Holiday memories, photo identified
By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History, Daily Gazette, 2-26-05
Many people remember the Enterprise store on Amsterdam’s East Main Street. However, Emil Suda of Amsterdam is eager to find a photo of the store that preceded it—Montgomery Ward. “I’ve always liked Montgomery Ward,” said Suda, one of a group of local history fans who attended a recent program at the Amsterdam Free Library.
Suda was able to verify a recollection in a column from last year. New York City public television announcer and Amsterdam native Tom Stewart wondered if anyone else recalled the Christmas Festival, held in the East End in the late 1950s.
“I remember my parents taking me to it,” Suda said. “There was a Santa Claus inside the building.”
A caller to my Amsterdam talk show found a brief Gazette notice of the event, pointing out that the festival in Coessens Park featured animals brought in from an Adirondack tourist attraction. Stewart recalled that the festival took place during the administration of Mayor Thomas F. Gregg, a Democrat who served one term from 1958 to 1960. According to another radio caller and Stewart, Gregg was a butcher who operated a shop on what was then Railroad Street. Frank Martuscello, a Republican who was elected mayor in 1960 to succeed Gregg, was the first of the city’s chief executives to serve a four-year term, following a charter change.
Mystery no more
Several emails and a phone call identified the mystery photo printed some weeks ago, showing a group of children in front of a huge snowman constructed adjacent to an Amsterdam grocery store. Bob Novak of Amsterdam said his sister, the late Barbara Novak Czelusniak, is in the picture and Novak has what may be the original of the photo. Novak said the location is Locust Avenue and Lindsay Street, at the time occupied by Firth’s Grocery Store. Today, the building houses the Mirror Image beauty salon. Based on his sister’s age in the photo, Novak estimated the picture was taken around 1950. Why the snowman was built remains a mystery. Perhaps the project was simply something to do during one long winter.
19th century newspaper
Frank Yunker, a Fulton-Montgomery Community college computer science professor who maintains the history website www.mohawkvalley.com, was able to restore the first page of the August 20, 1887 edition of the Daily Democrat newspaper in Amsterdam. The newspaper was on the cover of a yearly almanac of newspaper headlines in the collection of the Kenneth Dorn room at FMCC.
The paper has the first five winners of races that day at Saratoga. “How’s that for consistency,” Yunker said. “Over a hundred years later and Saratoga races are still front page news.”
The sewers were under construction on Division Street and “an Italian” was injured in a construction accident. Yunker said that headlines from The Democrat of that era often referred to an “Italian,” rather than giving the person’s name.
An article on big homes being built in Amsterdam in 1887 described Academy Street as an up and coming area, referring specifically to a villa at Market and Academy Streets built by Mrs. Julia Phillips. The newspaper predicted that in the near future, wealthy residents would be willing to pay as much as $25,000 for an elegant home, even paying a few thousand dollars more for a good view of the Mohawk Valley.
The Opera House was playing "Apollo in Eden: or the Little Devil's Revel."
The company putting on that production was comprised of 30 women, no men.
Shakespeare was scheduled for the Opera House. A man named Keene and his troupe were to perform “Othello” the following week.
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