USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Pittsfield > The history of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, from the year 1876 to the year 1916 > Part 33
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The earnest eloquence of the speakers and the attention of the audiences at the various anniversary meetings, the pageantry of the parades, the beauty of the decorations and lighting, the size of the crowds of visitors, and the hospitable arrangements for securing their safety and comfort, were alike impressive; but not a few citizens preferred to be impressed by the unselfish spirit of co-operation actuating the hundreds of persons who labored, in one way or another, to make the affair successful. There was no lack of the sort of civic pride which is executive rather than merely critical; and the anniversary observances not only affected the sentiments of reminiscence and self-esteem but also, in a certain measure, incited to emulation, and unified the people of the city.
CHAPTER XXV PITTSFIELD IN 1915
T HE population of Pittsfield was 25,001 in 1905, 32,121 in 1910, and 39,607 in 1915. The ratio of gain, there- fore, between 1910 and 1915 did not quite equal that maintained during the five years preceding 1910. There were many citizens who had become inclined, after 1900, to allow their satisfaction with Pittsfield to depend in great measure, perhaps in an unduly great measure, upon the census figures of the grow- ing city. To these citizens any slackening of the rate of numeri- cal growth was a disappointment; and they encouraged them- selves in the belief that in the early part of 1913 the population touched 40,000. Certainly industrial conditions in the winter of 1913-14 were unfavorable to a gain in population, and there was probably a slight loss. Employment was not plentiful, either in the textile or the non-textile factories; and, for the first time within the recollection of the younger business men, the number of vacant dwellings began to be somewhat disquiet- ing.
But in 1915 these conditions seemed to have markedly im- proved, and a description of Pittsfield in that year, which shall be attempted by this chapter, should premise that the spirit of the people was generally sanguine and optimistic, that the manu- factories were busy, and that the city, at the point of concluding its first quarter-century, was the home of a generally prosperous community.
It is right to premise, too, that there was a more keen, or at least a broader, appreciation of the civic problems involved in the absorption of new elements of population. Having been com- pelled to address themselves chiefly to the task of expanding rapidly the physical equipment of the municipality and of the public and charitable institutions, the citizens now began to
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realize the wisdom of both expanding and deepening the civic spirit, in order to render that spirit hospitable to the worthy aspirations of new-comers. A social observer in the Pittsfield of 1915 could not have failed to be impressed by the growing readiness with which influential citizens urged the importance of developing the civic consciousness, and of inciting the civic patriotism of those who only recently had made Pittsfield their home. Evidence of this is not difficult to find in the recorded opinions of leading men, as, for example, in the reports of the addresses at meetings organized for the purpose of welcoming newly naturalized citizens to the rights and duties of citizenship. To the wish to make the city a good place to live in was added the wish to enlist all the people in that cause.
To the gratification of the latter desire there seemed to exist a certain obstacle. This was the fact that a larger proportion of the inhabitants than formerly looked upon Pittsfield as a temporary residence. While it would be an egregious blunder to suppose that the gain in Pittsfield's census between 1900 and 1915 was dependent upon any class which might be called migra- tory, nevertheless it is probably true that an appreciable number of the new dwellers would then have spoken of Pittsfield as "your", rather than as "our", city. This detachment was as- cribable partly to changed conditions of employment, and partly to the characteristic deliberation with which the older commun- ity had submitted itself to readjustment. The influences which were most obviously operative in breaking down this sort of de- tachment were those exerted by the large social and fraternal organizations, with which the city was supplied far more plenti- fully than the town of twenty-five years before. Especially useful in this way were such institutions as the Father Mathew Total Abstinence Society, the Young Men's Christian Associa- tion, the Boys' Club, and the Working Girls', and Business Women's Clubs. It is likely, too, that the city's religious socie- ties attached more importance than did those of the town to the exercise of social hospitality to strangers, and the parish houses of several churches had become effectual social centers. Nor should it be forgotten that the large non-sectarian charitable as- sociations promoted the amalgamation of the newer with the older elements of the community.
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In respect of the conduct of public affairs, the Pittsfield of 1915 was fortunate in that the attitude of detachment, to which reference has been made, was scarcely observable. The burdens and responsibilities of municipal government were distributed, as they should be, without distinction of nativity or length of residence in the city.
The Board of Trade aimed to provide a common meeting ground for business and professional men. The Board, with about 400 members in 1915 and then under the presidency of George A. Newman, maintained offices in the building of the Agricultural National Bank on North Street. Its standing com- mittees were entitled executive, membership, publicity, civic, industrial, mercantile, transportation, and agricultural. A salaried secretary was employed. Various matters of interest and value were brought to the attention of the public, civic events and celebrations of divers sorts were organized, and commercial ventures new to the city were investigated and, when approved, practically encouraged. To these functions of the Board of Trade should be added the work which it indirectly accomplished in offering to business men of recent arrival the opportunity of wide and immediate acquaintanceship.
The organization of workmen and artisans into labor unions had progressed to such an extent that there were twenty-three labor unions and like associations in the city in 1915, a year marked by a particularly rapid increase in the local membership of these bodies. The Central Labor Union had headquarters in a hall in the Shipton building on North Street. The individual unions represented occupations so diverse as those of metal workers, printers, theater-stage employees, moulders, polishers, carpenters, painters, bottlers, barbers, bricklayers, masons, plasterers, street railway employees, stationary firemen, plumb- ers, steam and gas fitters, and workers in electrical manufactur- ing. Although applying themselves primarily to industrial questions, the unions in many cases served to unify their mem- bers socially and to make a new-comer feel that he was at home.
The visitor to Pittsfield in 1915 would have found, then, a community of diverging interests, but one wherein strong in-
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fluences, properly encouraged, were at work to unite the several elements.
At the city election of 1915, the number of ballots cast was 7,219. There were still seven wards, although five had been divided, each into two voting precincts. The largest number of voters in any single ward went to the polls in Ward Two, where 1,454 ballots were registered. This ward lay in the northcastern section of the city, and included the neighborhood of the works of the General Electric Company. There both the business and residential development had been brisk. Passing eastward along Tyler Street from Grove Street to Woodlawn Avenue, an observer might have seen much of the equipment of a distinct town-church edifices, business blocks, stores, a moving picture theater, and modern residences; and in the vicinity were two well-built school houses, sheltering the Crane and the William B. Rice Schools, with an aggregate enrolment of 900 pupils. Only twenty-five years before, this portion of Tyler Street was little different from a secluded country road.
Although in 1915 the Morningside district exhibited recent growth most substantially, there were many indications of such growth elsewhere. Residential streets had been opened as far on the eastern outskirts of the city as the land surrounding Good- rich Pond, and the former premises of the Pleasure Park on Elm Street. Along the west side of South Street, the residential section extended about two miles from the Park; running north and south from West Street, side streets had been occupied as far west as Backman Avenue. Toward the northwest, the limits of that which had once been the central village now included the eastern portion of Lake Avenue, at a distance from the Park of more than a mile. On the north, the Russell and Pontoosuc factory villages were no longer isolated, but had become merged in the general residential district spreading in that direction, while streets had been opened on the highland immediately east of Pontoosuc Lake, where numerous families had their dwelling houses. Five hundred streets were listed by name in the Pitts- field directory of 1915.
On the picturesque site of the villa successively occupied by William C. Allen and Henry C. Valentine, near the eastern shore
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of Onota Lake, the most impressive, elaborately adorned and costly residence within the city limits, "Tor Court", was erected by Warren M. Salisbury of Chicago, who now makes it his sum- mer home, having greatly beautified the broad and romantic estate. Other notably fine summer residences which grace the southern neighborhood of the lake are those of John A. Spoor, called "Blythewood Farm", and of the Misses Bryce, called "Fort Hill" and built on the eminence on which Ashley's block- house of 1757 stood guard over the western valley during the French and Indian war. Bordered on the southeast, south, and southwest by large private estates, and on the east by the public land of Burbank Park, the southern part of Onota Lake and its environment are preserved in their rural beauty.
It may be said, indeed, of a large part of even central Pitts- field that it has been enabled to escape the aspect of a manu- facturing city and to retain some of the genial, homelike look of a trim and prosperous rural town, although more than twenty-five distinct lines of industry are carried on within the city limits. No shops or factories are in operation, for example, in the section bounded on the west by North Street and on the south by Tyler Street and Dalton Road, or in the section bounded on the north by East and Elm Streets and on the west by South Street. The almost complete absence of street fences, the breadth of lawn which usually separates the houses from the sidewalks, the gen- eral simplicity and diversification of domestic architecture, and the agreeable width of the highways, combine to give to most of the new residential streets the attractive appearance of refined and healthful comfort. The reader will take care to understand that this characterization is not intended to be applied to every residential district of the city; streets exist where tenement houses are huddled together and poorly built. But the fact that the growth of Pittsfield in all directions has been unimpeded by any natural barrier has made the city, although a manufacturing one, a place where the conditions of living are wholesome and cheerful with fresh air and sunshine.
Unlike the town of former days, the Pittsfield of 1915 boasted of no conspicuous residence within a short radius of the Park, ranking relatively with the homes in 1876 of Thomas Allen, Ed-
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ward Learned, and Mrs. William Pollock. The men of affluence of the modern eity built residences externally less pretentious, surrounded by less ornamental and spacious grounds. At the same time there was a noticeable and perhaps an unusual pro- portion of homes indicating the possession of both comfortable means and good taste. The visitor to Pittsfield in 1915 would have found, for example, a number of houses of this description recently ereeted in the quadrilateral bounded by Broad Street, South Street, Crofut Street, and Pomeroy Avenue.
If he had chosen to glance at the business center and to begin a brief tour of inspection at the railroad station on West Street, he would have found two dwelling houses surviving on West Street between the station and the Park, these houses being on the south side of the thoroughfare. Going north on North Street he would not have seen a dwelling house on the west side until he reached Bradford Street, nor on the east side, except St. Joseph's parochial residence and an adjacent dwelling, until he had passed the Maplewood. North of Bradford Street, on the west side, were several business blocks; while on the east side substantial buildings for commercial purposes had been ereeted on the south corner of Maplewood Avenue and on both corners of Orchard Street. Trade overflowed from North Street into several of the side streets running east and west from it; but the observations of our visitor of 1915 would probably have led him to conelude that the general tendeney of trade in the city had been northward rather than toward the east or west. As for the modern value of North Street real estate, a parcel on the west side, at the south corner of Burbank Place and having a frontage of seventy feet on North Street, with a depth of two hundred, was sold for $148,500 in 1915.
Our first chapter offered to the reader a list of the principal mercantile establishments doing business in 1876. Some of the present business firms are directly descended from concerns upon that list, and therefore have been operative in Pittsfield for at least forty years without interruption, and in several cases for a much longer period. This can be said of the concerns of Gilbert West and Son (groceries), W. G. Backus' Sons (stoves and plumb- ing), the W. H. Cooley Company (groceries), the Peirson Hard-
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ware Company, John H. Enright (boots and shoes), Smith and Dodge (harness), H. S. Taylor and Son (men's clothing), Clarence H. Waite (drugs), Thomas Behan (harness), the Casey and Bacon Company (wholesale groceries), Prince and Walker (carpets), O. Root and Sons (shoes), England Brothers (department store), Robbins, Gamwell, and Company (steam fittings), and J. R. Newman and Sons (men's clothing). The number of so-called "neighborhood" stores, or establishments managed on a modest scale and in localities remote from the business center, is curiously large. For instance, there were about ninety grocery stores in the city in 1915. Many of them were conducted in small dwell- ing houses and sold, of course, merely a few household supplies of minor importance. The city contained twelve stores dealing in dry goods, six in books and stationery, thirteen in drugs, twenty- four in boots and shoes, sixteen in men's clothing, fourteen in house-furnishing supplies, thirty-six in meat, seventeen in plumbing and heating appliances, fourteen in jewelry, and twenty in automobile supplies.
The buildings on North Street south of the railroad bridge contained the banking rooms and offices of all the financial in- stitutions. Therein also, and in the blocks on Bank Row, were the offices of the practicing lawyers, of whom there were thirty- eight, and the offices of most, though not all, of the men and women engaged in other professions-for example, of the fifty- seven physicians and surgeons.
The concentration of so much mercantile, financial, and pro- fessional activity in North Street produced there a somewhat troublous condition of traffic, especially in the summer months, when tourists by motor car were numerous; and the regulation of this traffic had become not the least important duty of the police force. Modern Pittsfield has probably more reason to be grateful for the spacious width of its main thoroughfares than for any other single physical advantage. Assuredly the visitor to the city in 1915 would have been impressed by the well-ordered capacity of North Street for business or pleasure, and at night by the uniform system of its tastefully mounted and brilliant elec- tric street lamps.
North Street was not adorned by the building which in the
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opinion of not a few is the most artistically designed public cdi- ficc in the city. The post office, facing west upon the junction of Allen, Dunham, and Fenn Streets, did a lively business in 1915, of which the receipts for twelve months ending on June fifteenth of that year were about $130,000. Thirty-five years before, in 1880, the annual receipts were approximately $10,000. The postmaster in 1915 was John G. Orr. From 1861 to 1881 the position of postmaster was filled by Henry Chickering; from 1881 to 1883 by William F. Osborne; from 1883 to 1887 by Thomas H. Learned; from 1887 to 1891, and from 1895 to 1898, by William J. Coogan; from 1891 to 1895, and from 1899 to 1916, by John G. Orr. Mr. Orr was succeeded in the latter year by Edward T. Scully.
Returning to the Park by way of Allen Street, the visitor would have passed the closely adjacent central fire station, the police station, and the city hall, the latter being the town hall erected in 1832 and supplemented, after 1895, by plain, brick additions on the north. He would have found the tracks, wires, and poles of a trolley street railway encircling the verdant and elm-shaded oval of the Park, but here again he could not have escaped the impression of spaciousness and of the pleasant com- mingling of the aspect of a modern city with that of a dignified country town. Toward the southwest he could have seen, amid the trees near the north corner of Church and South Streets, the square mansion built by Ashbel Strong in 1792, and now the oldest house in central Pittsfield unchanged in respect of site, and least changed from its original appearance; while toward the north he could have seen the animated and modernly equip- ped main street of a busy manufacturing city.
The oldest house now standing on East Street is the St. Stephen's rectory, on the east corner of Wendell Avenue. This was built during the Revolution by Colonel James Easton on the land which is at present the lawn of the court house. The Plunkett house, still standing near the west corner of Appleton Avenue and East Street, was built about 1798 by Thomas Gold. Having become the summer residence of Nathan Appleton of Boston, it was the house described by Henry W. Longfellow, Mr. Appleton's son-in-law, in his poem of "The Old Clock on the
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Stairs". Since the writing of the poem, however, the appearance of the house has been radically altered, and the ancient timepiece has been removed from its station in the hall. The present resi- dence of George C. Harding, on the east corner of East Street and Bartlett Avenue, was built by the town for a town house and academy in 1793, on land now occupied by the head of Allen Street on Park Square, whence it was removed in 1832.
Of the twenty religious edifices in Pittsfield the oldest in re- spect of unaltered appearance, within and without, is the meeting house of the Second Congregational Church, on First Street. The edifice of the First Baptist Church, on North Street, was erected in 1849; but this was practically rebuilt in 1874. A gen- eral condition of amity has always inspired the relations between the different religious sects in Pittsfield, and such a condition is evident today. Not only have sectarian feuds of a seriously disturbing sort been almost wholly absent from the community life, but there have been many instances of mutual help and co- operation. Perhaps Pittsfield has become so familiar with this condition as to be not quite appreciative of its social benefit. Eight Protestant forms of belief are represented in the city by fourteen organized parishes and societies. Thirteen Roman Catholic clergymen, distributed among seven parishes, adminis- ter to the religious needs of about one-half of the city's popula- tion, according to an informal estimate. There are three Jewish congregations.
In the field of public education, the authorities of 1915 were not troubled as their predecessors had been by the inadequate capacity of their schoolhouses, except in the case of the high school building. The enrolment of the high school was 1,155. A class of 148 was graduated, the largest in the history of the school and larger than the aggregate daily attendance of only thirty years previous. Of this number, forty-two entered college in September. The enrolment at all the public schools was 6,758. The number of teachers employed was 244; the average cost of the education of each attending pupil was $34.89, and the aggregate valuation of the school buildings was about $1,100,000. Pressure upon the parochial schools of St. Joseph's was relieved during the year by the remodeling of the house
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numbered 22 on Maplewood Avenue for use as an annex to the parochial school building on First Street.
The pupils of the public schools enjoy the use of the Common on First Street for the sports of baseball and football, where football contests between teams representing the local high school and similar institutions of other cities interest numerous spec- tators. American intercollegiate football, once a favorite and strenuous diversion of Pittsfield's young men, is not now played in the city by those beyond high school age. Nor is professional baseball now played there, although the game of baseball stands first in the affections of a great majority of the people. Lawn tennis and golf have many devotees, while the most popular in- door athletic sports are basketball and bowling; and the various gymnastic and physical culture classes of the large young people's associations of both sexes are profitably patronized. The tra- ditional Pittsfield liking for lake and brook fishing, and for hunt- ing partridge and woodcock, still survives, and is made still possible of gratification at certain seasons by the enforcement of protective game laws during most of the year. Motor vehicles, procurable at a comparatively low cost, have almost wholly superseded horses, except for industrial and commercial pur- poses; and motoring, no longer a luxury reserved for the rich, is a pastime enjoyed by many.
Entertainment by means of moving pictures was the form of theatrical amusement most widely enjoyed in the Pittsfield of 1915, when it was provided by seven establishments. The Colonial Theater, however, was occupied by a stock company of actors in the summer, and occasionally by traveling organiza- tions during the winter; and the program offered at the Majestic and the Union Square was diversified by that variety of stage entertainment which had become known in the United States, by an odd misnomer, as vaudeville. The number of public balls was singularly large and between Christmas and the beginning of Lent, and during the weeks immediately following Easter, the Armory and the Masonic Temple were the scenes of many of these events, attended either for the benefit of a charity or of an association. Amateur theatrical productions, except on a pre- tentious scale and under professional direction, seem to have passed out of their former vogue.
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PITTSFIELD IN 1915
Among the inhabitants of the town there existed a small leisurely, if not a leisure, class, which is not so evident in the city of today. Social life is affected by the fact that the influ- ential men and women carry their fair share of the community's burdens. The avocations of business and professional men are apparently often chosen with a view toward public usefulness; women, rich and poor alike, are wont to devote much of the time and energy unconsumed by their personal affairs to philanthropic or educational activities. The people of the city, in short, have a good deal to do-more to do, it is likely, than had the people of the town. Thus engaged, the people in general are charac- terized by a community temper that is evenly balanced. Con- siderable antagonisms between the various elements of popula- tion have not been aroused. The local relations between the employers and the employed, during the period covered by this book, have not been disturbed. The stupendous blow of the vast European war of 1914 has brought about no serious cleavage between the foreign-born citizens of different nationalities in Pittsfield, or between American-born citizens whose sympathies are oppositely enlisted by the warring powers. Howsoever agitated temporarily, both civic and social life usually regain their equilibrium with a pacific promptness which was not charac- teristic of the somewhat isolated community of village times.
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