St. Vincent's Industrial School and Orphan Asylum

[dgriffin]

Aug 15, 2009 23:24:56 GMT -5 Clipper said:

The only things streetside on the West side of the street are McDonalds and the little store and deli on the NW corner of Eagle that sells the fantastic flatbread sandwiches.

Did you mean the Northwest corner of South? That used to be Cavallo's Restaurant .... Jimmy Cavallo, I think. Brother, I believe, to the Cavallo who ran the New Hartford Cavallo's.

My parents ended their years at the Steinhorst (sp?) Apartments behind the Chicago Market. The "back" side of the apartment building was on St. Vincent Street. It was an old factory building, converted to senior citizen apartments.

I remember being taken to the old City General for a tetanus shot after a dog bite when I was a kid. It was memorable for the first time I'd ever met a doctor who was not a native English speaker. And too, I must have begun the short road to sexual awareness, because I demurred when the nurse asked me to drop my pants for the shot. Hahahahaha! (Oops, sorry, off topic!)

Yes, I know the Navy Reserve is gone. As a young teenager totally taken with radio (still am), I'd ride my bike by there just to look at their wire antenna array, wishing I could do something like that on a smaller scale in our backyard on Cornhill!

And although I wasn't old enough to walk in and belly up to the bar that long ago, I do remember McGuirl's being on the Southeast corner of Eagle and Mohawk, before they moved the building west on Eagle to a site across (roughly) from the old Graffenberg Dairy, getting it ready for my early college years when we'd hang out, drink beer and presume the world would be our oyster.

[Clipper]

No, there is still a bar on the NW corner of South and Mohawk. I was referring to a small Lebanese or Syrian deli with wonderful flat bread sandwiches. I was last there while driving dumptruck one summer for Freddy Burrows after I retired from the base. We were paving the parking lot of the new Hannaford Market that was under construction at the time.

I remember McGuirls well. I drank many a beer sitting in the basement at a folding banquet table on a folding chair with 50 or 60 college aged beer drinkers. I knew Mike McGuirl Sr. well. The last time I spoke with him, he was working for the funeral home that was on the corner of Blandina and John St. I think it was Quinn's. He was a great guy, a die hard Democrat, and a big BSer, but a great guy and fun to listen to when he spun yarns about the old days in the city.

[dgriffin]

The basement, huh? So THAT was Mike's eventual solution to the crowding problem. Kids would spill out over the sidewalk and into the road and the cops would arrive. Mike built a sort of side patio in '63, but it didn't help much. Mike was quite a guy. The first time I entered the place at age 18, he came out from the kitchen, spied me and came up and told me everything about my family. (We all look alike and he recognized me. He knew my uncles. He knew Everybody!)

[dgriffin]

OK, here it is. The St. Vincent's Industrial School and Orphan Asylum building we've been looking at. Here it is on the 1883 map.




It fronts on Rutger and was between Third Ave. (Conkling) and Taylor.
(I've added street names that don't appear in this view.)

[dgriffin]

Here's what threw me off. This property to the south between Arthur and James, south of St. Agnes Cemetery. (Again, I've added modern street names.)




You can see scrolled across the map "St. Vincent Orphan Asylum Plan."
It was never to be. Probably for the reasons I'll cite in the future from John O'Grady's book, mentioned above. Instead, upper St. Vincent got shifted and became St. Agnes Ave, St. Jane Ave. was built up between St. Agnes and Clementian (the other Third St.) and Blessed Sacrament Church (the little one) was built.





By the way, the stream was called Ballou Creek. So now you know how the street off of Mohawk was named, opposite of Sherman Drive.

[Clipper]

Dave, I went in and deleted our posts about drinking at McGuirl's bar as they were not in line with the historic nature of this thread. I hope you don't mind. Let me know if you think any more of the banter between you and I should be deleted.

[dgriffin]

Before I get off this damned PC and go do something more useful, here's a clip from an article in the Friday Evening December 20, 1912 Utica Herald Dispatch. Oneida County Supervisors were invited to see the new St. John's Orphanage on Genesee St. "in New Hartford," run by the Sisters of Charity for 148 girls. The Supervisors then continued the evening at St. Vincents Industrial School for 168 boys.

The clip is interesting, especially the feelings of Brother Gregory for the Superintendent of the Masonic Home. Back in those days the Masons might as well have been devils with pointed tails to Catholic clergy.

You may have to click twice to read. I'll post a jpg of the entire article, but am not sure it will be readable on most browsers. I can read it fine after two clicks with Firefox.

[dgriffin]

Aug 16, 2009 15:11:01 GMT -5 Clipper said:

Dave, I went in and deleted our posts about drinking at McGuirl's bar as they were not in line with the historic nature of this thread. I hope you don't mind. Let me know if you think any more of the banter between you and I should be deleted.

RRR

LATER: RRR means Received and acknowledged, as I hand Clipper the scalpel.

[dgriffin]

Voters take note of the last two paragraphs in the news article.
Here's reason enough to expect each of your county legislators
to have a fine singing voice. Hear that, Larry?

Fiona: take note of the song in the very last paragraph.

[dgriffin]

Also, I found the opening paragraph interesting, because of a story I was working on a couple of years ago. It mentions that a few of the girls living at St. Johns are over age. Evidently, a girl aged out at 16. Were they then normally expected to get a room and support themselves elsewhere? That would make sense. You could work at 16 and there many boarding houses in that era.

[fiona]

the house and school building I spoke of were behind DanDee Donuts on Mohawk Street. You had to go in aways to get to it from eagle Street. A large family named Knopka lived there and the school building was roughly next to it. I know it was a school because we used to go in there. There were desks upstairs. It was wide open and essentially abandonded. We moved from there in 1964, so I don't know when they took it down.

[dgriffin]

Fiona, I don't know where the DanDee Donut in that area was/is. Would the house and school have been anywhere on this map? South St. is at the top, Eagle at the bottom, with Mohawk running up and down, north and south.

The more you can narrow in, the more accurate search I'll be able to do of the area on the 1883 map.

[dgriffin]

Confirming Jon's statement that certain lines were sewer lines.

[dgriffin]

From "Catholic Charities In America," John O'Grady, 1971

New Era of Protection of Catholic Children

After the Civil War there was a new awakening on the
part of Catholic leaders in regard to the care of wayward
children. The war had increased the number of children
who needed care away from their own homes. It had also
given Catholics a new sense of importance in the life of the
nation. As they had fought for the preservation of the Union
and had discharged all the duties of citizenship, why should
they be excluded from the rights of citizenship! The war,
for the time being at least, dissipated many of the old anti-
Catholic prejudices. It aided materially in bridging over the
gulf between natives and immigrants.

Real Catholic Leadership Follows Civil War

After the war, moreover, there appeared a new type of
Catholic leadership that was vitally interested in the welfare
of the Church. This new leadership had been schooled in the
activities of the various racial organizations and especially
in the Conferences of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. The
latter society was the first lay organization in which Catholics
of all races made common cause. Before the war the lead-
ers that had been developed by the St. Vincent de Paul So-
ciety had found an outlet for their seal in parish activities.

Dr. Ives Organizes Society for Protection of Destitute
Catholic Children

Under the leadership and inspiration of Dr. Ives a society
for the protection of destitute Catholic children was organized
in New York in May, 1863. This new venture had the full-
est support and approval of the Archbishop of New York. A
lay board of twenty-six men and an advisory chaplain were
selected to guide its destinies. Once organized, the board of
the society made a special plea to Irishmen in New York City:
"In the ilrst place we address ourselves to Irishman who con-
stitute the great body of Catholics in this city while, as we all
know, the children of Irishman make up by far the largest
proportion of sufferers for whom we are called upon to pro-
vide. Vast numbers of these defenseless young creatures are
daily wandering over the face of this great city, exposed to
all the horrors of hopeless poverty, to the allurements of vice
and crime in every disgusting and debasing form, bringing
ruin on themselves and disgrace and obloquy. Our object is
to extend to these little sufferers a helping hand, to raise them
from their state of degradation and misery and to place them
in a condition in which they may have a fair chance to work
out for themselves a better destiny." '

[dgriffin]

Fiona, here is the west side of Mohawk near South St., where the City Hospital was. The Utica Brewing Company building was one of what was later called The Steinhorst, a senior citizen apartments building. Also, further to the west across lower St. Vincent Street is a Diamond Match building. I've noticed a few of those around Utica on these 1883 maps.





Here's the east side of the same block of Mohawk St., between Eagle and South. Not much on the ground yet, a few houses.