USA > New York > Monroe County > Rochester > History of Rochester and Monroe county, New York, from the earliest historic times to the beginning of 1907 > Part 12
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As the community increased in size it became evident that an unfailing supply of water must be obtained in some way, not merely for pur- poses of protection but almost equally necessary for domestic use, as the wells of private residences were hecoming more contaminated every year by the increasing pollution of the soil, and the cis- terns which supplanted them gave us only the produets of the sky, good enough for washing but not sanitary as a potation. The result of this was that in 1852 another company was chartered with authority to expend the avails of $800,000 in bonds and the same amount of stock. This cor- poration performed a good deal of labor during the next twenty years, laying several miles of pipes to connect Rochester with three small lakes in Livingston county, but the work was badly done, the materials used were of poor construction, re- peated contracts with the city were violated with impunity and when the money had all been spent an expert engineer was called in, who, after a care- ful estimate, reported that the total value of the assets was 8222,738, and that it would require $410,067 to complete the undertaking. The bond- holders, feeling that they had been swindled, be- gan proceedings to foreclose the mortgage by which the bonds were secured, but that only led to the formation of other companies, nominally, with different schemes, which need not be described, to defraud the city and delude the public. The per- ple became disgusted, all hope was abandoned of the work being done by a private company, an.1
so, with general approval, the legislature in 1872 passed an act authorizing the appointment of five commissioners who should do the construction at the expense of the city.
The mayor appointed Roswell Hart, Edward M. Smith, William II. Bowman. Charles C. Morse and Gilman H. Perkins as commissioners; John Williams, the city treasurer, became the treas- urer of the commission, Christopher T. Amsden the secretary and J. Nelson Tubba the chief engi- neer, with Emil Kuichling as principal assistant and Isaac F. Quinby as consulting engineer. All kinds of obstacles in the shape of litigation were thrown in the way of the commissioners, but they kept on, formulated a plan at once exhaustive and comprehensive for supplying the city with pure water by the gravity system from Hemlock lake. twenty-eight miles to the south, and also to fur- nish water from the Genesee river by direct pres- sure, or what is called the Holly system, pumping it up into a power house, from whence it should by powerful engines be sent through the pipes with a force sufficient for the extinguishment of ordi- nary fires. The plan was accepted by the mayor and work was begun at once, the pipes for both systems being laid in the same trench where they were to go through the same streets, the Hemlock mains being placed on a shelf or bench above the Holly to allow the branches from either to pass over or under those of the other. Beginning the work in the early summer of 18:3, it was pushed so rapidly that on the 18th of February, 1874. an official test was made of the Holly system, with surprisingly satisfactory results. From the hy- drants on Main street, between the Erie canal and North avenue, fourteen fire streams were sent up at once by the machinery at the power house to a height of about a hundred and fifty feet, after- ward a vertical four-inch jet was made to reach an elevation of very nearly three hundred feet. and a horizontal stream from the same hose was thrown almost five hundred feet.
The fire water having been thus well provided for, the labor on the Hemlock system proceeded. larger mains being used than were at first con- templated and two reservoirs being built, one in the town of Rush, a few miles from the lake, and one near Highland park, just outside the city lim- its; in the center of the latter a fountain was con- structed in the shape of the frustum of a cone.
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the purpose being to provide thus for the constant aeration of the water, the twenty-one jets some- times rising together to a height of fifty feet; at other times only one stream shoots up, reaching an elevation of more than a hundred feet, thus pre- senting throughout the summer months a most beautiful spectacle visible for fifteen miles. The work was completed in January, 1876, on the 234 of which month the water was flowing through twenty-eight and a half miles of conduit and fifty-eight miles of distribution pipes in the streets, into the houses of the citizens; when the life of the commission ceased on the Ist of Oc- tober of that year the total cost had been a little less than three million dollars, which naturally has been much increased since then by reason of additions and improvements. No better drinking fluid than the Hemlock can be found in the world ; the lake is guarded against pollution by the strict- est provisions, and although in the spring time a light sum sometimes appears upon the surface of the water as it is drawn through the taps. that has been found to be due to vegetable growth and is not at all deleterious. The water thus dis- tributed now amounts to more than twenty mil- lion gallons daily ; with an increasing demand the supply may become exhausted, to guard against which catastrophe a company has been formed to pump water into the city from the inexhaustible reservoir of Lake Ontario.
1
DIFFERENT BOARDS.
At the same time with the formation of the board of water works commissioners in 1872 the legislature passed an act creating the board of commissioners of public works, with power of supervision over all the streets, lanes and parks of the city and with authority to pass ordinances for public improvements, to let contracts for such improvements, to supervise their construction and to confirm the assessment rolls therefor. Martin Briggs, William Purcell, George H. Thomp- son. Herman Mutschler and Daniel Warner were appointed commissioners. The common council resented the deprivation of the greater part of its authority, and in 1876 an act wge passed creating the executive board, which super- seded the board of commissioners of public works, but withont the authority to pass ordinances and confirm assessment rolls. As the board of water
commissioners ceased to exist in October of that year the entire management of the water works department wae conferred upon this new board as well as the control of the fire department. Thomas J. Neville, Philip J. Meyer and Valen- tine Fleckenstein were elected, and Henry IL, Fish. Ambrose Cram and C. C. Woodworth were ap- pointed by the mayor as members of this board. In 1879 the board was divided, one section taking charge of the street department and the other section being known as the "water works and fire board." This plan did not work very well, and so the next year all of these functions were lodged in the hands of an executive board of three mem- bers, which ran that part of the city government until the White charter went into effect in 1900.
LOAN ASSOCIATIONS.
Next to Philadelphia, where there were at one time more than a hundred thousand houses that had been built with money borrowed from loan associations, Rochester was for a long period em- phatically the home of those beneficent institu- tions. The forerunner was the Monroe Building and Mutual Loan association, in 1852, and after that had failed because the time was not ripe for it, the Concordia Saving Aid and Loan associa- tion came into being in 1871 and that was speed- ily followed by many similar concerns, some of which lingered along for a while, but they were not prosperous, being founded upon wrong prin- ciples. In the first place they were formed upon the "terminating" plan, with the idea that they would accumulate enough in about six years to pay off all their stock and go out of business. Many of them also were building lot associations, in which the corporation would build a number of houses on a large tract of land which it bought and for which it had given a blanket mortgage, trusting that it could sell the houses, always on the installment plan, at a sufficient advance above their cost to be profitable to all parties, but the sales would be slow, the mortgage would come due and be foreclosed, ending in the collapse of the whole affair. It finally became evident to ad discerning persons that a loan association ought not to be a building association, that it had no right to go into the real estate business and that a union of the two vocations would generally be disastrous.
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Profiting by these experiments and these fai !- ures, the Homestead Loan association, in 1882, settled down mpon the right basis, by which the money received for stock was sold to the highest bidder, wherenpon the purchaser of the money would give a mortgage on the lot that he owned and the house that he intended to build for the mount of his purchase less the premimn that he had bid, and would thereafter make a stated week- ly payment, of which one-half should go for in- terest, the other half going for stock, so that it would in its turn be sold, and when it had with its accumulated earnings amounted to as much as the mortgage that document would be canceled, thereby taking up the stock. The plan was soon found to be profitable, not only tu the investor who was simply a stockholder or depositor. but to the borrower as well, unless he had paid a higher premium than anyone who came after him, for his money would be making as much as the same amount of any other person. The result was that these associations increased in number with great rapidity, and at the time of their greatest popu- larity, when there were nearly one hundred of them, about one-fifth of the whole population had invested in them. Their loans (or "sales," as they were technically called) rose steadily in amount, soon surpassing those of the four savings banks of the city, so that during the four years just previous to 1890 the banks loaned $5.291,- 293.61. while the associations sold in the same time $6,989,834.50, an excess in favor of the latter of $1.698,5-10.83, All of that money was used for the erection of small and comfortable homes, the I-orrwer being generally the occupant, thus going far toward making Rochester a city of house- holders. In this way the nsofulness of the system was clearly shown, and beyond that it had the inestimable advantage of inducing habits of in- dustry, of thrift and, above all, of temperance I oan associations have of late years lost the favor with which they were once regarded and are no longer the fashion, but there is no reason why they should not again be taken up and repeat the gond that they onee accomplished.
1.
THE TELEPHONE STRIKE.
The Bell Telephone company of Buffalo, which a short time before that had Inid its wires through
the intermediate counties between the two cities, opened an office in Rochester in January, 1879. It was understood at the outset that this was merely a branch of the American Bell Telephone company, for it was evidently guided by ordete from that concern, which admittedly beld a large portion of its stock and had representatives on ity board of directors. Subscribers were readily found and the service was operated by means of wires carried for the most part over the lands of pri- vate individuals, but in 1883 the company felt strong enough to begin the appropriation of the streets of the city. Having obtained from the cominon conneil the right to string wires and erect poles -- provided the latter should be "straight and sightly," it immediately proceeded to disfigure Main and State streets by the elevation of im- mense pine sticks, in some cases ninety feet high, "like the mast of some tall admiral," none cf which had been prepared to resist the action of the moist earth, most of which were far from straight and all of which were placed without the slightest regard to the convenience of property owners, At the same time, it being assmned that the use of the invention had then become a no- cessity, the rentals were suddenly raised and all expostulations were met by the statement that the total revenue received under the original terms was not sufficient but that if the patronage were in. creased the old rate should be restored. Deceived by this promise, which the company probably never intended to keep, new subscribers carne in, till the number reached nearly one thousand, which was considered quite large for those days.
The service was extremely poor and the in- struments were inferior in construction, the re- ceivers giving forth a loud metallic click that was calculated to produce deafness in all persons ns- ing them. But not for that did the company care. or pretend to care; on the contrary, it increased its extortions and announced that the flat rate of rentals was to he abandoned and the exeerable to!l system substituted for it, in which the lowest pos- sible price was to be fifty dollars for five hundre l messages within the half-mile radius and six cents for each message above that nuniber, the fifty dol- lars being increased to seventy for all subscribers outside the half-mile limit. making fourteen cents for each message. This was the final culmination of inordinate greed : the patience of the people at
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last gave way and on November 20th, 1886, a tele- phone strike was inaugurated, practically all of the subscribers hung up their receivers and at the same time the common council revoked the license to use the streets and the public buildings for the wires. Much inconvenience was caused, but the community soon accustomed itself to the loss of the service and went without it for a year and a hulf; on the 12th of May, 1888, the company sielled and a settlement was affected by which the people gained most of the points in dispute. . \ few years later a home telephone company was organized, which will he mentioned in another chapter.
OTHER STUIKES.
While upon the subject of strikes it might be a- well to note the long strike at the stove foundries, which kept several hundred men out of work from the end of April, 1885, till the 9th of Au- gust, when it was settled by arbitration ; while the difficulty was at its height the strikers were so vio- lent in their murderous assaults upon those who chose to labor that police protection had to be af- forded to the workmen at the Co-Operative foun- dry and the Sill stove works, Similar disturb- ances marked the following years. In 1886 the masons, demanding the limitation of nine hours for a day's work, caused a general suspension of building operations for a month : early in the sum- mer of 1887 the troubles extended to the street laborers, the worst affair being on Gorham street. on the 24th of June, when the strikers attacked the peaceful diggers in an exeavation and then stoned the police who came to the rescue. so that three officers were badly injured before they fired into the wob and quetled the riot. A litle later was a prolonged strike of the shoe-cutters, in which there was no publie disturbance, but there was much suffering, as some twenty thousand peo- ple were dependent for their support upon thos. who went out. In 1889 there was a strike of the street car drivers, which began on the 3d of April and was not declared off till the Ist of June, thongh many of the old hands went back to work before that. During the first week there was almost a complete tie-up of all the lines, then some other drivers were brought in and the cars began to run on the principal thoroughfares, though they had
to be preceded, at least on Main street, by a line of police extending from curb to enrb. There was some rioting, the worst being on North Clinton street, ou April 13th, when the police were fero- ciously assaulted by the mob, several of the former being badly hurt. This little difficulty was prob- ably instrumental in hastening the transfer of the old horse ear concern, in November of that year. to the present company, which changed the sys- tem to the electric as rapidly as possible, since which time there has been no disturbance.
CIVIL SERVICE REFORM.
An important move was made on October 26th, 1582, when the Civil Service Reform association) was formed, in affiliation with the more general body in New York city, becoming afterward a member of the Natianol Civil Service Reform league, of which Dr. E. M. Moore, as president of this society, became one of the vice president< and member of the executive committee. Soon after this, through the influence of the Inst-named organization, Congress was induced to pass the "Pendleton bill," by which appointments in the vivil service of the United States were thrown open to those who successfully passed a competitive ex- amination, instead of being confined, as before that, to those who had political influence and who therefore conld obtain places under the excerable spoils system, and not otherwise. At almost the saine time the legislature of New York passed a similar bill, having regard not ouly to state em- ployees but to those engaged in the service of the different cities. Two boards of local examiners were appointed here, one to decide upon appli- cants for positions in the police and fire depart- ments, the other for all other subordinate officers, clerks aud assistants. From the very start both boards encountered a quiet but determined oppo- sitiou from the municipal authorities, the ma- jority of whom hated the law and could not com- prehend how there could be any such thing as ap- pointment by reason of merit or fitness, The mayor, Cornelius R. Parsons, who was friendly to the law, endeavored to have the various depart- meuts appoint suitable examiners, and in the board of police commissioners, of which he was er oficio, a member. he introduced a resolution on the 18th of January. 1884, for the creation of a "conunis-
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GENESEE VALLEY PARK, SOUTH END.
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sion, to conduct examinations and ascertain the like the one on Plymouth avenue. As these bad fitness of candidates, in accordance with the in- all been presented to the municipality they went the way of most gifts and but little thought or labor was expended upon them by the authorities, so that they were far from being a credit and were of no real use to anyone, except in the case of Jones square, where the boys played baseball during the Civil war and for some years after- ward. Long after every other city in the country had real parks Rochester was destitute of those desirable adjuncts of municipal life, and every plea that was made for them was met by the argu- ment of economy on the part of the common coun- cil. The late Dr. E. M. Moore, who was em- phatically the father of the present park system, constantly spoke and wrote on its urgent neces- sity from a sanitary point of view, but the people were as apathetic as the aldermen were hostile, and his efforts would have been unavailing had not the late George W. Elliott, who was then a member of the board, supplemented those appeals by his unceasing arguments in the public press and in the council. The well-known nursery firm of Ellwanger & Barry had to make more than once the offer of a free gift of twenty aeres of land that now form a part of the beautiful Highland park before the council could be induced to accept it, which was finally done in January, 1888. tent and purpose of the statute." But the two other commissioners would have none of it and voted that "it is not expedient that a commission be appointed to conduct examinations." The mayor having thereupon gone ahead and formed the two examining boards of private citizens, the police board declined for a whole year to ask the examiners for a list of those who had shown the required standard of excellence, but at the end of that period they came to their senses and made the proper application, so there was no further trouble with them. The common council was the next body to undertake the destruction of the law. Wishing to reward in the old-fashioned way a cer- tain politician for some purely partisan services, they created the office of "inspector of lamps" and appointed him to it, with a good salary. The mayor promptly vetoed the ordinance and the al- dermen with equal celerity passed it over his veto. Then they put the name of the illegal appointee into the budget, which the mayor declined to ap- prove, und the spoilsmen readopted that als). whereupon the board of examiners obtained an in- junction against the city treasurer, the council and the mayor, forbidding the payment of that budget. When the whole swarm of city officials had to go without their salaries for some time thi storm of protest became so violent that the name of the alleged inspector was dropped from the rolls and the other salaries were paid. The mat- ter afterward was taken through all the courts of the state until the Court of Appeals decided, in a unanimous opinion, that the appointment was in violation of the civil service law. The executive board was somewhat more politic and diplomatic, but it was equally stubborn in its evasion of the statute for a long time, until finally it too wa? compelled to yield. Since that period there has beren no great difficulty and the law is now car- ried out in the letter if it is not respected in the spirit.
THE PARKS.
Even while Rochester was still a village there were several open spaces, grass-grown, in some cases fcneed in, sometimes not, and universally called "squares." even where they were circular.
Later in that year the legislature passed a bill creating the park commission, with extensive pow- ers to accept gifte, to purchase land and to main- tain and control all publie parks, including the small "squares" alluded to. The commission promptly organized, selecting Dr. Moore as presi- dent, which he continued to he until his death. The result of all this was the formation of three separate parks, of which the largest is the Genessee Valley-commonly known as South park-just south of the city line and envering both sides of the river, though mainly on the east, for the west is devoted to baseball grounds, golf links, canoc club and other houses. The vast expanse of this territory, extending to the horizon, is pleasing te the eye, the monotony of the plain being relieved by flocka of grazing sheep and a few of the larger variety of deer, while under the ancient forest trees bands play periodically during the summer afternoons. Fine as it is, the Genesee Valley must yield in point of natural beauty to Seneca park, usually called North park, where the undu-
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lations of the ground permit of the most agree. able variety of walks and drives with a charm- ing little lake toward the lower end; on the upper level are a number of cages with the smaller animals, while down below are many of the larger beasts, making altogether quite a menagerie: the gorge of the river prevents com- munication between the two banks, so that Maple- wood park, on the west side (originally a part of Seneca), is comparatively little visited, but it has Inany features of interest. Perhaps Highland park, the smallest of the four, is the most attractive of all, with its botanical display, particularly of the lilacs in their season, and the enormous number of different kinds of trees, showing a greater variety than can be found in any other park in the United States: besides which the view from the highest point, comprehending a large section of the sur- rounding country. with the neighboring villages and towns, affords enjoyment to the beholder. The older citizens may possibly consider that, after all, the advantage of our park system, which has given Rochester so envioble a position among the cities of the Union and has done so much to benefit thr health of the people by giving them these delight- ful breathing-places, lies very largely in the trans- formation that has been made in the small public places, which, formerly unsightly from neglect, have become beanty spots by the tasteful arrange- ment of well tended shrubbery.
One of these old inclosures, which always wem by the name of Brown square, is, perhaps, produc- tive of more direct and obvious benefit than any one of the more capacious parks, In 1902 the president of the hoard urged the devotion of that «pot to purposes of recreation for the young, and, as his recommendation was warmly indorsed by many leading citizens it was, after some opposition, adopted by the board. This was carried ont in the following year, the Children's Playground league being formed for the purpose of aiding the move- ment and supervising the conduet of the young- sters. A year later the enterprise was in full swing. the children were taught how to play sy- tematically and, what was still more important, how to respect the rights and the feelings of each other. The park board had in the meantime erect- el a shelter for them, with every convenience for the boys and girls, and every afternoon during the summer and fall great troops of juveniles may be
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