USA > New York > Onondaga County > Past and present of Syracuse and Onondaga County, New York : from prehistoric times to the beginning of 1908 > Part 61
USA > New York > Onondaga County > Syracuse > Past and present of Syracuse and Onondaga County, New York : from prehistoric times to the beginning of 1908 > Part 61
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PAST AND PRESENT OF ONONDAGA COUNTY
The increase in the size of the city and its industrial activity made neees- sary, during the Fobes administration, preparations for a second conduit from Skaneateles lake to supply the city's need for more water. This required both legislative action and constitutional amendment, the amendment being voted upon at the elections of 1907.
In 1906 the eity had its first park commission, appointed by Mayor Fobes July 16, in active operation. giving valuable assistance in making the city beautiful, planning for the future and wresting from the march toward filling up every available spot, suitable playgrounds for the boys and girls of the city. Mayor Fobes appointed as members of this commission five men noted for their broad sympathy with public movements. They were John W. Pennoek, named chairman; Walter R. Stone, William K. Pierce, Emil Kotz and George W. Driscoll. The saving of a great plot adjoining Schiller Park in the northeastern seetion of the city, which was about to be sold at anetion, and its dedication for use as playgrounds, was one of the first practical works of this commission. Then came a great plan for a future boulevard about the eity, connecting the park systems, the value of which will be more appar- ent as the eity expands. This plan is filed as something to work towards in the final laying out of Greater Syracuse. George E. Kessler was the lands- cape artist brought here to aid the commission in its great work.
CHAPTER LIX.
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MAKING AN INDUSTRIAL CENTER.
That the salt which made Syracuse should play such an important part in its later industrial growth and activity, is a eurious consideration for the investigator of causes and effects in the trend of industry. The reservation by the state of great tracts of land for salt manufacture, now located north of West Genesee street and west of the Oswego canal, preserved territory near the later railroad center, which, upon the decline of the salt industry, was found admirably adapted for factory nses. Any man eonversant with the business story of Syracuse in the past ten years, asked the greatest thing which had happened for the progress of the city, would quickly reply that it was its industrial activity. Upon the acquisition of these old salt lands at state land sales, the prices and convenience of the properties quickly appealed to manufacturers, with the resultant transformation from broken and ruined salt covers to a busy factory section. It is as astonishing a change to former Syracusans visiting their old home as the high and pretentious buildings nearer the center of the city.
Just as the seven to eleven-story piles of masonry in the down-town see- tion are hives for professional workers, and speak eloquently to the observer
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of the business activity of the city, the block after block of extensive factories, shops and yards tell of the work of the industrial hives. The increase in factories was more responsible than anything else in bringing thousands of workmen, cansing the great demand for homes which began in 1905. sending up rental values and resulting in the greatest activity in home building known in the city's history in 1906 and 1907.
At the November election in 1893 the vote in the state was taken upon the proposed amendment to the Constitution permitting the legislature "to provide by law for the sale and disposition of the salt springs and the lands adjacent thereto belonging to this State, making just compensation to all persons having rights therein." There was no opposition to this amendment, as there had been an annual deficiency in the production of salt on the Onondaga reserva- tion since 1882, and the year prior to the vote upon the amendment the cost of operation was twenty-four thousand dollars in excess of the revenue. The result of the permission given the legislature to sell salt lands was the appointment by the Senate of a commission to investigate the matter, but not until after the State Land Commissioners had made several sales in 1894. Upon January 5. 1895. the coarse and fine salt manufacturers met and eonsid- ered the sale of salt lands, outlining a course of procedure.
At the Yates Hotel on February 18, 1895, the Senate committee met salt manufacturers and took evidence, among the men interested in salt pro- duetion present being former Senator Frank Hiscock, former Justice George N. Kennedy, Superintendent P. J. Brnmelkamp, former Lieutenant-Governor Thomas G. Alvord. Colonel James B. Gere, Duncan W. Peck. Lewis Hawley. John J. Hallock, Philip Carkins, Edward Lynch, Michael R. Hayes, Lucius Lnddington, N. E. Loomis, Michael Prell and John Molloney. These men were really in attendance upon the obsequies of the old method of salt production from the wells about Onondaga lake, for since then the brine used has been drawn from the Tully wells. The principal witness before the Senate com- mittee was Mr. Alvord, who said that there were only about five hundred and fifty aeres of land then devoted to coarse salt, and of that there were two hundred aeres in Salina. The remainder of the salt lands were taken for fine salt or were lying in neglected disuse.
Myles Tyler Frisbie. in writing of "The Passing of a Great Industry," in Collier's in April, 1896, said that but forty thousand salt covers then re- mained, covering about two-fifths of the salt reservation. Covers were of uniform size and numbered sixty-six to the aere. In 1895 the output in round numbers was three million bushels, and three hundred men were employed.
The first year of the new century the Syracuse Wall Paper Company plant was in operation in the salt marsh distriet, and the second year the Monarch Typewriter Company was equipped for business. the C. C. Bradley & Son plant in North Franklin street and the Clinton Knitting mill in course of construction, the Merrell-Soule Company planning for its new factory. E. I. Rice building a fifty-thousand-dollar coal yard, and the Syraense Lighting Company constantly adding to its extensive plant just east in Fulton street.
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In 1903 the Monarch typewriter factory was in operation, with a capacity of one hundred and fifty typewriters a day, the factory being three hundred by fifty-five feet, five stories high, and one of the most prominent buildings in view upon the entrance over the West Shore from the west. Silas W. Cran- dall was the president of the company. The Syracuse Wall Paper Company was dissolved March 7, 1904. and the Syracuse Paper & Pulp Company, in- corporated March 9, 1903, increased its working force from one hundred and fifty to three hundred and sixteen men before the close of that year. Both companies had many of the same men interested, the incorporators of the latter being Nicholas P. Moses, Leonard A. Saxer, Richard Rose, George W. Adams and Nicholas Latterner. In the summer of 1903 the Bradley company went into its new plant, which had a main building three hundred and ten feet long, one wing being one hundred and fifty feet long.
In April, 1904. the Merrell-Soule Company, which had been established in 1869 and incorporated in 1883, went into its new plant from the old loca- tion just east of the creek in West Fayette street. The new plant consisted of a manufacturing building two hundred by eighty feet, and a warehouse of the same dimensions. The working force of two hundred bands was then doubled. The company had a record of fifteen million packages of food pro- duets shipped in a year. The Merrell-Soule Company, on December 3. 1907. increased its capital stock from one million, eight thousand. five hundred dol- lars to one million, five hundred thousand dollars. The New Process Rawhide Company had erected its new plant on Plum street, one hundred and sixty- four by ninety-two feet, at a cost of thirty thousand dollars. The Hotaling- Warner Company also put up a plant in North Clinton street, the permit for which placed a value of twelve thousand dollars upon it. In 1904 the Regal Textile Company absorbed the Clinton Knitting Company.
In 1905 the O. M. Edwards Company, manufacturing patent ear windows and vestibules, had a plant in the new industrial section which employed eighty hands. The Merrell-Soule Company had become the third largest shipper in Syracuse (the Solvay Process Works being first and the Syracuse Chilled Plow Company second), and was turning out one million packages of mince meat, enough for two million pies, a month. The Warner Broom Company had reached a force of sixty employes in 1905, and used a concrete factory, forty by eighty feet, three stories in height. The New Process Raw- hide Company, with T. W. Meacham as president, had made an increase of thirty-five per cent over the year before, doing one hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars of business upon a capital of forty thousand dollars, with eighty-one employes. In 1905 the Hotaling-Warner Company had increased its capital stock from ten thousand dollars to one hundred thousand dollars and had fifty employes. The Syracuse Paper & Pulp Company had become the largest distributor of wall paper in the world, sending out twenty million rolls a year. Upon a capital of six hundred thousand dollars the mill had been run night and day since starting in 1899. the produet was invariably sold a year ahead. and there were five hundred hands employed. The Regal Textile Company reported two hundred and fifty hands at work in 1905.
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The Elgin A. Simons Company was another factory builder, putting up its building at Spencer and North Clinton streets in 1907. In this marsh lot section. at West Division and North Clinton streets, was also erected the furniture factory of the Butler Manufacturing Company. In Spencer street, occupying an old factory, was the P., B. & Il. Molding Company. and the municipal baths were also located in this section. The Justfood Company located in north Clinton street, and further north, upon Hiawatha avenue. were the General Chemical Company. the American Malting Company and the Syracuse Reduction and Manufacturing Company. the latter having the contract for the disposal of the city's garbage for five years. The former plant of the Butler Manufacturing Company was taken by the I. E. Wana- maker Company, also in the furniture business, and employing more than one hundred men.
The right to be called the "Typewriter City" was gained in 1903 by the . completion of three distinct typewriter factories. In this year the Smith Premier Typewriter Company constructed the largest and finest typewriter building in the world. It was early in 1903 when the business world was as- tonished to hear that the four Smith brothers, Lyman C., Wilbert L., Monroe C. and Hurlbert W. Smith, had severed their connection with the Smith Pre- mier Company. Upon January 27, 1903, the Smith Brothers Company was organized with a capital of five million dollars, and in that year spent half a million. Upon the old Myers homestead lot at East Washington and Almond streets, purchased February 6. 1903, an pighi-story factory was erected in eight months, by day labor and with Syracuse workmen, the building permit placing the cost at seventy-five thousand dollars. The Monarch Typewriter Company, which put up its building that same year, was in the so-called trust. the Union Typewriter Company, making a visible typewriting machine.
Former Lieutenant-Governor Thnothy L Woodruff was elected president of the Smith Premier Company February 10, 1903, and for three years spent much of his time in Syracuse in the interests of the company. In two years the company reported one thousand employes in the local factory and three thousand employes in one hundred and fifty branch offices. The L. C. Smith & Brothers Typewriter Company placed a writing-in-sight machine upon the market in 1905, and had a factory production of one thousand machines a month and six hundred employes.
To two men belong the chief credit of giving Syracuse the typewriter in- dustry. They are Alexander T. Brown, the inventor of the Smith Premier typewriter, and Lyman C. Smith, whose manufacturing spirit and business genius saw its possibilities. In 1886 Mr. Smith, who had previously made the L. C. Smith gun, began the manufacture of the typewriter which Mr. Brown had invented. It was a decided improvement which Mr. Brown's mechanical genius had evolved over any previous machine, and a ready market was found for it by diligent and appreciative introduction. At first the typewriter was made in the Smith gun shop, but it soon required a building of its own.
In 1906 the E. C. Stearns Company, the old hardware specialty firm which reached its highest fame in the making of bicycles, was into the type-
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PAST AND PRESENT OF ONONDAGA COUNTY
writer game with the Stearns typewriter, the invention of Angust Schmeelock, who had much to do with the production of the Underwood typewriter.
The slump of the bievele business was a hard blow to Syracuse, for, in the full flush of the craze, five of the largest factories in the country were located here. and within a single year they were all practically wiped out. There were the Stearns, Frontenac, Olive, Empire, Dodge and other well- known wheels manufactured here. However, with the resiliency of a good pneumatic tire, business rebounded. and. in a short time, four of the factories were occupied by new industries. The fifth building. that of the old Syra- cuse Bicycle Company. in West Fayette near West Genesee street, was turned into a factory for finishing automobiles by the H. II. Franklin Company on August 15. 1907, thus completing industrially the eyele from bieyele to anto- mobile.
The manufacturing of automobiles began to displace the bicvele industry, which for ten years was one of the chief manufactures of the city. in 1901. Practically the last of the great bieyele industry was when the E. C. Stearns business was sold to the Pope Manufacturing Company November 24. 1903. The Stearns plant had been absorbed by the American Bievele Company August 17. 1899. Much of the earlier automobile manufacturing efforts were but experiments. and some of them expensive. In 1903 the Century Motor. Vehicle Company and the J. S. Leggett Manufacturing Company went out of business, while the H. H. Franklin Manufacturing Company, destined to send the name of Syracuse over the roads of the world, began to branch out. The Franklin Company took possession of its new building. soon to grow too small for its work, in 1903. and increased its employes from seventy to three hundred. In another year the increase was to five hundred and seventy-three employes, and in 1905 the business had doubled and one thousand three hun- dred and fifteen men were employed. In the fall of 1907 there was a slump in the automobile business, but in the spring of 1908 a hopeful revival began. In January. 1908, the E. C. Stearns Company purchased from the receivers of the Pope Manufacturing Company their interest in the old Stearns plant for twenty-five thousand dollars.
The pride of the Syracuse industrial field has been the Solvay Process Company. for many years doing more shipping than the remainder of business Syracuse combined, with a year where only one hundred thousand dollars' worth of structural additions to its plant being considered an "off year." and the greatest employer of labor in the city. The growth of the Solvay works has been like that of a Western boom town. The original capitalization of three hundred thousand dollars at the time of the organization in 1881 has been frequently increased. In 1895 it had reached four million dollars. and on July 29. 1903. was increased from five million to six million dollars, being again increased in January, 1908. to eight million dollars. There has also been a constant reaching out for new products of manufacture, and the establish- ment of kindred manufactures in the neighborhood. Among the manufactures are soda ash, caustic soda, refined carbonate of soda, soda crystals (concen- trated sal soda), precipitated sulphate of lime, chloride of calcium, coke and
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ammonia salts. In 1903 the Solvay works had a traffic of thirty-one thousand and twenty-three cars in and out for the year, with two thousand, six hundred employes, and in 1904 it was thirty-five thousand, one hundred and seventy- two cars. The business steadily increased, the investment in 1908 being placed at twenty million dollars. In 1888 rock salt was discovered at Tully and brine piped to Solvay, the Tully Pipe Line Company being formed in 1889, with a capital of three hundred thousand dollars. Limestone was brought from the Split Rock quarries by a gravity eable operated by the Split Rock Cable Road Company, with a capital stock of one hundred thousand dollars. The Solvay Process Company is the largest individnal producer of soda in the world. The directors who took the move to increase the stock to six million dollars, the certificate being filed January 10, 1906, were Frederick R. Hazard, William B. Cogswell, R. G. Hazard, Colonel Osgood V. Traey, Edward N. Trump, George E. Dana and Hendrick S. Holden.
Upon July 9. 1896. the Church & Dwight Company established its great salaratus factory, with a capitalization of two million dollars, and in 1905 the By-Products Coke corporation was incorporated for five million dollars.
Another thing in which Syracuse has led the world is the manufacture of time recorders, the instrument to record the working time of people, which has become almost indispensable in factories where any considerable numbers are employed. Within a short distance in the South. West and Jefferson streets sections were loeated four factories which in 1906 had reached an annual out- put of nine thousand time registers and adding machines, and gave ample em- ployment to three hundred men. One-half of the time registers made in the world were then being produced in Syracuse. while of all the typewriters of the world this city turned out one-third.
The making of time registers began shortly after the opening up of the typewriter industry in the early '90s, the Dey Time Register Company being the pioneer in the field. Into the business also came the Hawley Time Regis- ter, made at the Crouse-Hinds factory, the W. II. Bundy Recording Company, which in addition to a recorder made the Columbia Adding machine, and the Syracuse Time Recorder Company.
For nearly fourteen years and down to December 1, 1905, John and Alexander Dey condueted the Dey Time Register Company, either as a part- nership or corporation. The incorporation of 1903 was for five hundred thou- sand dollars. Upon December 1, 1905, it passed into the control of a group of New York and Syracuse business men, with C. Il. Warfield as president and William Rockwell general manager, and an authorized bond issue of three hundred thousand dollars. The West street four-story factory was built at a cost of thirty thousand dollars in 1903, the company occupying the building in January. 1904. It is one hundred and seventy-one by fifty feet, with forty- five thousand square feet of floor space. In 1906 there were one hundred and seventy-five men employed. The Dey Time Register Company consolidated with the International Time Recorder Company in January, 1908.
In 1904 the Hawley Time Register Company was absorbed by the Crouse- Hinds Company, with II. B. Crouse as president, J. L. Hinds as vice-president,
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and W. C. Blanding general manager. The main office of this company was at 308 East Jefferson street.
The W. H. Bundy Company took the old plant which had successively been the Dodge and Olive wheel companies' places of business, at 501-515 South West street, on August 20, 1903. In 1907 this factory was again built upon. The Bundy Company was organized in 1903, the officers in 1906 being G. Osgood Andrews, W. H. Bundy and Robert S. Morrison. In 1905 the time recorder invented by W. Il. Bundy was put upon the market, and the first calculating machine, the invention of W. L. Bundy, was shipped July 9, 1906.
In 1905 the Syraense Time Recorder Company practically began its work, and the men who brought it into notice were Jacob Amos, president, and Calvin MeCarthy, manager, with A. K. Hiscock, H. P. Denison, Albert Speneer, H. S. Fulmer and Adolph Schwartz in the directorate.
The Will & Baumer Company, manufacturers of the greater part of the candles used in this country and doing considerably more than a million dollars business annually upon a capital of seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, has not allowed a year to go by recently without the addition of sub- stantial structures to its manufactory upon the Liverpool road. Upon July 7, 1896, the company was incorporated. Down to the close of 1902 there had been two hundred thousand dollars' expenditure in five buildings upon the ten-acre site, and from 1902 to 1905 the increase was from one hundred em- ployes to two hundred and seventy. In 1906 was erected a three-story con- erete office costing forty thousand dollars, the first in a series of cement buildings to cost one hundred thousand dollars.
The Syracuse Chilled Plow Company, giving employment to five hundred hands, added a five-story building, eighty by one hundred and seventy feet, to its plant in Wyoming street in 1902. In 1905 the four-story storehouse, fifty by eighty feet, was built at Wyoming and West Fayette streets. The Kemp & Burpee Company, also in the business of manufacturing agricultural imple- ments, had risen to a manufactory employing seventy-five men in 1902, and the factory in West Fayette street has been frequently extended with the growing business since. March 17, 1908, the capital stock of the Kemp & Burpee Company was increased from two hundred thousand to five hundred thousand dollars, and one hundred and seventy-five men were employed, with W. C. Brayton president. Work was begun on the plant of the Continental Can Company in East Washington street, between University and Walnut avenues, in 1904, the company beginning the work of making cans in April, 1905, a machine shop employing forty men being removed from Rochester that year. In 1905 a seventy by two hundred foot addition was built, and the company became one of the important manufactories of the eity. In iron work the Sanderson Brothers works employed eight hundred men. and the Frazer & Jones Company four hundred and twenty-five men. The Syracuse Safe Company. incorporated on December 31, 1903, took possession of a part of the old Phoenix foundry building in East Water street on February 15. 1904, the twenty men employed at the start being inereased to seventy-five before the following November.
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Ground was broken near the main entrance of the State Fair grounds in May, 1905, for the Halcomb Steel Company, one of the greatest accessions to the city's industrial life of the year. In the first year the completed plant comprised seventeen buildings, with four hundred workmen employed. and capital stock of nine hundred thousand dollars. Charles H. Haleomb was the president of the company. In January, 1908, Horace S. Wilkinson became interested in the general management of the company, Mr. Halcomb still re- taining his active interest. February 3, 1908, the capital stock of the Hal- comb Steel Company was increased from one million, five hundred thousand dollars to one million, seven hundred thousand dollars.
The Solvay Foundry Company, with Frederick Frazer, Charles R. Jones, Ilendrick S. Holden and W. W. Wiard as directors, to manufacture malleable iron eastings in a Solvay plant, was incorporated in 1906. While these same business men were interested in the Frazer & Jones Company. it was a note upon the increase of business that the foundries did not interfere, but plans were made at the same time to expand the Fayette street plant.
In 1902 Dey Brothers & Company was incorporated, extending the already huge department store business. On April 14, 1894, the new building at South Salina and Jefferson streets was opened for business, the crown of a commercial life started at Elmira on March 28, 1877, and begun in Syracuse in January, 1883, by the purchasing of the E. 1. Rice stores in South Salina street, between Washington and Fayette streets. Just prior to the opening of the new building at South Salina and Jefferson streets, the stores were thrown open for a brilliant charity ball. This was upon April 10, 1894.
Bacon, Chappell & Company leased the old Dey Brothers stores on March 20, 1895, and became a corporation in 1907, under the name of the Bacon- Chappell Company, with a capitalization of two hundred thousand dollars. In 1907 another store was added and the enlarged building completely re- modeled.
In their expansion of the dry goods business, which was first established in 1832 by M. S. Price, and taken by E. W. Edwards & Son in 1889, the latter firm not only occupied all the old Milton S. Price stores on the west side of South Salina street, between Washington and Fayette streets. but in 1906 purchased the historic hotel block, which in 1907 was completely rebuilt into a mammoth department store. On April 2, 1908, Edwards & Son was ineor- porated for one million dollars, to conduct dry goods stores in Syracuse. Rochester and Troy; and the Murray Realty Company was incorporated for six hundred and fifty thousand dollars to manage the real estate. Edwards & Son came to Syracuse from Johnstown and Gloversville. In 1908 they had seven hundred employes in Syracuse.
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