyor's hand deftly drew a map on the wall of the town hall to illustrate his speech; of Oliver W. Robbins, who declared that he and his sisters, in childhood days, walked two miles to school and thrived by the exercise; and of John V. Barker, who said he could prove, on the contrary, that the health of the juvenile Robbinses was not al- ways what it should have been. Eventually the South Street site was selected.
Among the other locations suggested, that most persistently urged was the "town lot" on First Street, between the German Lutheran Church and the railroad. The ill-kept condition of this piece of town property was not creditable. After its disuse, about 1850, as a village burying ground, it had been so robbed of soil and gravel, and so denuded of grass and trees, that it was an
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HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD
ugly blot upon that part of the village. The voters who met in the April town meeting of 1883, stirred to action by a vigorous newspaper campaign that had been conducted by Miss Anna L. Dawes, appropriated $1500 to make the town lot a public park, and from this votc originated the present Common.
When, in 1886, the first street railway in Pittsfield was to be laid, a route through First Street, instead of North Street, was advocated by a few citizens who protested vainly against the laying of tracks in the town's main thoroughfare. The railway, to run from the Union Station to Pontoosuc, had been projected by Boston investors in the fall of 1885. Of the capital stock of the company, one-fifth, or $10,000, was subscribed in Pittsfield; and the original directors were Thaddeus Clapp, who was presi- dent, T. L. Allen, T. D. Peck, A. A. Mills, H. R. Peirson, G. H. Towle of Boston, and F. W. Harwood of Natick. The selectmen granted the franchise in February, 1886; and work at once be- gan, so that the first cars, drawn by horses, were placed in op- eration on July third following, when the use of the road was gratuitously extended to a large party of guests for the initial run. Upon this occasion, the Sun waxed lyrical:
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