USA > New York > Erie County > Buffalo > A history of Buffalo : delineating the evolution of the city > Part 13
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26
159
THE YOUNG MEN'S ASSOCIATION
Eagle and Court, the lease including the fairly large and excellent American Hall, on the third floor, with the library placed underneath. Here the Association won a footing which made its future secure. The Hall became a source of considerable income. Annual courses of lectures by famous speakers were undertaken, with pleasure to the public and profit to the library. The annual election of officers became a contest which excited the town and added constantly to the membership list. The Y. M. A. was now distinctly at the front of the intellectual life of the town.
Mr. Sargent had resigned the post of librarian in 1850, because of failing health, and Lewis Jenkins, who took his place, withdrew in 1852. Then the office was taken by William Ives, whose connection with the library lasted through fifty-three years. Though still in firm health, but feeling the weight of nearly ninety years, Mr. Ives retired from service in January, 1905.
In 1856 a munificent proposal by Mr. George Palmer encouraged a new project of building. Mr. Palmer prof- fered a gift of land valued at $12,000, with $10,000 in money, on the condition that $90,000 more be raised from other sources. The condition could not be fulfilled. In 1861, near the eve of the outbreak of our dreadful Civil War, the Association celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary, with notable public exercises, distinguished by one of the finest of the poems of the late David Gray.
The years of the ensuing war were years of prosperity and progress in the history of the Association. It was in that period that it acquired its first actual endowment, by the subscription of a building fund which amounted to the sum of $81,655. This came at the end of an effort, pro- longed through two years, to unite the Y. M. A., the Gros- venor Library, the Fine Arts Academy, the Buffalo His- torical Society and the Society of Natural Sciences in the
160
CULTURAL EVOLUTION
erection of a building for their common use. The outcome, in the spring of 1864, under the presidency of S. V. R. Wat- son, was excellent, though not in accordance with the original plan. A fine property, embracing the St. James Hotel and St. James Hall, on Main, Eagle and Washington streets, was purchased for the Association from the Messrs. Albert and George Brisbane, under conditions which pro- vided quarters in the hotel building, when reconstructed, for all of the institutions named above, and temporarily for some others, as well. The Grosvenor Library, however, was removed in a short time to another place.
The Association was now in happy circumstances. Its library was well placed, with room for considerable growth, and its property yielded a revenue which extinguished the debt on it within thirteen years. By an issue of bonds in 1869, under the presidency of Henry A. Richmond, a spe- cial fund for large purchases of books was raised, whereby the total of volumes on the shelves was raised from about 16,000 in 1870 to 25,000 in 1872.
A change in the working organization of the library was made in the spring of 1877, by the creation of the office of superintendent and the appointment of J. N. Larned to the place. During the next two years the books were classified and rearranged throughout, on what is known as the Dewey system of relative location and decimal notation, which holds the volumes of each class together, whatever the growth in numbers may be. The system is now in quite general use, but its first complete practical application was here.
With an increasing income, the library grew rapidly dur- ing the next half dozen years, and the collections of all the societies in the building, artistic, literary, scientific and his- torical, were rising to a value which made their exposure to the chances of fire a subject of anxious thought. Once
161
THE YOUNG MEN'S LIBRARY
more there were building projects mooted, and action taken by nine public-spirited gentlemen, in the fall of 1882, focussed them to a decision the next year. To save the fine site of the Old Court House (bounded by Washington, Broadway, Ellicott and Clinton streets) from being sold for commercial uses, these gentlemen bought it, under agree- ment to transfer it at any time within twelve months to one or more of several societies and institutions named which might determine to buy and build on the ground. The citizens associated in this action were Sherman S. Rogers, James M. Smith, Sherman S. Jewett, Francis H. Root, Charles Berrick, O. P. Ramsdell, Dexter P. Rumsey, Pascal P. Pratt, George Howard.
At once there was wakened a feeling that the opportunity secured for a united establishment of our most representative institutions of liberal culture, in so central and admirable a situation, must not be lost. Again the project contemplated a side by side planting of the Young Men's Library and the Grosvenor Library, with the Fine Arts Academy, the Society of Natural Sciences and the Historical Society grouped around them. There was failure to bring the two libraries together; but in its remaining features the scheme was carried through. An energetic and resourceful presi- dent of the Young Men's Association, Edward B. Smith, led the undertaking to success, raised a building fund of $117,000 by public subscription, in sums which ranged from $5,000 to $1. A building committee of five, composed of Edward B. Smith, Jewett M. Richmond, John G. Milburn, George B. Hayes and J. N. Larned, was given large powers for the supervision and direction of the contemplated work. A tentative outline of floor plans, with a full description of the wants to be satisfied and the conditions to be met, were sent to a number of architects, who were invited to submit competitive designs. From eleven designs submitted that
162
CULTURAL EVOLUTION
of C. L. W. Eidlitz, of New York, was preferred, and the construction of the building was placed under his charge, with August Esenwein, of Buffalo, as resident superinten- dent of the work.
Ground was broken on the 8th of October, 1884. On the 13th of September, 1886, the removal of the library from its old to its new home was begun; but the formal opening of the completed building, with the Art, the Science and the History collections in place, did not occur till the 7th of February, 1887. Before that time, the Young Men's Association had been authorized, by act of the Legislature, to assume the more appropriate name of The Buffalo Library.
The vacated building, at the Main and Eagle streets corner, which remained the property of the Library, was now remodelled once more, and restored to its original use as a hotel, named the Richmond House, in compliment to Mr. Jewett M. Richmond, who had succeeded Mr. Smith in the presidency of the Library. A dreadful tragedy re- sulted from the change; for the Richmond House and the adjoining St. James Hall were burned in the night of the 18th of March, 1887, and fifteen lives were lost.
For the support of the Library it now became necessary to make a costly improvement of the ground, involving a heavy debt. One of the finest of fireproof hotel buildings was erected and favorably leased, receiving the name of The Iroquois. During the next decade the income of the Library was slender and the demands on it large. It did what it could to supply the need of a free public library, opening its reading and reference rooms to all comers and distributing a large number of free tickets in the public schools ; but the privilege otherwise of borrowing books for home use could be extended only to its members, life or annual, the latter of whom paid three dollars per year.
163
THE BUFFALO PUBLIC LIBRARY
The major part of the income derivable from the hotel property of the Library depended on the continuous ex- emption of that property from taxation, as belonging to an educational institution. By legislation enacted in 1896 this exemption was withdrawn, and the Library came sud- denly face to face with a situation in which the means for any usefulness of existence were suddenly taken away. In this desperate emergency proposals for making it a free public library, as a municipal institution, won instantly a surprising weight and earnestness of support. The project, widened to include the Grosvenor Library, grew in favor as the discussion went on. Conferences' between committees representing the libraries and the city government resulted in agreements which the Legislature, by an act that became law on the 13th of February, 1897, empowered the city and the two libraries to enter into. These agreements, em- bodied in a formal contract on the 24th of February, were in effect as follows :
The Buffalo Library conveyed to the city of Buffalo its books and pamphlets in trust for a period of 99 years, to- gether with the net annual income from the Library prop- erty. The city accepted the trust, and bound itself to main- tain the Library, by annual appropriation of a sum not less than four-fifths of three one-hundredths of one per centum of the total assessed valuation of taxable property in the city (appropriating, also, not less than one-fifth of three one- hundredths of one per centum of such assessed valuation to the maintenance of the Grosvenor Library each year). The Library to be known as The Buffalo Public Library, and to be free to the residents of the city for all of its uses ; to be open every day, during stipulated hours; to be under the control and management of a board of ten directors, five of them representing the city and five the life members of The Buffalo Library, as previously constituted; these
164
CULTURAL EVOLUTION
latter having been incorporated with the power of perpetual succession, and having the control and management of the library real estate.
On the 9th of March this corporation of life members of The Buffalo Library was organized by the election of Nathaniel W. Norton president; George L. Williams vice- president; Joseph P. Dudley, James Frazer Gluck and Charles R. Wilson managers. These, with the Mayor of Buffalo, the Corporation Counsel, the Superintendent of Education, and two citizens, John D. Bogardus and Mathias Rohr, appointed by the Mayor, formed the first board of directors of The Buffalo Public Library, with Mr. Norton to preside.
This momentous change in the circumstances of the Library-in its relations to the public and in its educational power-was striven for by no one more ardently than by the writer of this narrative of the event, who had been the superintendent of the library for twenty years. From the day it became a certainty he labored strenuously on prepara- tions for the reorganization of library work which the ser- vice of the whole reading public of the city would involve. He hoped to have a hand in that service for some brief time, and then retire; but a few weeks of experience convinced him that he could not work in harmony with the presiding officer of the new board of directors, and in April he re- signed. Mr. Henry L. Elmendorf was appointed his suc- cessor in the following June.
During the summer extensive changes in the interior of the building were made and it was not opened to the general public until the beginning of September. In thirteen years since that opening, the educational service of the Library to the city has gone far beyond every expectation. It has far more than realized the highest hopes that were entertained when its resources were enlarged and it was
165
THE GERMAN YOUNG MEN'S ASSOCIATION
made free. That its collection of books in 1910 numbered no less than 284,176 volumes, and that its circulation had expanded from 768,000 in the first full year of its free open- ing to 1,368,425, are the least significant of descrip- tive facts. The influence of its methods and agencies, in introducing good literature to its great reading public,- giving prominence to it,-luring attention to it,-advertis- ing it,-is what gives real and immense importance to its enormous daily output of books. Its big "open shelf room," where readers browse as in a private library, among care- fully selected books, and pick for themselves ; its children's room, where boys and girls do the same; its class-room libraries in the public schools; its traveling libraries, in parochial and private schools, in Sunday schools, in social settlement houses, in clubs, in factories, in hospitals, in police stations and firemen's quarters ;- these are what give its mighty influence to the Public Library, as a stimulating center of intellectual life.
On the death of Mr. Elmendorf, in July, 1906, his assistant, Walter L. Brown, became the head of the Library, and was succeeded in the assistant's office by Mrs. Elmen- dorf, who had been, before her marriage, the librarian of the Milwaukee Public Library, and recognized as one of the ablest of the people engaged in library work.
The unnamed writer of the "History of the Germans of Buffalo," published in 1898, who gives an extended account of the German Young Men's Association, ascribes its origin to the Buffalo Apprentices' Society, which existed for a number of years after 1833. Several young Germans were among the members of the Apprentices' Society, some of whom on leaving it, when they had reached a certain age- limit prescribed in its constitution, became instrumental in organizing, on May 10, 1841, the German-English Litera- ture Society with F. A. Georger as president, John Hauen-
166
CULTURAL EVOLUTION
stein vice-president, Carl Neidhardt secretary, and the brothers Jacob and George Beyer, George F. Pfeiffer, Wil- helm Rudolf and Adam Schlagder among its members. The purpose of the society was: mutual education in the different branches of German and English literature, science and art, the general spreading of useful knowledge, and the providing of a good library. Meetings were held every Monday night in a very plain room in the rear of Dr. Del- lenbaugh's drug store, on Main near Court Street. This meeting room was, in accord with the modest means of the society's members at the time, furnished very plainly. Here the society met until 1843.
Although the founders of the society intended to foster the English language as well as the German, they discov- ered, after the first month of its existence, that they were not able to succeed in this matter. They did not drop the English entirely, but they had to neglect it. To indi- cate this action also externally, they changed the name of the society to the German Young Men's Association of the City of Buffalo. This took place on the 11th of Septem- ber, 1841.
A series of annual balls, continued for a number of years, provided a fund by which a library was gradually built up. It numbered 750 volumes in 1846 and a catalogue was printed that year. For a time after leaving Dr. Dellen- baugh's drug store the association had its meetings, lectures and dances in the Eagle Tavern. In the winter of 1843-4 it established rooms in the Kremlin Block, where it re- mained until 1854.
The immigration of political exiles from Germany in 1848 brought some important additions to the membership of the association, among them August Thieme, who had been a member of the Frankfurter Parliament; Carl Adam, the future musical director; Dr. H. Baethig, Dr. K. Weiss,
167
THE GERMAN YOUNG MEN'S ASSOCIATION
Carl Gruener, artist, and Julius Rieffenstahl. Thieme went to Cleveland in 1852; the others made Buffalo their permanent home.
The first published report of the executive committee of the association was issued in January, 1851. It showed a membership of 120, and a library of 1,090 volumes, 890 of which were in the German language. In that year the association gave a reception to the German patriot Kinkel, who had escaped from a fortress prison with the help of Carl Schurz, and in the next year it took a leading part in the reception to Kossuth.
The period of hard times and general depression which began in 1857 lowered the membership and the spirit of the association, as of most other institutions, for a number of years. It had established fine quarters in the Hauenstein Block, corner of Main and Mohawk streets, just before this occurred ; but its membership had dropped by 1861 down to 54. Then recovery began. In the course of the decade after 1870 it brought some quite notable lecturers to the city, including Dr. Gerhard Rohlfs, the African traveler, and the poet, Friedrich von Bodenstedt.
In 1882 the association rose to a great achievement in response to a great need. To properly accommodate the Twenty-third Saengerfest of the German Saengerbund of North America, appointed to be held in Buffalo in 1883, a suitable hall was desired, and it was determined that the German Young Men's Association should undertake the work. Its charter was accordingly amended, empowering it to hold property to the amount of $500,000, and a board of real estate commissioners was created, consisting of J. P. Schoellkopf, Philip Becker, Albert Ziegler, John Greiner, and F. C. M. Lautz, all men of great business experience and solid wealth. A large piece of ground on Main, Franklin and Edward streets was purchased from the
168
CULTURAL EVOLUTION
Walden estate. General help was given to the enterprising Germans in raising funds for this excellent project, and it was carried out with success. This first Music Hall in Buffalo had a too short life. It was burned on the evening of the 25th of March, 1885, and the library of the German Young Men's Association, which had rooms in the building, was almost totally destroyed. It had then grown to 7,451 volumes, of which only 384 were saved.
Two days after this catastrophe it was resolved that the hall should be rebuilt, and $20,000 were subscribed on the spot. The corner-stone of the new Music Hall was laid in May, 1886, and the finished building was opened with a grand concert, ball and banquet in November of the next year. It had cost $246,600, and the association was now heavily burdened with debt; but a unique and extraordi- narily successful "Prize Fair," organized the next year, cleared off more than $43,000 of this debt.
In 1891 the fiftieth anniversary of the association was celebrated, on which occasion F. A. Georger and Dr. John Hauenstein, who had been president and vice-president in its first year, 1841, held the same places of honor again.
The adoption of the Buffalo Library by the city, in 1897, and its conversion into an entirely free institution, rendered the maintenance of such collections of books as that of the German Young Men's Association no longer an important need. Ten years of experience convinced the members of the association that their library would gain in usefulness if transferred to the free public institution. Accordingly they made a generous offer of it to the latter, and the offer was accepted in the spirit in which it had been made. A bronze tablet commemorating the gift has lately been placed on the walls of the library vestibule. The release of the German Y. M. A. from one of the functions for which it was organized does not, however, involve its dissolution.
169
THE BUFFALO HISTORICAL SOCIETY
It continues in existence for other purposes, which bear on German interests in the city.
The circumstances of the origin of the Buffalo Historical Society were related to the present secretary of the society, Mr. Frank H. Severance, by the late Lewis F. Allen, and recorded by Mr. Severance in some notes which are printed in the fifth volume of the B. H. S. Publications, as follows : "I was coming up Court Street one day," said Mr. Allen, "when I met Orsamus H. Marshall. I knew him well,- knew that he was one of the few men in Buffalo who gave any thought to the preservation of the records or relics of our history. * He spoke of something that he wanted to get, or that had been destroyed, I don't remember now just what. 'Marshall,' I said, 'we ought to do some- thing about these things. Somebody should take care of them.' It was a raw, windy day, early in spring, along in March, 1862. He said, 'Come up in my office and we'll talk it over.' The result of that talk was that we got a few others interested and published a call for another meeting to be held at Mr. Marshall's office. The rest of it," said Mr. Allen, "is a matter of record. We named a committee to draw up a constitution and by-laws, which were sub- mitted to a meeting of citizens held in the rooms of the old Medical Association on South Division Street. Millard Fillmore was made chairman of that meeting, and a little later, at our first election, he was chosen the first president of the society." That meeting at which Mr. Fillmore pre- sided was held April 15, 1862. Mr. Allen was chairman of the earlier meeting, in Mr. Marshall's office, and was the first vice-president of the society.
The history of the early years of the society is sketched very interestingly in a paper written by Oliver G. Steele, in 1873, and printed in the first volume of its Publications. Its maintenance for five years was secured at the beginning
170
CULTURAL EVOLUTION
by a pledge from fifty gentlemen of $20 each per year; and this was done on the suggestion of Mr. Fillmore, who was one of the most earnest of its founders. It was especially to the interest in it felt by him, by Mr. Marshall, by Mr. Lewis F. Allen and Orlando Allen, by William Clement Bryant, E. P. Dorr, Elias S. Hawley, William P. Letch- worth, William Dorsheimer, James Sheldon, James M. Smith, George S. Hazard, William H. H. Newman, Wil- liam Hodge, Emmor Haines, William D. Fobes, Alonzo Richmond, James Tillinghast, William K. Allen, Julius H. Dawes, Dr. Joseph C. Greene, and some others, that the society was kept in life through its first quarter century or so, until later energies, working in more favoring times and circumstances, built under it the broad and stable founda- tions on which it rests to-day. But how much of our early local history was saved from oblivion in those years, by the exertions of the founders of the Historical Society to have it recorded while those lived who could record it, can only be known to one who has had occasion, as the present writer has had, to appeal to the contents of the society's shelves and drawers.
The collections of the society in its first three years were deposited and its meetings were held in the office of William Dorsheimer, on Court Street. From 1865 till 1875 it had rooms, with kindred organizations, in the Young Men's Association Building, southeast corner of Main and Eagle streets. Then it obtained safer quarters in the Western Savings Bank Building, on Main and Court streets, where it remained until it went again into co-tenancy with the Young Men's Association, in the new Library Building which was opened in 1887. There, on the third floor, it had large rooms and safety, but stair-climbing, which grew irk- some as stairs in public places went more and more out of use. A remarkable opportunity for obtaining relief from
171
THE BUFFALO HISTORICAL SOCIETY
this irksomeness, and from other handicaps, came in con- nection with the preparations that were begun in 1899 for the Pan-American Exposition to be held at Buffalo in 1901, and the Historical Society was fortunate in a president and other officers who could recognize the opportunity with promptitude and improve it with vigor and ability.
Mr. Andrew Langdon had been president since 1894, and had been devoting himself, with the support of the board of directors, to efforts towards the placing of the society in a home of its own, with a better provision of sup- port. Through State Senator Henry W. Hill, one of the directors of the society, legislation had been procured in 1897-8 which authorized the construction of a Historical Society Building on park lands in the city, and which au- thorized the City to appropriate $25,000 toward the con- struction of such building, as well as $5,000 annually for its maintenance, at the same time making the Mayor and five other city officials ex officio members of the society's governing board. Thus it was given the character of a semi-municipal institution.
Now, in the arrangements making for the Pan-American Exposition, the State of New York planned a building for temporary use, on the Exposition grounds, and the happy idea was conceived of an alliance with the State, to make its building a permanent structure, to plant it on the park land which adjoined the Exposition grounds, and to secure the reversion of it to the Historical Society. This happy idea was realized, in a beautiful building of the classic order, constructed of white Vermont marble, overlooking a very beautiful park lake, built at a cost of $175,000, to which the State contributed $100,000 (about the sum that would, probably, have been wasted on a structure of staff, to be torn down), the Historical Society $45,000, the city of Buffalo $30,000. The building is enriched by two sculp-
172
CULTURAL EVOLUTION
tured bronze doors at its main entrance, which are the gift to it of President Langdon.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.