USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Pittsfield > The history of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, from the year 1876 to the year 1916 > Part 28
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After 1892, the Eagle, in equipment of service, kept pace ju- diciously with the rapid growth of Pittsfield. In 1893 its quarters were removed from West Street to a new building erected for it on the south side of Cottage Row, and on July thirty-first of that year it was printed in a six-page form. In 1904 it occupied another new building which had been provided for it, and for the Eagle Printing and Binding Company, on the north side of Cottage Row, wherein the newspaper has been since equipped from time to time with the more important and improved facilities of a metropolitan daily and has been so de- veloped as to serve the community to great and steady advan- tage. In 1915 the regular edition contained eighteen pages.
Until 1897 the duties of chief editor of the Evening Eagle were performed by S. Chester Lyon and since that year they have been assumed by the president of the Eagle Publishing Company, Kelton B. Miller; prominently connected with the editorial staff have been Dennis J. Haylon and Joseph Hollister.
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When a daily edition was added to the weekly Eagle in 1892, another daily newspaper had been in course of publieation in Pittsfield for twelve years. Nathaniel C. Fowler, Jr., established the Evening Journal in Pittsfield in 1880 and issued his first num- ber on September twenty-seventh, antedating any daily in Massachusetts west of the Connectieut. Mr. Fowler's enter- prise, indeed, may be said to have antedated its opportunity, for the conservative and not very prosperous town of 1880 afforded a hazardous field for the exploitation of a daily paper. Never- theless, he broke ground bravely. The original Evening Journal was a four page sheet, with seven columns to the page; the price was three eents and the advertising rate was six dollars a column. Editorial offiees and press room were in the building on the north corner of Fenn and North Streets.
The Journal under Mr. Fowler was Republican in politics, but it declared in its first number that "it will endeavor to be fair while being foreible, so that no one ean charge it with that growingly dangerous eourse, unthinking and unearing partisan- ship." Newspaper fashions were changing. It is not likely that a Pittsfield paper of an earlier era would have considered it expedient to emphasize a declaration of that sort.
Mr. Fowler relinquished the Journal in less than a year after he founded it, and sold it to a small stoek company of young local Republicans, who obtained the editorial serviees of I. Chipman Smart. Mr. Smart, in later years the brilliant pastor of the South Congregational Church, beeame editor of the Journal on August third, 1881, and his talent gave distinetion to the leading artieles of the paper. The stock company, however, sold the Journal in 1883 to J. M. Whitman and Frank D. Mills, who took possession on March twelfth of that year and assumed the edi- torial direction. They published also for a few months a periodi- eal ealled the Weekly Gazette, which contained a department written by Miss Anna L. Dawes. On November twenty-fourth, 1883, the suspension of the Journal was announeed. The sus- pension was continued for a month; and the next number of the Journal was issued on December twenty-second, under the editor- ship and ownership of Joseph E. See.
The headquarters of the Journal, meanwhile, had been re-
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moved in February, 1883, to the Burbank building on the west side of North Street, next south of Central Block; in 1885 the editorial rooms were transferred to the latter building. There Mr. See caused the Journal at length to thrive. He owned and edited the paper for six years. During that period he enlarged it three times, although he retained the four-page form; and he added a weekly edition in 1886. Mr. See's good results with the Journal appear to have been attained mainly by commendable at- tention to business detail. On October fifteenth, 1889, Mr. See announced that he had sold his establishment to Ward Lewis of Great Barrington.
Mr. Lewis was well-known in Berkshire as a Democratic county commissioner, and the Journal by his purchase became a Democratic organ. Its new editor in 1889 was the proprietor's son, J. Ward Lewis, who then came to Pittsfield from Connecti- cut, where he had served on the Middletown Herald. The Journal was published successfully under this ownership until 1897. The Journal Printing Company appears as the proprietor in 1893, but of that corporation Ward Lewis was the controlling owner. The paper was increased in size to six pages in 1891, and its price was reduced to two cents in 1889 and to one cent in 1893, but was fixed again at two cents in 1897.
The Pittsfield Journal Company, a corporation organized in 1897, on April nineteenth of that year assumed ownership of the newspaper. This company was in effect a consolidation of the Journal Printing Company with the job printing establishment on West Street owned by George T. Denny. Mr. Denny was the first president, and was succeeded in 1907 by Carey S. Hayward. Freeman M. Miller, who for twelve years had been connected with either the editorial or the business staff of the Journal Print- ing Company, was the treasurer. J. Ward Lewis, having served as editor of the Journal since October, 1889, resigned the editor- ship in February, 1898, and Freeman M. Miller then undertook the direction of the editorial columns and S. Chester Lyon that of the news department. Mr. Lyon withdrew shortly afterward to the Sun. Carey S. Hayward, who had been the Pittsfield cor- respondent of the Springfield Union, became city editor of the Journal in 1902., The Journal moved its establishment from
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Central Block to quarters at 70 West Strect in 1899, and there it maintained itself until January, 1916, publishing in ordinary editions cight pages.
A third daily newspaper was so actively projected in Pittsfield in 1915 that a building was erected especially for its use on the north side of Melville Street. The proposed paper, however, was never published, and in November, 1915, the Journal announced that the Journal Company had effected an absorption of the ownership of the Melville Street concern, that the reorganizcd corporation, called the Pittsfield Publishing Company, would issue a new afternoon publication bearing the name of the Daily News, and that the Evening Journal would thereupon be discon- tinued. This plan was duly executed. The final number of the Evening Journal was issued on January eighth, 1916, and the first number of the Daily News, a sheet of eight pages, on January tenth. Of the new corporation, with its plant and editorial offices in the Melville Street building, the president was Freeman M. Miller, who was also managing editor, and the treasurer was Charles W. Power.
To the three publications existent in Pittsfield in 1888 was added a fourth in the summer of that year, when William H. Phillips, formerly of the Sun, established a weekly paper, issued on Saturdays and called The Berkshire Hills. It endured the slings of fortune for only a few months; and its plant was then acquired by Hiram T. Oatman and his brother, William J. Oat- man, who in December, 1888, stirred the town not a little by offering to the community a Sunday newspaper, the Sunday Morning Call. Under the Oatmans the Sunday Morning Call was a sheet usually of twelve pages and during the greater part of its career it had its home on Cottage Row. Its policy was bold, aggressive, and judged often to be sensational by the Pittsfield of its time. Its managing editor for its first five years was Hiram T. Oatman.
Mr. Oatman was born in Hartford, New York, in 1844, and died at Pittsfield, December twenty-seventh, 1901. He was not only an instinctive news-gatherer of the most assiduous and faithful industry, but also a capable printer and an expert stenog- rapher, serving the Commonwealth in the last-named capacity as
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the first official court reporter in Berkshire. Unsparing loyalty to his employment was his conspicuous trait; afflicted by blind- ness in his later years he clung manfully to his profession of journalist. Mr. Oatman was closely identified with Pittsfield newspaper life after 1874, and was probably best known as the local correspondent of the Springfield Republican.
Shortly after the retirement of Hiram T. Oatman from the active editorship of the Sunday Morning Call, the position was filled by Walter M. Fernald, who came to the Call from the Springfield Union and left it after ten years to edit the Ansonia Sentinel in Connecticut. William J. Oatman, the publisher of the Call, in 1896 launched a daily edition christened the Morning Call. This remained above water for about ten months, and then sank from sight; another daily, the Evening Times, set afloat by Mr. Oatman in 1906, had a voyage even less pro- longed. In September, 1906, he sold his newspaper establish- ment to the firm of Hamer and Osborne.
The new owners continued the publication of the Sunday Call, and with some fortitude again added a daily, entitled the Morning Press, to the output of the plant. Their enterprise survived for five months. Both the Sunday Morning Call and the Morning Press were then discontinued, in 1907, and the me- chanical equipment was removed from the city.
The Berkshire Sunday Record began publication in Pittsfield on June eighteenth, 1893. An eight-page sheet of dignified ap- pearance, it was in make-up and in the general nature of its con- tents almost a replica of the Sun, perhaps because one of its edi- tors, Henry T. Mills, had done service for half a dozen years under James Harding on the older paper. The owner of the Record was the Record Publishing Company, of which the chief, if not the sole, components were Mr. Mills and his brother, Frank D. Mills, the latter being a vivacious newspaper man of varied local experience. The Record was not a financial success and it expired with the issue of March twenty-sixth, 1896. Its files are now of antiquarian value because of the series of portraits of Pittsfield citizens which it published. Henry T. Mills, who himself wrote most of the contents of the paper, was too nicely literary, it may have been, for the field of popular journalism,
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and the Record appears to have lacked a definite and clean-cut editorial policy in dealing with local affairs, to which it exclu- sively devoted itself.
About a year after the demise of the Record, another weekly appeared, the Saturday Blade. It was edited and published by H. T. Oatman and S. Chester Lyon, and its career was limited to four months of the summer and autumn of 1897. The name of the Sunday Morning Call was revived in 1912 by Isaac H. Potter, who applied it to a Sunday paper which he began then to publish and which he discontinued in 1915. Lenox Life, a weekly aiming to be of interest to the summer visitors in Berkshire, was issued in Pittsfield for a few seasons commencing in 1897 by Earl G. Baldwin. It was succeeded in its field by Berkshire Resort Topics in 1903, and this periodical was afterwards absorbed by the Sun.
Two salient features characterize the history of the last forty years of Pittsfield newspapers. One of them is the elimination of the weekly, unsupported by a daily edition. The Sun in its old age was obviously kept alive so long only by the unique talent and personality of James Harding; the Eagle was no doubt saved by its expansion to a daily paper; of the various independ- ent Sunday journals none now survives. The other feature is the growth of the notion that a newspaper is more properly a servant of the public than the political agent of one man or of a group of men. The two Phineas Allens and their immediate successors in the editorship of the Sun had worthy ambitions to be elected to political office, and they worthily attained that ob- ject; Henry Chickering of the Eagle was essentially a politician and for twenty years held a political appointment with credit. But by these facts their respective newspapers were inevitably affected, not only in the editorial columns but in the news de- partments. The conduct of the Pittsfield press gave evidence of a broadening change in this respect about the time of the es- tablishment in 1880 of the Evening Journal.
The products of Pittsfield publishing have included a singular monthly periodical, The Berkshire Hills, edited and first issued in 1900 by William H. Phillips, who used for it the name given to his short-lived weekly of 1888. The second Berkshire Hills was
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published by Mr. Phillips, and mostly written by him, from 1900 until 1906; after October, 1904, it was a quarterly publication. Its purpose, which it pleasantly fulfilled, was the preservation of the county's traditions and ancient gossip, the sort of harmless gossip, often delightfully inaccurate, which used to be familiar of old in Berkshire country stores, and crossroad blacksmith shops, and the offices of village lawyers.
The first meeting of a formal character of the county's news- paper men was in October, 1878, when a dozen of them regaled their guests and themselves with a dinner in Pittsfield, listened to speeches of humorous advice from Francis W. Rockwell and William R. Plunkett, and read letters of regret for non-attendance from the President of the United States and other dignitaries. As a result of this dinner appears to have been formed a nebulous Press Club, but for long periods its activities were wholly invis- ible. The city's newspaper workers in 1909, however, formed a social organization under the curious title of the Dope Club, which has since had a prosperous career, holding regular meetings of mutual benefit and occasionally exhilirating the community by novel entertainments.
Among workers for the local press in Pittsfield during the last half-century, the most distinguished writer was Joseph E. A. Smith. He was, to be sure, a poet, an historian, and a man of letters, rather than solely a journalist, but from about the year 1850 until his death the columns of Pittsfield's newspapers were enriched by his labor and during most of that time he was con- strained to derive a livelihood from newspaper employment. It is not improper, then, to conclude this chapter with an account of him and of his great service to the town and city.
Joseph Edward Adams Smith was born at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, February fourth, 1822. He went to Bowdoin Col- lege and he studied law, but his ambitions both of an academic and a legal education were abandoned because of ill health. In 1847 his father was engaged in building iron works at Lanes- borough, and in 1848 Mr. Smith the elder removed his family to Pittsfield. Thither came also the son Joseph, a handsome, romantic youth, who could already claim to be a professional author. His verses had been printed in Boston magazines and
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his lyrics had been set to music for the songbooks of that era- those "Vocal Garlands" and "Wreaths of Melody", whosc prim fragrance enraptured the singing schools of the middle century.
The spirit of the hills possessed the young poet immediately. He began at once, both in prose and verse, to write about Berk- shire for his Boston editors. In 1852 he collected many of these productions in a volume which was published under the title of "Taghconic, the Romance and Beauty of the Hills". Mr. Smith adopted as its author the pen name of Godfrey Greylock, with which he customarily signed his magazine contributions. The book enjoyed a comfortable sale and the praise of dis- tinguished critics. Godfrey Greylock became the laureate of Berkshire. The literary lights, who at times then illuminated the county, welcomed him to a modest place in their constella- tion. Dr. Holmes extended to him a genial right hand of fellow- ship, the formidable Fanny Kemble patronized him majestically, and with the novelist, Herman Melville, he formed a close in- timacy. In 1854 Mr. Smith assumed under Henry Chickering the editorship of the Berkshire County Eagle and held it until 1865. In September, 1866, he began to write his "History of Pittsfield".
The work owed its inception to a speech made in town meeting by Thomas Allen, and the town in August, 1866, voted its first appropriation for the cost of preparing a local history, to be expended by a committee headed by Thomas Colt. To this task, under the general direction of the town's committee, Mr. Smith devoted nine laborious years. His first volume was published in 1869, his second in 1876. In Pittsfield homes the books shall always be his honored monument.
The "History of Pittsfield" is, of course, the chief product of Mr. Smith's talent and industry, but he made valuable historical and biographical contributions to many works, notably to the "History of Berkshire", published in 1885. He published in Pittsfield in 1895 a little volume which he called "Souvenir Verse and Story", and somewhat earlier a brochure of Berkshire reminiscences of Oliver Wendell Holmes, entitled "The Poet Among the Hills". His pen found frequent employment in the local press, because of his peculiar knowledge of local men and affairs. On October twenty-ninth, 1896, he died at Pittsfield.
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His old age was shadowed by care and poverty, for in business affairs he was an infant, and he was at the last a somewhat pa- thetic figure-bent, gray-faced, moving absent-mindedly through the streets with a little basket of books and papers on his trem- bling arm. Everybody in Berkshire knew him but he had few intimates, and these discovered in him strange, harmless pecul- iarities of social and religious belief. A sweetly-tempered and courteous man, he could be excited to surprising wrath by that which he judged to be bigotry or injustice; nevertheless in what he wrote there was never harshness, and he was by mental habit a searcher for the best in humankind. To the loveliness of na- ture he responded as if to music, and in his last years he retained for it the passionate affection of his youth. The grateful hills of Berkshire can smile upon no man's grave more tenderly than upon his.
CHAPTER XXII CLUBS, THEATERS AND HOTELS
T HE tendency toward increased organization, characteristic of American life during the later years of the nineteenth century, was remarkably operative in Pittsfield. The number of local branches of secret and fraternal orders, for ex- ample, was multiplied to an extent out of proportion to the gain in population. A list in the directory of 1876 names seven socie- ties of this description in the town; a corresponding list in the city directory of 1915 enumerates forty-six. Several of the fraternal orders, and the Turn Verein Germania, had buildings of their own. That of the Pittsfield lodge of Elks was opened on Union Street in 1910. On South Street the Masonic Temple was built in 1912, at a construction cost of about $50,000, and devoted to the uses of the Masonic fraternity. The Pittsfield branch of the order of Eagles dedicated their building on First Street in 1915.
Having indicated briefly the growth and success in the city of secret societies which are component parts of nation-wide, or indeed of world-wide, organizations, this book cannot, it seems, with propriety attempt to deal with the intimate and detailed history of their local development and activities. Some of the city's social clubs, however, may here claim notice.
The formation of the Business Men's Association was prob- ably suggested and certainly hastened by the availability in 1881 of good rooms in the then newly-built Central Block on North Street, opposite the Baptist Church. In the fall of that year, preliminary meetings were held, and ninety-nine members were obtained. Formal organization was effected on March twenty- third, 1882, four connecting rooms having been hired and furnish- ed in the southeast corner of the second floor of the new block. Games of any character were interdicted; and it otherwise ap- pears that the founders were at first torn in their minds as to
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whether their establishment was that of a club or of a more sedate and seriously purposed chamber of commerce. The club notion prevailed, not altogether without difficulty. The diversions of cards and billiards were officially provided in 1883, and thereafter three rooms were added to the quarters of the association. Its home in the Central Block was occupied by the Business Men's Association for fourteen years.
Early in 1896 the corporate name was changed to "The Park Club of Pittsfield, Massachusetts", and in May of the same year a removal was made to the block on the corner of North Street and Park Square, then of recent construction by the Berkshire County Savings Bank. There the club, having gained greatly in mem- bership, occupied the whole of the third floor. A second migra- tion was accomplished in December, 1911, when the club dedi- cated its present rooms, to which is devoted the fifth floor of the building of the Berkshire Life Insurance Company. These rooms were designed specially for club purposes, including those of a restaurant, and there the club was for the first time in its history completely equipped, according to metropolitan stand- ards. The membership in 1915 was about 400.
The presidents of the organization, which has represented Pittsfield citizenship more broadly and for a longer period than any similar body, have been, since 1882, John R. Warriner, James M. Barker, Francis E. Kernochan, William H. Sloan, Edward T. Slocum, Thomas A. Oman, Frank W. Hinsdale, John F. Noxon, Irving D. Ferrey, Charles H. Wright, George W. Bailey, Arthur W. Eaton, Frank E. Peirson, and William D. Wyman. The social function of the club has been emphasized beyond the intention, doubtless, of many of its founders, but not by any means to the exclusion of other functions; a forum is afforded for the discussion of public problems; and at the Wash- ington's Birthday dinners of the club, initiated in 1915, dis- tinguished orators have taught lessons of patriotic duty.
The Country Club of Pittsfield was formed in the early spring of 1897, and owed its inception to the desire of several men and women of the city to familiarize themselves with the game of golf. The first president was Dr. Henry Colt. Land was rented sufficient for a nine-hole course immediately south-
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west of the junction of Dawes Avenue and Holmes Road, and there the club was opened in July, 1897, a small cottage having been converted to the uses of a clubhouse. The club had so pleasant an effect upon social life that considerable expansion was warranted. In 1899 the fortunate purchase was made by the club of the beautiful, uplying, tract of land of 230 acres on lower South Street, then known as the Morewood estate. Upon this land stood, nearly as originally built by Henry Van Schaak in 1781, the historic mansion called "Broadhall", the home of Elka- nah Watson, of Thomas Melville, and of John R. Morewood, wherein, while it was utilized as a summer boarding house, Henry W. Longfellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Mel- ville had been guests. In 1900, when the Country Club first occupied Broadhall, it was necessary to alter the house only slightly; but subsequent additions have greatly enlarged it. The members of the club organized an incorporated stock com- pany for the purpose of acquiring and improving the house and land.
The exceptional possibilities of the property for the uses of a country club were steadily exploited. Tennis courts and a base- ball diamond were laid out; and in 1915 steps were taken to change the golf course of nine holes to one of eighteen. A boat- house and a bathhouse were placed on the shore of the lake. Roads and trails were cut through the picturesque woods. Out- of-door winter sports were provided. The spacious house, with its piazzas from which the fairest of views lie to the north and east, soon became a favorite center of recreation. The member- ship of the Country Club in 1915 was 425.
The Pittsfield Boat Club was organized in September, 1898, and in June of the following year formally opened its first quarters, a pavilion which had been built by a previous tenant of land at the Point of Pines, on the southeastern shore of Pontoosuc Lake. The club, of which the membership in its first year was more than 300, was incorporated in April, 1901. Its success had then been so firmly established that a new clubhouse was erected at the Point of Pines, in the summer of 1901, at a cost of about $3,000; in 1915 $4,600 was expended upon additions. As soon as the club was in operation, arrangements were made for the con-
THE FARNHAM RESERVOIR
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venient keeping of private launches, canoes, and rowboats of the members, and the nucleus of a club fleet was formed. On an August evening in 1899, the club conducted its first boat pa- rade, with the accompaniment of fireworks and much elaborate illumination.
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