Bustling Amsterdam sparkled in 1925 expo
The progress in a city of 35,000 touted
By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History, Daily Gazette, 7-02-05
America was prospering in 1925 and local businesses staged Amsterdam’s Progress Exposition and Auto Show that year to show off that prosperity.
“In the twenties, that was the heyday here,” said anthropologist Susan Dauria. “The population was about 35,000, the biggest it’s ever been.” Dauria wrote her doctoral dissertation on the rise and decline of manufacturing in Amsterdam.
The Progress Exposition was organized by the Board of Trade, predecessor of the Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce. The event was held from September 11th through the 19th, 1925 at Ross’ Flats in the East End, next to the railroad tracks. Admission was 25 cents for adults and 10 cents for children.
According to the Schenectady Gazette of that day, a windmill was erected as the entrance to a series of huge tents that contained more than a hundred booths where manufacturers and businessmen showed their wares. One “mammoth tent” was dedicated to the display of automobiles. Socony (Standard Oil of New York) displayed a gasoline pump.
A Main Street parade preceded opening night. The Gazette reported: “All the industrial concerns and stores in this city have been invited to have their old employees in point of service participate in the parade, as the parade will feature those who have had part in the building up of Amsterdam.”
Schenectady General Electric furnished floodlights. “The whole city is in gala attire, with the merchants making displays of their flags on the poles along the curbs,” reported the Gazette.
State Senator William T. Byrne of Albany gave a speech. There was a fashion show, baby contest and a pet show. A billboard advertised music and entertainment daily.
The Walter Elwood Museum in Amsterdam has a book of pictures of the Progress Exposition taken by photographer Emil Zillgitt for the Board of Trade. The Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce donated the book to the museum in 1982. Museum director Ann Thane would like to know more about Zillgitt. His photography studio was at 13-15 East Main Street and he is listed in city directories through the early 1950s when he died. He and his wife Eunice lived at 118 Grand Street.
One picture shows the booth of real estate agent Monroe Gray who is selling suburban lots at Tribes Hill Heights. “A lot means a home and a home means a lot,” states a poster. Gray is seated at his booth, which is next to Quist Lumber, smartly dressed in a three-piece suit with well-shined shoes, holding what may be a rolled up blueprint. Another poster promises: “Invest now and double your money at Tribes Hill Heights.” Gray has blueprints of the lots and pictures of homes stacked on a table underneath an American flag. He has a promotional item: a calendar depicting an elegant woman.
The carpet mills—Mohawk and Stephen Sanford & Sons--had booths in the Exposition, as did other manufacturers.
Main Street merchant Holzheimer & Shaul occupied several booths that look like store window displays. A cardboard cutout of a young girl is behind a new Hoover vacuum cleaner, offered with “unusually easy terms.” A female mannequin wearing an apron sits amid a display of Glenwood gas and wood stoves. One of the firm’s principals, P. Dater Shaul, is pictured at a planning session for the Exposition. To tout the city’s role in making rugs, Holzheimer’s put a Sanford carpet on the sidewalk in front of its East Main Street store during the Exposition.
In Amsterdam since 1882, Fitzgerald’s Bottling Works offered ginger ale for five cents a bottle at its booth. “The safest drinks--kills disease germs,” states an advertising poster.
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