USA > New York > Erie County > Buffalo > A history of Buffalo : delineating the evolution of the city > Part 17
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kranz, the Saengerbund and the Orpheus, conducted by Pro- fessor Parker, of Yale; an address by President Eliot, of Harvard; an ode by Arthur Detmers, set to music by Pro- fessor Parker; a poem read by Richard Watson Gilder, of New York; a hymn written by Philip B. Goetz, made up a program that was flawless in every part.
In his letter of 1900, which proffered the building, Mr. Albright intimated his willingness to expend upon it some $300,000 or $350,000. There seems to be little doubt that he will have expended, when the statuary still to come is in place, not less than double the largest of those sums.
Besides this splendid property the Academy is now in possession of permanent funds to an amount that exceeds $235,000. Of these, $95,000 are specifically for the pur- chase of pictures, namely : $50,000, by bequest from Miss Elizabeth H. Gates; $20,000, by bequest from Albert H. Tracy; $10,000, by gift from Sherman S. Jewett; $10,000, from Mrs. Sarah A. Gates ; $5,000, from Mrs. Charlotte A. Watson.
Since the organization of the Academy its presidents have been the following: Henry W. Rogers, 1862-64; George S. Hazard, 1864; Sherman S. Jewett, 1865; Eben P. Dorr, 1866-67; C. F. S. Thomas, 1868; Henry W. Rogers, 1869- 70; William P. Letchworth, 1871-74; Sherman S. Rogers, 1875; Lars G. Sellstedt, 1876-77; John Allen, Jr., 1878; Josiah Jewett, 1879-80; Dr. Thomas F. Rochester 1881-87; Sherman S. Rogers, 1888-89; Ralph H. Plumb, 1889-93; Dr. Frederick H. James, 1894; John J. Albright, 1895-97; T. Guilford Smith, 1898-1902; Edmund Hayes, 1903-04; Ralph H. Plumb, 1905 (dying early in this term) ; Stephen M. Clement, 1905; Carleton Sprague, 1906-7; Willis O. Chapin, 1908-
A Society for Beautifying Buffalo was organized in 1901, under the presidency of Dr. Matthew D. Mann. The main
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THE SINGERS OF A CENTURY AGO
objects of its endeavors have been the securing of more public and private care for trees ; the promoting of the home cultivation of flowers; the suppression of the smoke nuisance, and of unsightly billboards and signs; the re- moval of overhead wires; the institution of public play- grounds for children; the stimulating of interest in the crea- tion of worthy monuments, and the organizing of influences in favor of true art, wherever public undertakings, in build- ing especially, come into touch with art.
Kindred in aim to this is The Society for Beautifying Schools, organized at about the same time.
An original manuscript document preserved in the library of the Buffalo Historical Society offers the fittest possible and most interesting opening to a sketch of the history of Music in Buffalo. It is dated on the 29th of March, 1820, and its beginning reads as follows: "We, the subscribers, desirous of improving the style of singing in this village, and feeling that, in order to carry into effect the said object, it is necessary to have some rules by which we will be gov- erned,"-therefore the subscribers join in forming a society, to be called the Musica Sacra Society, and adopt by-laws or regulations, the ultimate object of which is to give effect to the following :
"It shall be the duty of all the officers of the society to inform themselves in the most modern style of performing music, and to consult the most eminent writers on the sub- ject (of whom we may consider Messrs. Hastings and War- riner, editors of the 'Musica Sacra,' at present entitled to our particular notice and respect), and shall endeavor by all means in their power to introduce into the society the style which they, together with the committee, shall ap- prove."
About sixty signatures are appended to this document, the names of women being a little the more numerous, and
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most of them being names that have prominence in many connections, in the records of the village life of Buffalo. How long the Musica Sacra Society existed, and with what improvement of the style of singing in the village its officers studied Hastings and Warriner and other eminent writers on "the most modern style of performing music," it is not likely that we shall ever be informed.
Apparently the singers of the village in 1820 had no teaching available to them, except such as they could obtain from books; for James D. Sheppard, who came to Buffalo in 1827, is said to have been the first professional musician that the town received; and Mr. Sheppard does not seem to have come as a teacher. He started a music store, opening it first in a corner room of the old Court House, but remov- ing it the next year to Main Street, adjoining the Eagle Tavern. Later it went to the corner of Main and Niagara streets, where it remained until 1857; then, for a single year, to Swan Street, near Main, and finally, in 1858, to 269 Main Street, where Mr. Sheppard was succeeded in the proprie- torship by Messrs. Cottier & Denton.
From some time between 1830 and 1840 until one of the later decades of the century, Mr. C. F. S. Thomas was a resident of Buffalo who interested himself in everything that had to do with the cultivation or enjoyment of music. In 1866 he was persuaded to prepare for the Historical Society a paper which he entitled "Discursive Notes on the History of Music in Buffalo," and it is probable that no one else could have recorded so much on the subject. From the manuscript of his Notes, to be found in the archives of the Historical Society, some facts of considerable interest can be drawn.
They tell us that Mrs. Walden, in Buffalo, possessed the only piano-forte west of Canandaigua in 1812; that the first organ in the city was placed in St. Paul's Church in 1829,
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and the second one in the Unitarian Church, in 1834. They name the members of the early church choirs, and these are mostly familiar names of the pioneer citizens who were active in everything that went on in the town. The first musical society of which the writer had found any record was the Buffalo Harmonic, formed in 1828, with ninety members; but how long it existed is not told. In 1829 a military band was made up, of raw material, in- structed and led by a Mr. Willoughby, who was also the musical leader of a Philharmonic Society, organized in 1830, which had, says Mr. Thomas, "a very lively birth and a very quiet death." "From 1830 to 1838," he writes, "we do not hear of any movement in the way of an organized musical society. Music was very generally cultivated, and home concerts as well as professional concerts were well attended. * Both sacred and secular concerts were frequently got up."
The year 1838 brought the organization of a Buffalo Handel and Haydn Society, with Noah P. Sprague for its president, Mr. Thomas for its secretary, George W. Hough- ton for leader. The meetings of the society were in the large room over James D. Sheppard's music store; and it is astonishing to be told that nearly one hundred singers and an orchestra of nearly fifty took part in a brilliant opening performance. Mr. Thomas proceeds to say "that this society had a brilliant existence for about two years; gave some really excellent concerts; numbered many very fine female and male voices ; but died out in 1840, in conse- quence, it was said, of many of its best members having taken to the 'Log Cabin and Hard Cider persuasion,' and having entered so enthusiastically into that memorable cam- paign as to have entirely lost voice for any other musical occupation." Thus the "Harrison Glee Club" seems to have wrecked the Handel and Haydn Society, and did not,
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itself, survive the songful political campaign of 1840 very long.
No other musical organization was known to Mr. Thomas until 1847, when one appeared which assumed the rather high-sounding name of the Buffalo Academy of Music. It had a brief life; and, says Mr. Thomas, "musi- cal matters, as far as regards associations, were now at a standstill." That a concert was given by Jenny Lind in the old North Presbyterian Church on the evening of the 30th of July, 1851, is a fact not mentioned by Mr. Thomas. Ex- cepting an annual gathering of the musical folk of the town at his own house, which went on from 1842 until 1857, he has nothing to record until about 1862, when "a number of gentlemen associated themselves informally together, ap- pointed J. R. Blodgett their leader, and had social practice in vocal music. After a while they adopted the name of the Continental Singing Society. This association con- tinued until about December, 1863, when a new musical association was formed under the name of the Saint Cecilia Society, and the Continentals joined with the ladies and gentlemen constituting that society. They have tastefully fitted up a hall, in the Arcade building, for their exclusive use; give dress rehearsals about once a month, to which only the members and their families are admitted, and cer- tainly the Saint Cecilians give more promise of vitality than any of their musical predecessors." Mr. Thomas was the vice-president of this society, Captain D. P. Dobbins its president, Mr. J. R. Blodgett its leader and Mr. Robert Denton pianist.
The Continental Singing Society was not absorbed in the St. Cecilia, but maintained its organization of male singers for a number of years, giving concerts at intervals, not only at home, but quite widely outside; on occasions at Roch- ester, Cleveland and Detroit. It celebrated its tenth anni-
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THE GERMAN SINGING SOCIETIES
versary on the 30th of June, 1870, and gave what may have been its final concert in November of that year. Either then or soon afterward it came to the end of what seems to have been a highly creditable career.
Long before this time, however, a more persisting and stably organized cultivation of music had been instituted among the Germans of the city. Many had been coming from the land of song in the two or three decades before the Civil War, and they were soon in such numbers as to be able to shape life for themselves in their new home, by the institutions and customs of their fatherland, and to take on the naturalized feeling of a German-American com- munity. That singing societies should arise among them as soon as they realized this feeling was a matter of course.
According to the writer of an anonymous "History of the Germans of Buffalo," published by Messrs. Reinecke & Zesch in 1898, the first of such societies to appear was or- ganized in 1844, but was not maintained very long. Four years later a society had birth which now, after sixty years, is in vigorous life. This, the Buffalo Liedertafel, had its origin at a meeting of singers in the rooms of the German Young Men's Association, in the spring of 1848. Its first headquarters were at Weimer's Hall, on one of the corners of Batavia (Broadway) and Michigan streets. It gave its first public concert in Greiner's Hall, Genesee and Jeffer- son streets. Professor Carl Adam became its director in 1852.
In 1853 a second singing society, named the Lieder- kraenzchen, was formed by a number of the musical mem- bers of the German-American Workingmen's Union ; but part of this society withdrew from it and organized the Buffalo Saengerbund, under C. W. Braun, in 1855. The Saengerbund gave its first concert in Gillig's Hall in the fall of that year. Subsequently Mr. Frederick Federlein
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became director, and remained as such until 1886. In 1859 the eleventh of the Saengerfests of the German Saenger- bund of North America was held at Cleveland, and both the Liedertafel and the Saengerbund took part in it. At the prize singing the Liedertafel won the first prize, a silver cup. The next Saengerfest, in July, 1860, was held at Buffalo, and the New York Central Railroad Company was so accommodating as to allow its station on Exchange Street to be used for the principal concert, all trains being turned out of it for that occasion. The city had no other building that would answer the need.
The Saengerbund gave its first public performance of an opera in 1862, and this was followed by home productions of German opera at intervals for a number of years. At the same time, in this decade of the Civil War and after, Buffalo was enjoying quite as much of opera, and of music in general, from foreign sources, as it has had in recent years ; and it was better equipped for the enjoyment, in its St. James Hall and the little so-called Opera House of the old Brisbane Arcade, than it is with its big barn of a Con- vention Hall to-day. Between 1864 and 1867 it had a num- ber of brief seasons of Italian opera with Brignoli in the tenor parts; and Brignoli was to that generation what Ca- ruso is to this. In 1865 it had five continuous nights of Italian opera performed by Max Strakosch's company; three of German opera by Grover's troupe; four of English opera by Campbell and Castle's combination; with three nights of operatic concert by Parepa and Carl Rosa, and with recitals by Gottschalk and Camilla Urso besides. In what recent year have we had richer indulgence in music than this?
The later years of that decade brought more of Brignoli, with Adelaide Phillips; more of Parepa and Carl Rosa; many prolonged seasons of the Caroline Richings English
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opera; Grau's Opera Bouffe Company; the Mendelssohn Quintette; Carlotta Patti; Clara Louise Kellogg; Ole Bull; the first visit of Theodore Thomas and his orchestra; and the intervals were well filled with local song.
By a secession of some of the younger members of the Saengerbund, in 1868, a new German singing society, the Orpheus, was formed. Professor Carl Adam, who re- signed the directorship of the Liedertafel that year, came to the Orpheus as its director in 1870, and remained at its head until 1887. At the same time Mr. Joseph Mischka was called to the directorship of the Liedertafel, and held it, with a short interruption, until 1894, when he was ap- pointed director of music in the public schools of the city. Mr. Mischka is the possessor of a most interesting and val- uable scrap-book of concert and operatic programmes and newspaper clippings on matters of local music, which Pro- fessor Blodgett began about 1863 and which Mr. Mischka continued into the early years of the next decade. For that period this scrap-book is a useful supplement to Mr. Thomas's historical paper, and is the source of facts given above.
From this source we derive an impression that the St. Cecilia Society gave much offence by the exclusiveness with which its "dress rehearsals" were protected, as one writer of the time expressed it, "from the troublesome raids of a curious public." It was maintained for about four years, ending in 1867, and a clipping preserved in the scrap-book, from some newspaper not named, pronounced its obituary in these bitter words: "Its exclusiveness was a bar against the admission of talent; its mutual admiration tendencies afforded no encouragement to art, and its excessive kid- glovism had no vitality to impart to anything. And so the St. Cecilia Society died."
In 1869 a Beethoven Musical Society was formed, which
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gave orchestral concerts, with Professor William Gross- curth for its conductor that year, and under the lead of Signor Nuno in the following year. It was assisted in its concerts by the Continental Singing Society, the Lieder- tafel and the Saengerbund. In 1870, as mentioned before, the Continental Singing Society appears to have been dis- solved; but some part of its elements were reassembled in the Buffalo Choral Union, organized in 1871, at a meeting, as I find stated in a slightly later circular, of several gen- tlemen who had been members "of the then late Continental Singing Society." Its president was Francis H. Root, and it had a large active membership, giving frequent entertain- ments, until 1877, beyond which it is not traced.
In German musical circles there was vigorous life through all these years, and it went on without break. For the second time, the great Saengerfest of the North Ameri- can Saengerbund was held in Buffalo in 1882, and not only the Liedertafel, the Saengerbund and the Orpheus, but seven other German singing societies were found then in the city to take part. They were the Harmonie, the Hel- vetia, the Arion, the Harugari Maennerchor, the Germania Maennerchor, the Teutonia Maennerchor, and the East Buffalo Maennerchor.
In 1884 the Buffalo Philharmonic Society was formed "to establish and sustain a quartette of stringed instru- ments." For two years under the direction of Mr. Gustav Dannreuther, and for a third year under Signor J. Nuno, this fine quartette gave thirty concerts each season.
Professor Carl Adam's long connection with the Orpheus was ended by his resignation in 1887, and he was succeeded by Mr. John Lund, who had come lately to a prominent place among the leading musicians of the city. In the next year Mr. Lund was called to organize and conduct an orchestra of the first order, with guarantees of support by
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RECENT CHORAL ORGANIZATIONS
an association of subscribers which took form under the lead of Mr. Fred. C. M. Lautz. For seven seasons this Buffalo Orchestra (known in the later years as the Buffalo Sym- phony Orchestra) was upheld mainly by the persisting energy and liberality of Mr. Lautz, representing the finest achievement in music that Buffalo has been able to boast.
During the same period and lasting somewhat longer, a large and excellent Vocal Society was well sustained. This had no equal successor until 1904, when the Guido Chorus was organized by Mr. Seth Clark, the organist and director of music at Trinity Church. The fourteen men of the choir of that church formed the nucleus of the Chorus, which has been expanded since to a large active and sub- scribing membership. It grew naturally out of rehearsals that were held during the winter of 1903-4 at the residence of Dr. Matthew D. Mann, "purely," says Mr. Clark, "for the pleasure of practicing male voice music once a week." The first public concert of the Guido Chorus was given on the 12th of January, 1905, with an active membership then of fifty-six. In each year since it has given three concerts, rehearsing from September to May, and the public delight in them has increased with every succeeding year.
A second choral organization which gives great promise was formed in 1906. Of this, the Philharmonic Chorus, the original moving spirits are understood to have been Messrs. Hobart Weed, Frank Hamlin and Edmund Hayes. Associated with them in the supporting organization are S. M. Clement, Dudley M. Irwin, Edward Michael, Dr. Roswell Park, Dr. J. J. Mooney, J. G. Dudley, Carlton M. Smith, Truman G. Avery, Robert K. Root. The director of the Chorus is Mr. Andrew T. Webster.
Two Polish singing societies, the Kolo Spiewackie, com- posed of about 150 men, and the Kalina, in which about 50 girls are enrolled, meet weekly in the Dom Polski, on Broadway.
CHAPTER X SOCIAL ORGANIZATION
C LUB organization and the club-house as a social insti- tution have acquired their whole present importance in the life of this city within the term of the genera- tion that is not yet very far down the slope to old age. Prior to late years in the decade of the sixties there was nothing to represent them more nearly than the engine and hose companies and houses of the old volunteer fire depart- ment,-which had a very markedly club-like social char- acter,-and certain attractive places of public entertain- ment, such as "Bloomer's" small hotel, on West Eagle Street, between Main and Pearl. Each had its circle of habitues, as faithful as club members in their nightly assembly.
More or less of club organization in small ways had been going in the city from much earlier times, like that, for example, of "The Nameless," which took form in 1858, with the genial Guy H. Salisbury for its patriarch, and a further membership of men and women, then young, which in- cluded, first and last, William Pryor Letchworth, David Gray, James N. Johnston, Lyman K. Bass, William C. Bryant, Colonel George H. Selkirk, Dr. C. C. F. Gay, Charles D. Marshall, John Harrison Mills, John U. Way- land, Mrs. C. H. Gildersleeve, Miss Amanda T. Jones, Miss Mary A. Ripley, and the present writer. The Name- less Club maintained its own meeting place, where it held debates and enjoyed social evenings, throughout about a dozen years. If others of like kind in that period had as durable an existence this historian has no knowledge of them.
The first purely social institution to be established in its
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BEGINNING OF SOCIAL CLUBS
own distinct dwelling and to have a planting for large growth was the Buffalo Club, organized at a meeting held for the purpose in the rooms of the Law Library, on the 4th of January, 1867. Its first president was Millard Fillmore, ex-President of the United States. For nearly three years it leased the former residence of Mr. Julius Movius, at the corner of Delaware Avenue and Cary Street; then bought the home of Mr. James S. Ganson, at the corner of Dela- ware and Chippewa Street, where the club was in residence until 1887, when it purchased the larger mansion, built by the late S. V. R. Watson, on Delaware Avenue, at the corner of Trinity Street. This, by repeated extensions and im- provements, in 1889, 1894, 1899 and 1909, has been fitted to the increasing needs of the Club, down to the present time.
The next club organization of social importance was the Falconwood, formed in 1869 for the establishment of a family club-house, for summer resorting, on Grand Island, in the Niagara River; and this was followed, in 1873, by another of kindred character, the Oakfield, whose club- house was built at a point farther down the Niagara, on the same island shore.
The City Club, incorporated in 1877, and maintained for a few years in quarters at 354 Washington Street, mainly for luncheon use, was the next to appear. Then, in 1882, a Press Club was undertaken, but did not acquire a lasting life. In the same year a club organization, the Idlewood, for summer suburban residence on the south shore of the Lake was incorporated, and its planting has endured. A year later the Canoe Club began the prosperous career which has established its fleet, its club-house and its cottage colony on the Canadian shore of the Lake.
The year 1885 gave birth to the lively Saturn Club, which caught, somewhere, the secret of perpetual youth. It was cradled in house No. 25 Johnson Park, and went thence into
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three successive residences on Main Street and Delaware Avenue, until 1890, when it bought and built its present home, at the corner of Edward Street and Delaware. An extensive remodelling of its club-house was executed in 1904.
The Country Club, incorporated in 1889, occupied for ten years house and grounds on the northern edge of Delaware Park, where the Pan-American Exposition was located soon afterward. The Club, then, in 1900, bought 70 acres of land more remote, to the northward, on the east side of Main Street, where it built and began large improvements. A further purchase of 140 acres was made in 1903, and the club-house was then enlarged.
The first club-house for women was projected in 1894 and opened in 1896, by an organization, incorporated in the former year, which took Time by the forelock a little boldly, in order to assume the name of the Twentieth Century Club. It bought ground on which the Delaware Avenue Baptist Church had built a chapel, and placed its attractive club- house on the front, retaining the chapel for use as a con- nected hall. In 1905 this hall was rebuilt, and the third floor of the club-house was remodelled throughout.
The University Club was organized in 1894, and opened house in the dwelling at 884 Main Street on the Ist of March, 1895. In October, 1897, it removed to a more com- modious residence at 295 Delaware Avenue, and seven years later had become able to erect the spacious club-house it now occupies, at the corner of Allen Street, on Delaware, which it dedicated October 29, 1904.
The incorporation of the Ellicott Club, with agreeable provisions for luncheon and dining as its primary object, came in 1895. From the beginning the club has occupied one of the upper floors of the Ellicott Square Building, but has now in contemplation a home of its own making.
The Park Club, instituted in 1903, and seated in what had
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WOMEN'S CLUBS
been the Women's Building of the Pan-American Exposi- tion, previously a part of the original premises of the Coun- try Club, is the latest of the club associations of a general- ized class.
Club organizations of a more specialized or limited order have become too numerous in the city to be reported of in detail. It must suffice to mention a few, such as the Acacia (Masonic), the Elks, the Otowega (of the Central Park dis- trict), the Lawyers' Club, the Transportation Club, the Automobile Club, the Canadian Club,-and to leave un- named the many associations for study and discussion, for professional improvement, for athletic sport and other amusements, which have multiplied astonishingly, here as elsewhere, in recent years. Out of the first of these neg- lected categories there is need, however, to take for mention one, at least, which arose in 1891. That is the Liberal Club, whose purpose was announced to be "the careful con- sideration at monthly dinners of subjects having to do with religion, morals, education and public affairs," and which had for its noble motto-"In thought, free; in temper, reverent ; in method, scientific." A second club of like pur- pose, the Independent, was formed soon after, and a third, the Equality Club, a little later, in connection with the Cen- tral Y. M. C. A.
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