USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Pittsfield > The history of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, from the year 1876 to the year 1916 > Part 8
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If it is possible to conceive a civic mind, it is possible also to imagine that Pittsfield rubbed her civic eyes, habituated to gaze placidly at the slower and more sober thrift of a Yankee village.
Another element of singularity in Pittsfield's abrupt growth lies in the fact that this growth brought suddenly into relations with industrial and financial centers a community which had long been sturdily self-reliant, if not self-satisfied. He has con- sidered the earlier story of Berkshire to little avail who has not noted the effect of the isolation of its highlands upon the moral and political independence of its people, from the old days when Parson Allen and the Pittsfield selectmen so zealously lectured the governor of the Commonwealth and the lawmakers at Bos- ton. In a not dissimilar way, nature had wrought the inde- pendence of the county's manufacturing enterprises. Between the palisades of the hills, the Berkshire mill owners had found a sufficient working capital in the power of the mountain streams; and, for nearly a century, no considerable amount of money from abroad had sought investment in Pittsfield. Unaffected
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by the proximity of any large commercial metropolis, the town had been trained to rely chiefly upon itself, to initiate its own plans, and to carry them forward with its own resources. About the year 1891, this state of things began to be altered; and thic change was violently contrary to the long experience of an es- pecially self-contented community.
It is peculiar that the industrial growth of Pittsfield at this period should have been accompanied by increased evidence of the attractive power of the place upon the vacation traveler and the metropolitan searcher for a summer home. Holiday-makers do not usually linger where factory wheels are busy. Pittsfield was fortunate in that its factory wheels were both busy and un- obtrusive. The residential portions of the city remained un- vexed by the clang of machinery; the beauty of its surrounding uplands was not disturbed; and, with the exception, to the east, of the Hatter's Pond of former days, its jeweled lakes retained their rural loveliness. The city was therefore enabled still to share substantially in the growth of Berkshire's popularity as a summer resort. In Pittsfield, however, more often than in the other towns of the county, the casual visitor became the perma- nent resident, cultivated the city's increasing opportunities of business, and added to the enjoyment and value of its social life.
The number of those attracted to Berkshire by the fame of its highland scenery was at this time augmented by the im- provement of facilities of travel over its picturesque roads. Cars propelled by electricity through the medium of an overhead wire were first used in Pittsfield in 1891. A strong disagreement among the stockholders of the Pittsfield Street Railway Com- pany had so confused the affairs of the corporation that in 1890 it was dissolved, and a new company was organized, called the Pittsfield Electric Street Railway Company. This corporation, of which Joseph Tucker was the president, acquired the plant of the former company, equipped the line for the use of electricity as motive power, and on July ninth, 1891, began to run trolley cars from Park Square to Pontoosuc Lake. Upon the first Sun- day of operation, 3,700 passengers were carried. The experiment, nevertheless, was regarded doubtfully by the public, because the cars ascended grades with difficulty; and, at the Benedict hill,
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near Pontoosuc, they often declined to ascend at all. Horse- drawn cars were not immediately abandoned by the managers of the enterprise. Naturally enough, the lay opinion was that trolley cars, however practicable they might be on city streets or in a level country, could never prove to be of much utility among the hills of Berkshire.
In 1892, a large part of the stock of the company was pur- chased by Patrick H. and Peter C. Dolan, who came to Pittsfield from New Britain, Connecticut, and assumed the active direction of the road. Within eleven years from 1893, the line was ex- tended east to Dalton and Hinsdale, south to the foot of South Mountain, west to West Pittsfield, northwest to Lake Avenue, and north to Cheshire. The Berkshire Street Railway Company, an energetic and resourceful corporation keenly promoted by Ralph D. Gillett of Westfield, and supported by several local shareholders, began in 1902 to operate a line north and south through the county, which traversed the eastern part of Pittsfield and connected with the business center through East Street. In 1915, there were twenty-five miles of trolley car tracks within the city limits. In 1910, the capital stock of the older corpora- tion was sold to a holding company, and the control of both roads passed to the New York, New Haven and Hartford Rail- road Company.
The builders of these lines and extensions met, especially from the residents on South and East Streets, the lively opposi- tion which at that time was usual in similar cases the country over; and they accomplished for the community the benefit as usual and inevitable. Less ordinary in its results was the local rivalry between the two railway companies, in which the general public participated to an exceptional degree, so that ill-considered charges flew wildly back and forth. The rancor of the so-called "trolley war" disturbed Pittsfield for several years; and the final absorption of the roads by one management was welcomed by many pacific citizens.
The wide vogue of the automobile, which began to prevail in the United States during the first decade of the century, was also a factor of no slight importance in the growth and prosperity of Pittsfield at that time. The county of Berkshire became a
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favorite touring district for motor cars. The travelers by auto- mobile, of whom 90,000 were roughly estimated in 1915 to have visited Pittsfield from April to November, not only profited the local merchants and the local hotel-keepers, but made both the social and commercial atmosphere of the city more cosmopolitan. It happened fortunately that the public accommodations of the city were already prepared to take care of this benevolent inva- sion. In this instance Pittsfield was forehanded. Its equip- ment of hotels had been made, for the first time in many years, thoroughly adequate. The Maplewood had been enlarged. The American House was replaced by a new hotel bearing the same name in 1899; and in the previous year Samuel W. Bower- man, son of the former owner of the property, razed the ancient building on the corner of South and West Streets, and ereeted and opened the Hotel Wendell.
On the other hand, the city was by no means prepared for the housing of its increased permanent population between 1900 and 1910; and this matter soon assumed the proportions of a serious problem. Local owners of residential real estate were accustomed to move with deliberation. A "land boom" was not within their experience, and they regarded symptoms of it warily. The expansion of dwelling facilities did not for several years keep pace with the need for them. Outside capital, here as elsewhere, seized its legitimate opportunity. In 1905 the scarcity of tenements first became noticeable. The building development thereafter was chiefly toward the northeast, where, in the wooded Morningside section, the oceupancy of house lots had begun markedly to increase about 1895.
The city's annual building record, inclusive of the cost of buildings for all purposes, first touched one million dollars in 1906. Four years later, it more than doubled that amount.
A considerable part of this expenditure was due to the erec- tion of the great factories, north and east of Silver Lake, of the General Electric Company of Schenectady, New York, which in 1903 purchased the stock and plant of the Stanley Electrie Manufacturing Company. To narrate with detail the extraor- dinary development of this enterprise is not within the province of the present chapter; nevertheless, no account, not even a
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general one, of the first quarter-century of the city's existence can well be attempted, or understood, without some account also of the company's existence, so important was their interre- lation and so curiously coincident in point of time were their beginnings. The city of Pittsfield began its course in January, 1891, and in the following April the Stanley Company made its first shipment of machinery.
Sixteen hands were then employed in the manufacture of electrical transformers on Clapp Avenue. Twenty years later, the establishment initiated by William Stanley employed over 5,000 people, and its shops, in the vicinity of Silver Lake and Morningside, covered fifty acres. Not only did the early pros- perity of the company augment the material welfare of Pittsfield, but also it was of a nature to energize unusually the popular spirit. It represented an industry which was at the time novel and strange, and of which the mysterious possibilities defied calcu- lation. Few cities in the world, between 1890 and 1895, possessed a manufactory of the same sort. Its very presence in Pitts- field seemed to signify that the community was awake, expansive, ultra-modern. The daily evidence of its early success kindled optimism regarding the future of the city as a whole.
With a few exceptions, the incorporators and original share- holders of the Stanley Company were Pittsfield men, who put their money into the modest venture of 1890 rather because of public spirit than because of expectation of large profits. Upon its successive directorates, during the first decade of its develop- ment, were Charles Atwater, William R. Plunkett, Walter F. Hawkins, George H. Tucker, William Stanley, Charles E. Hib- bard, Henry Hine, George W. Bailey, W. A. Whittlesey, Henry C. Clark, and William W. Gamwell. The active supervision of its finances and commercial relations was consigned to Mr. Gam- well, who was chosen president after Mr. Atwater resigned in 1893. Mr. Gamwell served at times as treasurer, and Mr. Bailey and Mr. Whittlesey also held the same position. The financial guidance of the company, between 1890 and 1900, being thus mainly in the hands of Pittsfield citizens, its immediate success peculiarly gratified local sentiment; and Pittsfield's self-confi- dence was stimulated by the fact that the community, through
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its own business men, was able to take such profitable advantage of an industrial field then new and commercially hazardous.
Moreover, in attempting an estimate of the early value to the city of the Stanley Company, it must not be forgotten that the character and eireumstances of the enterprise attracted to Pittsfield, as residents, men of especial mental alertness and breadth of mental vision. They widened the social, as well as the industrial, horizon of the city. The mechanies and laborers in the shops were necessarily intelligent as well as aetive. The company's powerful and more wealthy rivals enforeed at head- quarters a general management of especially vigilant and far- sighted shrewdness. Apart from the company proper, the brilliant and ambitious electricians, who worked with Mr. Stan- ley in his laboratory, typified a high grade of scientifie talent in their young profession. Indeed, the zest and venturesome energy of youth seemed to inspire the entire undertaking. William Stanley, whose tireless inventive genius leavened it, was only thirty-two years old at the date of its inception.
The most conspicuous effeet which textile manufacturing had at this period upon the growth of Pittsfield was accomplished through the development of the mills of the W. E. Tillotson Manufacturing Company near Silver Lake. After 1901 their eapaeity was so increased that eventually the operations of weaving, spinning, and knitting, gave employment to about 600 people. Leaving aside the Stanley Eleetrie Manufacturing Company, non-textile manufacturers contributed to the city's gain notably through the medium of the Eaton, Crane, and Pike Company's activities. This establishment, a manufactory of stationery, began its unusually successful career in Pittsfield in 1893, then employing thirty operatives. In 1915, more than 1,000 operatives were employed in the large and busy shops extended from the building formerly occupied by the Terry Cloek Company on South Church Street, with two auxiliary plants.
These industrial factors of growth, combined with others of less magnitude but of no less energy, produced in the Pittsfield of 1891 to 1916 a general state of domestie effort, almost of strain. To keep pace with this expansion taxed the energies, the
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capital, and the character of the city. In this respect Pittsfield singularly reflected the condition of the Republic during the same era, an era wherein the capability of its self-government, and of its financial, educational, and social systems, was tried severely by the growth of industry and population. It is quite possible to find in the experience of Pittsfield at this period many of the same problems of readjustment, in miniature, which confronted the United States; and one may observe an illustration of the familiar fact that often the history of an indi- vidual community closely exemplifies the history of the nation, of which it is a diminutive part.
The number of the financial institutions in the city was re- inforced in 1895 by the establishment of the Berkshire Loan and Trust Company, under the presidency of Franklin K. Paddock, and in 1893 by the chartering of the City Savings Bank, of which the president was Francis W. Rockwell. Two co-operative banks were initiated, the Pittsfield in 1889, and the Union in 1911. In their various lines of service, these institutions pros- pered, while at the same time the sound prosperity was strengthened of the national banks, the Agricultural, the Pitts- field, and the Third, and of the Berkshire County Savings Bank. By the last named, the city's first office building on a modern scale was erected in 1894, at the corner of North Street and Park Square.
This building, which necessitated the disappearance of West's block, brought about the earliest change in the appearance of the older business center during the period which we are now surveying. Other noteworthy changes on North Street were effected by the construction in 1908 of the Agricultural Bank building, between Dunham and Fenn Streets; by the burning of the Academy of Music in 1912 and the erection on its site of the Miller building; and by the destruction by fire of the ancient Callender block on the west side of lower North Street in 1914. The advance of business structures north of the railroad bridge was constant and substantial. In 1915, North Street presented an unbroken front of blocks on the east side as far as St. Joseph's Convent, and on the west to Bradford Street, while north of these points on the main thoroughfare, as well as on the northerly
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cross streets, and at Morningside, were many buildings devoted to mercantile purposes. Not until 1900, however, did upper North Street losc its most obvious relic of village days, a rural blacksmith's shop, which stood at the head of Wahconah Street on a portion of the grounds now occupied by the House of Mercy hospital.
The strain of the city's growth was felt with acuteness by all of its charitable enterprises, and especially by the House of Mercy. In 1890 the number of charity and pay patients cared for in the hospital was 156, in 1915 it was 2,213. In 1901, the growth of the institution was signalized by the erection of a spacious main building in the triangle bounded by North and Wahconah Streets, and Russell Terrace. Again, in 1908, the establishment of Hillcrest Hospital, at the corner of North Street and Springside Avenue, added substantially to the equip- ment of the community for the performance of charitable hospital work.
Altruistic spirit found expression also during this period in the beginning of the work of the Visiting Nurses' Association, the Anti-tuberculosis Association, and the Day Nursery Associa- tion. The last was organized by Pittsfield women in 1905, for the purpose of providing a place where busy mothers, during their working hours, might have little children cared for. Its first president was Mrs. William H. Eaton. The Visiting Nurses' Association, designed to supply the services of a trained nurse to the destitute sick in their homes, was instituted in 1908, under the presidency of De Witt Bruce. The Pittsfield Anti-tuberculosis Association, of which the first official head was Dr. J. F. A. Adams, was formed also in 1908, and soon thereafter acquired a farm in the western part of the city, where a sanitorium was es- tablished for the treatment of patients afflicted by consumption. The Associated Charities, organized in 1911 with Arthur N. Cooley as president, became the central, supervising, and assist- ing agency of these and other benevolent activities, and in 1915 absorbed the Union for Home Work, and assumed the charitable functions of that organization.
It is to be observed that, during the first twenty-five years of Pittsfield's existence as a city, its people not only sustained and
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developed the philanthropic institutions inherited from earlier days, but also were generally responsive to new and growing needs.
In fact, the field of service of almost every public institution in the city was broadened so rapidly and so imperatively during these years that its managers were seldom out of danger of find- ing its resources inadequate. Almost every public and semi- public institution in the city was conducted under an abnormal, although legitimate, pressure of popular demand. At the public library of the Berkshire Athenaeum, for an instance, the annual issue of books advanced from 30,000 to 100,000. Those who founded the Athenaeum and endowed it in 1875 could not have contemplated growth of service on this scale; and the city, follow- ing properly the fine example of the town, sustained a large por- tion of the burden of the current expenses of the institution by a yearly grant from the harassed municipal treasury.
A similar condition of laborious endeavor to meet demand was evident about this time among such agencies for good as the Young Men's Christian Association and the Father Mathew Total Abstinence Society. The latter, organized in 1874 by the men of St. Joseph's Church, found its opportunities so extended in 1911 that a building seemed necessary for its beneficent work. In that year, $47,000 was raised by an enthusiastic popular sub- scription; and the building was erected on Melville Street. The Young Men's Christian Association was established in Pittsfield in 1885. In 1908 the need of a building for it was so generally recognized that the public readily contributed $44,000, and this, added to a large fund gathered already by the associa- tion, made possible the erection of a building on the corner of Melville and North Streets.
The sphere of possible usefulness of the Boys' Club and its vocational schools, modestly initiated in 1900, became enlarged so obviously in 1905 that the wise munificence of Zenas Crane of Dalton provided a building on Melville Street for the club. A building also was generously assured for the Business Women's and the Working Girls' Clubs at the corner of East and First Streets in 1915, when it had grown apparent that the demand
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for the benefits derivable from those organizations was in urgent excess of the supply, which their former facilities afforded.
The provision of public playgrounds within the thickly set- tled portion of the city began in 1910. In the next year, a com- mittec, appointed by the mayor, formed the Park and Play- ground Association, of which the declared object was "the pro- motion of the establishment, acquisition, maintenance, and im- provement of parks and playgrounds for the people of Pittsfield." The association's first president was Joseph Ward Lewis, and the land first bought for its use in 1911 was north of Columbus Avenue, immediately west of the river. The attendance at the public playgrounds in 1915 was about 90,000.
In connection with the development, between 1891 and 1916, of thesc and kindred activities in Pittsfield, one observes that here again the life of the city reflected with fidelity the life of the nation. The period was one of social organization, when forces working for social betterment began to become combined, and subjected to unified and skilled direction. Of this tendency the social history of Pittsfield presents clear evidence; and, if one views in sum all the various endeavors toward mutual help and the common good, he will find that they represent a very con- siderable part of the domestic life of the community.
The city's churches, of whose philanthropic ideal such agen- cies were, to some degree, the practical expression, responded to the impetus of the city's growth. New edifices were dedicated by Unity Church, in 1890; by Advent Church, in 1891; by the Evangelical Lutheran Church, in 1893; by Notre Dame Church, in 1897; by Pilgrim Memorial Church, in the following year; by St. Charles' Church, in 1901; and by the Morningside Baptist Society, in 1913. First Church of Christ, Scientist, occupied its own building in 1907. The Gathering of Israel erected a new synagogue in 1906. The building on Linden Street used by the Epworth Mission of the Methodist Episcopal Church was re- modeled in 1906; and in 1913 a chapel was erected on Elm Street by the First Baptist Church. The activities, in short, of every religious denomination in Pittsfield were increased. St. Joseph's Convent was opened in 1897. The St. Joseph's pa- rochial schools were established in 1899.
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By the public schools of Pittsfield, the strain of expansion was felt with trying rigor. The enrolment of pupils was approx- imately doubled in the fifteen years following 1900. The fact that the city was growing rapidly was thus emphasized in the experience even of the children, and the constant endeavor of the community to adjust itself to this growth was brought home to every household. Unlike previous generations in the normally progressive town, Pittsfield boys and girls now became men and women among surroundings abnormally changeful, and in an atmosphere charged with a constant effort to make the supply of free public education equal to the demand for it. The city, wherein the building and enlargement of schoolhouses were an- nual necessities for several years, and wherein overcrowded schoolhouses were not unusual, was by these witnesses made forcibly aware of the need of effort beyond the ordinary.
Strain and growth in a community sometimes produce a certain disintegration. Against this tendency, in the case of Pittsfield, has often worked a strong impulse summoning the en- deavor of all the citizens to attain some object for the direct benefit of comparatively a few. Instances of this are the popu- lar subscriptions, to which allusion has been made, for the build- ing funds of the Young Men's Christian Association and the Father Mathew Total Abstinence Society. An increased co- operation for such ends deserves to be noted by the reader inter- ested in American social life at the dawn of the twentieth cen- tury. It was a characteristic feature of the period in Pittsfield. When money was to be raised for a worthy object, the campaign, as it was called, was elaborately organized and a studious at- tempt was made to enlist in the ranks every member of the entire community, who had any means of contribution. Such a cam- paign, with its numerous participants and daily meetings, fre- quently resulted not only in the subscription of a fund; it also operated to unify the social body and to bring together men and women of various sorts in the friendly pursuance of a common purpose. Social co-operation of this kind was not a new thing in Pittsfield, but the scale on which it was practiced after 1900 in- troduced a distinct and novel phase of the city's growth.
Hardly so evident was co-operation in industrial and mercan-
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tile affairs. A Board of Trade and a Merchants' Association each exerted somewhat spasmodic influence. The former, about 1910, seemed to have been placed on a more practical and perma- nent basis than it had previously enjoyed, but in general the business men of Pittsfield may be said to have shown an odd jealousy of official organization, an inheritance, perhaps, from the stubborn Yankce individualism of village times. Concerted action in matters of commerce has ordinarily been difficult of at- tainment; evoked now and then by extraordinary emergencies, it ceased to be operative when the particular need for it had passed. A conspicuous, and in its purpose the most important, effort to awaken co-operation of this character was made in 1900, when there was apprehension that the shops of the Stanley Electric Manufacturing Company might be removed from Pittsfield. A public meeting was held, which was attended by three hundred influential citizens and over which the mayor pre- sided; to confer with the new management of the company a committee was selected, consisting of William E. Tillotson, Henry R. Peirson, Frank W. Dutton, James W. Hull, William A. Whittlesey, and George W. Bailey, and was instructed "to ar- range for some concerted plan of action whereby the require- ments of the company may be fully met by the business men of Pittsfield". The committee labored with zeal and determina- tion, and on March twenty-ninth, 1900, the announcement was made by the new president of the company, Dr. F. A. C. Perrine, that the factories would remain in the city. Flags were hoisted, bells rung, and mill whistles blown; and Pittsfield congratulated itself, as well it might. The success of this meeting of 1900 affected not only the city's material prosperity, but also the civic spirit, which it enlivened and at least momentarily welded, from elements then threatening to become more diverse than they had ever been before.
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