On Genesee Hill, QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS

[fiona]

Dave and Clipper: As I previously wrote, I made a mistake on the location of Gorman's and here is the correction: 36 Whitesboro Street was originally built around 1820 and occupied up until around 1893-4- by Henry Seymour and then his children. Henry Seymour, as far as I can ascertain, is a relative of the Miller's, according to Blandina Miller in "A Sketch Of Old Utica". The Utica Directory has the house vacant, until 1897- 8, when it is occupied by James Gorman, Teamster, and his family. The house then becomes a boarding house and is featured as a "house of assignation" in the Saturday Evening Globe's story on the death of Carrie Cobb and John Karl, December 24, 1898. A photo of the house may be found on page 53 of "A Sketch...", and a free download of "Sketch" can be found at "A Sketch Of Old Utica:www.archive.org.

[dgriffin]

Found it. If you choose to access the pdf version, it links you to Google Books, where a facsimile copy is displayed. I downloaded the pdf of "Sketches," so I could search it, but the search function has been disabled in the file. I can search the Text version, however, using Word. I also tried DJVU, because I have the software for that (free) which I use in my radio work. But it doesn't allow searching across multiple pages, either.

[jon hynes]

Nov 1, 2009 23:16:04 GMT -5 @dgriffin said:

Found it. If you choose to access the pdf version, it links you to Google Books, where a facsimile copy is displayed. I downloaded the pdf of "Sketches," so I could search it, but the search function has been disabled in the file. I can search the Text version, however, using Word. I also tried DJVU, because I have the software for that (free) which I use in my radio work. But it doesn't allow searching across multiple pages, either.

I have put it in text mode back in May and is fully searchable.

[jon hynes]

Oct 31, 2009 19:35:00 GMT -5 @dgriffin said:

(Jon, am I reading those numbers correctly? The numbers IN the street are the house numbers? On other parts of the 1883 map, in addition to those numbers are other numbers written in the plot itself. I don't know what the latter are, unless they indicate a lot number from a large group of properties.)

That's right. The house numbers are in the street in front of the building. I don't know to what the other numbers are in reference unless the 19 & 20 etc. are on the De Burchard which might be an alley servicing the stables in the back of the properties.

[fiona]

Can anyone put up a pic of the house? This house is very early and was the home of Henry Seymour, father of Horatio Seymour, who was the father of Mary Foreman Semour Miller, the mother of Sarah Miller and thus the great grandfather of our Mary B. Do I have that right? Henry Seymour committed suicide during the financial panic of 1837. So, without fore knowledge of this fact ,I put our Annie there simply because I needed a vehical to move the story forward and the story about Gorman's just seemed too perfect and, it turns out that that she is going to be "Living" at the ancestral home of the girl she's about to meet, who will decide her fate??? This is too rich for my blood. I think I'll put my head under the pillow and pray for a normal day tomorrow.

[dgriffin]

From Blandina's "Sketch of Old Utica."


www.windsweptpress.com/images/seymour house.jpg[/img]

Looks like it would be the northwest corner of Whitesboro and the northern extension of Hotel St. to Water St.

[dgriffin]

The above photo of Seymour's neighborhood just off Bagg's Square on Whitesboro Street has me wondering when the area was cleared out for factory buildings, which are what I remember a scant 50 years later in the 1950's.
If the Gormans were living in Seymour's old house in the late 1890's, does that imply the neighborhood was by then on its way downhill?

And where did the gentlefolk (he said, wryly) move to? Genesee Hill? Is that when churches and mansions began to go up on Genesee St. as the thoroughfare climbs toward the Parkway?

You can see in this engraving that we've discussed in the past, what appears to be a neighborhood of fine homes beginning just a block to the west of Bagg's Square on Whitesboro Street. I believe the engraving is from 1848, or so it was labeled.


www.windsweptpress.com/images/seymour nhood.jpg[/img]

[fiona]

Dave: From what I have read ( in old Sat. Evening Globes) and from what I can glean from the changing names in the Utica Directories, 1895 - 1898, I would say that Whitesboro Street (In that area) was on it's way down, that the old families were dying out, and or moving up many of to South Utica, Those massive old homes became boarding houses, apartments or quite possibly, hotels. The directory for 1897 lists 4 hotels in a 3 block area and many saloons. That area, which in the 1850's was possibly all white Protestant began to give way to an influx of Irish, then Jews, then Blacks and finally factories. There are many, many Jewish names in the 1895-96, ect directories, most of them Russian Jews. The area was bordered by the canal and would have been a tough place to live, as so many of the factories and warehouses were along side the canal. The canal brought progress and money to Utica, but it also brought crime, just as the thruway does today. There were canal drovers, homeless persons, transients, boosters, homeless children called "canal boys", all types of criminals who could just pass through and dissapear into the West - anything beyond Buffalo - so to speak. All those people had to have places to stay, to eat, to drink, to be entertained and I think I can be safe in saying that the great moving tide of them "didn't lunch at the Butterfield House". I recall Liberty Street in the 1960's, it was all Jewish and across the tracks there was washington Courts. Also, I want to point out that for many years there was a cemetary called Potter's Field just beyond Whitesboro Street. I have no idea about the cemetary or what happened to the bodies, stones, ect when they re did Whitesboro Street" . That would be another interesting project. Just off the cuff, I would imagine that those huge old houses were hard to heat and eventually were broken up into flats or smaller units when steam heat came along. I also read somewhere, but can't recall, that the Seymour House was eventually used for a garage before it was torn down. Shame. That house was designed by Phillip Hooker, the same gent who designed 3 Rutger Park for the same family. I was web searching for some info on the interior, but nothing much. I will have to go in and recreate it in my mind from what I know about Rutger Park. I think the photo you put up was taken about 1870.
What a nice looking neighborhood!

[fiona]

Can we begin to put up some photos of gentlemen? I want to begin the bio of John. B. Wood.
I have a photo of Latcher to go on so don't worry about that.

[Clipper]

You might use Dave in period dress. He is a master with the graphics and pictures. What better image of a gentleman than Dave himself?

I can't for the life of me picture in my mind the stretch of Oriskany or Whitesboro Sts where the Arterial and ramp system now lies, other than Abe Nathan's junk yard, and a railroad turntable just east of Schuyler St.

Neither can I remember or picture the rest of the factories on Whitesboro St. East of the arterial other than Horrick and Ibbotson and the Central Hotel. I remember the buildings, but not the industry names that were there.

I also can recall that when I worked for a Deerfield farmer, that he used to stop at a house on Washington between Liberty and Whitesboro st and deliver a gallon of raw milk and some vegetables from the farm a couple of days a week when we took cans of milk to Sunshine Dairy on Court St. He would be inside for about a half hour, so I assume that he was trading the milk and produce for "services rendered". He always made sure that I had a hot coffee and a couple of donuts from Goldman's bakery to occupy me for that half hour, haha.

[dgriffin]

Goldman's! That's the name I was trying to remember. Like you, Clipper, I just can't imagine that area as genteel. Maybe the genteelness was 20 feet underground by the time you and I came on the scene.

Fiona, I'll look for photos of men and put a few up.

But it was more fun looking at women.

I don't think I mentioned (maybe I did) that when I was looking for Annie, all I got on an image search for "young women, 1890's" were photos of wan damsels who looked in need of vitamins for their physical or psychic selves. So I then searched on "porn 1890's."

Well .... more skin, of course, but the facial expressions hardly changed at all!

A tough one, that century.

[fiona]

Clipper: I recall Liberty Street: There was a Jewish Deli: "Eppe's Essen" where they gave you massive sandwiches of corned beef, the New York Bakery, where the roaches were bigger than the bagels, but the bagels were so delicious, a greyhound bus station, it was congested and dirty and we loved it, like the nasty little street urchins we were. There was the Center Hotel, which I belive was at one time called the Saint James, for homeless men, Yates Hotel, Birdland, all on lower Genesee. I vaguley remember a coal yard on lower Whitesboro. I am slowly reconstructing it from old city directories. When I get a good list going I will publish it here. I guess we could use Dave in period dress, but what would John B. think of it? Clip, what do you think of the work so far?

[fiona]

Dave: Oh, so that's why some of the photos have those black boxes over their how-do-ya-do's. Well, we'll just have to speak to Mrs Gorman about that! She would not be happy that you're muscleing in on her territory!

[dgriffin]

Here are some men from the 1890's.
(Click to enlarge.)





I was thinking primarily of John B. Wood when I chose them. (By the way, John D. Rockefeller is for reference.)

For JBW, I like No. 3 the best. Although I find No. 9 different, he is also somehow compelling. Of course, No. 8 appears he may not be in the best of health, matching JBW's condition as we understand it.

At any rate, here is a larger No. 3. (Who, by the way, is William Moody, the lead attorney who prosecuted Lizzie Borden, and went on to become Teddy Roosevelt's Attorney General.)


www.windsweptpress.com/images/william moody.jpg[/img]

[Clipper]

Well Fiona, my first job other than farm work was at Brayton's Hotel Supply on Hotel St. Jones of Utica movers and warehouse was North of Braytons, and there was several other businesses in that block. There was Uncle Louie Phillipsons, Sauter's Shoes, Birdland, a place that sold appliance parts Joe's Sugar Bowl coffee shop, Colerick Supply, Mier's Safe and Lock, and other businesses. The bus terminal sat between Oriskany and Liberty, and then moved to the location across from the Aud just east of State St. just before I started driving the Syracuse bus for Central NY Coach Lines. I remember the Yates Hotel. Dicky Frank was the owner of the Birdland Night Club. He was a Utica cop that was raised by Sam Johnson and his wife. Sam was a very fine old black gentleman that had retired as a redcap from the NY Central.Whether they adopted or just fostered kids, they raised a lot of children from their washington courts home.

I remember the New York Bakery and the great sandwiches from the jewish deli. I could not remember the deli until you mentioned it. Now I remember getting sandwiches there when I worked at Braytons. There was also a barber shop, Wang and Gene's Bar and the Club George along that stretch of Liberty St.

I love it so far Fiona. It makes me think back to my childhood and try to remember what it looked like in my lifetime, as opposed to what you guys are finding there before the turn of the century.