In and About New York State History; 101; Upstate Travels: Seneca Falls

Hope Iraq hope This is the village of Seneca Falls. It's not a very big place. It extends only about 3 miles one way and 5 miles the other. Fewer than 8000 people live here. The people we got a chance to talk with think quite a lot about their village. Mrs. Elizabeth Dellavan thinks quite a lot about the town's past. She's a local historian. Matt McHugh's an ex-sheriff of Seneca Falls. He likes to think about the town of HIS youth. He's lived here all his life.

He's been our architect. This man's a doctor. And this man is the president of the largest independent pump manufacturer in the world. They all think a lot about the future of the town. As for Lucille Pavarone and Carroll Stillona, they think a lot about famous women in Senaca Falls. What all their thoughts add up to is a 30 minute story of the past, present, and future of Seneca Falls as WCNY takes you on the road for upstate travels. We heard one person say and says to me like. Oh, you know, Upsate communities: they're all the same. [Chuckles] And it's just not true. I mean everyone is.

Is totally different. The more you look at it, the more different it is. It has been for the most part a law abiding community. It's been for me and I think many would agree with me, a good place to live. Cayuga lake is three miles away on the East. Seneca Lake is seven or eight miles on the West. Lake Ontario is only 30 miles on the North. Close by if you want what the cities have to offer you have Syracuse and Rochester within an hour's drive. Ithaca is 40 miles away at the other end of Cayuga Lake. If you like to fish, hunt play golf. Whatever your thing is there is opportunity here. If one of your things is working, Seneca Falls offers opportunity. While the number of people looking for work today elsewhere in the country has grown to almost 8%, unemployment here is only 4.5%.

The reason: industry. This was a workingman's town. We have actually been much better off than larger places close by. We have more industry. We have people coming in from 30 and 40 miles away to work in Seneca Falls, you see. Industry is a big part of life here. It has been the cornerstone of the town's economy since the very first. As such, the town has played host to many industrial achievements. During our industrial revolution. the first all metal pump was made here. It's been used in industries and homes ever since. Pumps all over the world bear the mark made in Seneca Falls. The first steam powered fire engine was also produced here. This fire engine stepped up firefighting methods and helped save many lives. There was a business enterprise in 1800 that made Seneca Falls a world attraction. That was really world famous, I guess. And I am sure it was because there are accounts of that people being so surprised about it and coming over here. They were traveling from England. They would come up here and to see that Keuga

extended from the Village of Keuga which is across the lake at the north end of the lake. It went straight across the lake to Bridgeport. And it was a wooden bridge. Over a mile long, but I can't tell you offhand exactly how much over a mile long. it could be and authentically so, the longest bridge in the country. The country was young then but also very likely the longest bridge in the world then. Then it didn't stand up to well then, it was made of wood, of course and gradually it disappeared. But it served a wonderful purpose in the settlement of the West really, through here. The bridge was built to promote the sale of land on one side of the lake and cost the great sum of 25 cents to use. The first settlers did not have the great convenience of the bridge. They came about 13 years earlier. Most of them by boat,

like the first settler, Job Smith did. People say Job Smith was a wanted man and just came across this area presumably while making his getaway. He moved on as soon as more people showed up. Then Clay family was our earliest family, I think. You discount Job who didn't stay [laughs] because Van Cleef's stayed . The first Van Cleef was a soldier in Sullivan's expedition. And like lots of those soldiers they like the territory up here, the country that they saw. They thought it was quite wonderful lake country and they a lot of them thought they might come back here to live. And I guess a lot of them did, but the one we all know about here is Lawrence VanCleef. Most of the first settlers settled in an area known as the flats. The flats were located right near the river and the settlers settled there for a very good reason. The reason for the[m] being here was because of the water power provided

by the river. In the village. I think there were 7 different places where there were falls and rapids: water power was here for the taking and then resulted in our having so much industry. The mills used the falls to operate their industries and use the waterways for transportation. The Seneca River and the early canal systems gave manufacturers a way to receive raw materials and ship their finished products to larger markets. So, Seneca Falls had a lot to offer industry. Smaller businesses also benefited. These were the days before the big shopping malls and the many villagers who work for the industries depended on the local stores for everything. The shopkeeper could get his goods delivered easily and as long as industry was strong he was assured customers. Becoming a working- man's town came pretty easy to Seneca Falls, but they had their moments-- terrible moments, like in 1890. Even in the home of the steam powered fire engine

half the business section in town was wiped out. That was what the papers all. And it did burn-up a lot of private stores. And Little businesses and it damaged some of the bigger ones too. They sent for help and Geneva came down, sent their stuff down on their firefighting equipment down on the train on a flatcar. I don't know I just why it got so so out of control, but I guess that often happens with fires.And it used to be more so than it is now. But, it was a frightening thing. I guess we've always all heard about. Big Fire, every Family has some story connected so much. My grandfather, for instance, had a hardware store there on Falls Street and that was that burned up. He lost all his records and all his everything. every, lots of people

things of the village. But they survived. The buildings were rebuilt in the Victorian style popular then. Life went on and from the look of things in this film in 1914 business survived very nicely. People seem to be buying up one store after another. If something seems oddly familiar about this film maybe it's because it looks like a commercial. Which it was. They which came in and sold the idea to the retail business people. Who subscribed to the thing as an advertising gimmick. It was quite apparently if you subscribe then your business place was shown, you see not all of the business places being shown, it was shown in the local theaters. People were making a big effort to get in that those pictures, right. The movies were still in their infancy and not only were you. Were you anxious see the movies. If you had an opportunity which was rare to get your

face in a movie, you really pushed into the forefront. Beyond its obvious advertising role. This film documents many things that were a part of Seneca Falls at that time. Students at school. A girls' basketball team. Some of the places where where people work. This film also shows some important construction work going on less than a year after after this film was completed the construction would be finished and Seneca Falls would be changed dramatically. The area where the village began where the first mills were set up and from which Seneca Falls took its name would be destroyed. The Falls Can't be seen any more. They all were absorbed when they were the canal was put in. Our old early canal became the Seneca Cayuga branch of the Barge Canal in 1915. But what it did to Seneca Falls was flood a certain area that

was known as the Flats and it was decided to. Flood that, make it, convert it into a lake in order to. Make this connection with the upper canal and it was all planned and organized. It was an orderly thing; it took two years to get ready for it. Everything was being torn down. And or moved out. There are More than a few houses in this village that were moved out of there intact. And placed on new foundations and still being used then as homes. In the winter when the canal was drained. You can go down and wander among among the ruins and it's sort of like Brigadoon and it's really exciting. The canal may have made the village very picturesque with its new lake, but it caused the loss of some things in return. Some small businesses and industries could not afford to relocate on the dollars the state gave them and were either forced out of business or forced out of

town. Silsbee the company that produced the first steam powered fire engine moved out. So the village gained a beautiful lake, but lost some business. Many industries however still feel very much at home in Seneca Falls. Presently there are at least 8 industries here and they keep the population working. There's a certain characteristic common to the industries here. They all seem to make just one kind of product. There's the Seneca knitting mill which knits thousands of socks here every year just socks. Then there's the Sylvania plant that makes only color TV picture tubes. There Weskett ruler factory makes. That's right, just rulers. Guaranteed Parts concentrates on electrical parts for cars and Kibee Machine Company which makes food processing equipment is said to be king of the sauerkraut makers. And then there's Goulds Pumps the biggest industry in Seneca Falls and the number one independent pump manufacturer in the world. They make pumps and nothing but pumps. Goulds had.

has been really the bread and butter of this village for a hundred years. You may recall that metal pumps got their start here, but it's more than just history that keeps Goulds in Seneca Falls. If someone told me 50 years ago that we were going to have a company in Seneca Falls where there are less than 8,000 people. Where we're going to have we had to employ over 2000 people. I'd say this is not the place to go because you're not going to get the skilled labor that you need here and you're not going to grow here. That's not happening. I would have to say that our plants at Seneca Falls are of the most productive and efficient of any pump company plants anywhere in the United States. So that alone is enticement enough to continue to expand here and we will do that and we have done that. The economic relationship between the company and the working community is a strong one. But many times their relationship goes beyond the workplace. There are other mutual concerns like

energy that not only affect the industry, but the entire community as well. The fact that energy will never be cheap anymore in this country-- will in fact create changing lifestyles. And with all that we decided why don't we why don't we really do something. And we embarked on a program of energy conservation that I think has caught on that's worked. We've created incentives for our employees to get involved and to do this. And one of the savings that we did incur as a company we decided to plow back into the back to the employees through expansion of our Goulds Recreation Center. And this year we've had tremendous success there because full 6 times as many employees use the Rec Center as they ever did. And I'm gratified that something that's worthwhile is also thought to

be worthwhile by the people that work for the company. The on-the-job aspect of it is the carpooling. It is the walking to work, it is the bicycling. It is the thermostat settings and so forth. It also is the insulating of all our buildings, of better efficiency in our boilers and so forth. That's obviously saved us money and saved some of our employees money. The economic relationship between the presence of industries such as Gould's in Seneca Falls and the liveliness of the downtown business area is not as strong as it once was as many other places discovered in the last decade. People are spending their money outside their own communities. Just 2 years ago a major mall was created to the east of us giving us competition with our downtown district. And 2 of shopping plazas were refurbished and sort of brought back into use to the west of us. A lot of the buildings downtown are over a century old and they need

maintenance they need care and with the energy crunch and whatnot they become less and less desirable as investments. Unless you can start to get state and federal aid to come in. This is nothing that industry in town is going to help us with this is a private building owners', myself included. Private business owners are having a tough time competing with the shopping malls and the physical decay of the buildings downtown that were built in the eighteen hundreds is not helping matters. In an effort to revitalize the area preservationists want to restore the old buildings to their original grandeur, but there are some drawbacks. The main one being cost. Restoration can be very expensive in many cases more expensive than building something brand new. Still preservation is pressed for restoration. They feel restoring these buildings will prove to be more valuable to the village in the long run. We can't afford to destroy the quality of life that we have in some of the older communities because as prices rise and as transportation costs go up it's not as easy to

slip away as many people have been in the habit of doing to national parks or other communities which have maintained themselves well and leave their own. I think that's going to be less and less possible and certainly the richness of life that could have been done and was done in the late 1800s and early 1900s and still remains with us in some places Its going to be more and more important rather than less and less, and I think to a degree people are going to realize as they find themselves spending more and more time at home. There was a beautiful early 1800 Victorian mansion which was sort of the rallying point for preservationists because it was destroyed and soon after that another mill dating way back to the early 1830s 1830s in the water power days along the canal side was knocked down. But basically no one could do much about it because it was they were single incidences taken out of the context of development of the village. The minute that we decided we want to use historic preservation as a means of bringing to the Community Preservation.

Attitude of the village began to take hold and saying let's save the structures that we've got and develop them along whatever lines are necessary to bring the dollars in to the community By saving these old buildings preservationists hope to preserve part of the town's unique history store owners hope it will give the town a distinct character that will make it more attractive to costumers. What store owners hope will help them financially in their preservation efforts. Is the National interest in the role of this working man's town in the history of women. One of the most far reaching reform movements of the last century in the United States began here in Seneca Falls. Well in 1848 on July 19th and 20th the first women's rights convention ever held in the United States was held here in Seneca Falls in the Westleyan Chapel. And Elizabeth Caty Stanton and Lucretia Mott were the 2 people who convened that convention. So it really sparked a long battle for women's suffrage and women's rights in this country. Mrs. Stanton she raised a large family right here in Seneca Falls.

She was restless here. She didn't think this was a very interesting place to live I think, she was more intellectually inclined perhaps than lots of her neighbors. She started this movement the women's rights movement right here with their friend Amelia Bloomer you've heard of her probably. She's one started the Bloomers and she'd gathered together a group of other women and they did the Women's Rights Convention which [which] they'd managed in the Wesleyan Chapel up there on Falls Street and there were a certain number of men that came to us. They were asked to come; everybody was asked to come in they had a pretty large attendance. I don't think there were many people that were sold on the idea in those days,[laughs] but it seemed to be rather successful and certainly eventually and look where they are now.

The village has only recently begun to commemorate its unique history. One of the first things that has been done is the establishment of a woman's Hall of Fame last July. I've spoken with a lot of tourists who come in the last year year and a half and they were on the thruway and they saw the Seneca Falls exit and they just got off to see what they could find out come from nearly every state and more than 20 foreign countries which is pretty gratifying considering Seneca Falls is a small upstate New York community. Local people would direct them to the Women's Hall of Fame since that is the only museum type of facility connected with women's rights that's available in town at the moment. The tourist looking for something connected with women's rights say 2 years ago would have been disappointed. Many of the historical landmarks of the Women's Rights Convention are in the same condition as the downtown buildings. The landmarks were owned by private citizens and through the years they were either changed dramatically or in some cases completely destroyed. The village had no control over what happened to them.

A man from Seattle, Washington 2 years ago was driving through Seneca Falls with his wife by the name of Ralph Peters and saw for sale sign out in front of the house and just couldn't believe that one would sell a national landmark. And he called a realtor put in a purchase offer and. Promised us he would hang on to the house until such time as we could get some kind of organization going locally. And that's exactly what happened we founded the Elizabeth Cady Stanton Foundation. There's a bill in Congress now that will make a create a an women's rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls. It calls for the full restoration of the Stanton House and a full restoration of the Westleyan Chapel which is now a laundromat which is in downtown Seneca Falls. Why is the preservation of the Wesleyan Chapel and the Stanton House so important? So the House has something I just had so many people come here from all over the country in the last 2 years. And even though it's mint green and even though it doesn't vaguely resemble. Anything of what it looked like when Elizabeth was here. [um] There is the spirit here [um] for sure.

People come here and they feel it. I mean this is where women's roots is located. I grew up in Seneca Falls I am a native and [um] until I was 28 years old I didn't have the vaguest idea who she was. Believe it or not it wasn't in the history books although we have a school named after her. I just had no idea. It's interesting that women's history has been a largely neglected in the history books until fairly recently. I think the availability of more information and more role models at places like the Women's Hall of Fame and in the history books. I think that that will expand their understanding of what women have done and what their contributions are. The interest in women's rights has made Seneca Falls part of a special state program. The urban cultural parks program that's a program that wants to make a network of parks in selected towns throughout New York state to promote tourism and help revitalize some areas. The program may give Seneca Falls some money to help renovate some of its

buildings. What we're shooting for is with [with] a minimum amount of further investment by the local community. [Um] And if we can get on line with programs which we are Really deserving of because of our history and the architecture that's here. Why not? 50 percent eligible funding for new roofs, painting, refurbishing, planning, sewers, lighting --things of this nature. So it's what we see as one way of bringing tax dollars back to Seneca Falls which we've been paying for years and really haven't seen much return. Some people, like doctor Cinna Cropey have been planning the future of Seneca Falls for years and have very specific ideas about what that future should be. Five to six years ago we were saying Seneca Falls better prepare themselves for increased national attention as the birthplace of the women's rights movement. We wanted to prepare ourselves so that we would be in local control of those changes. And this is why we think the program is important to us. We want to keep it low key. [uh] Basically allow us

to. Restore the physical plan of the community which has been run down quite a bit and attract people, but not in such throngs as to really make it difficult to utilize the downtown by local residents. It's really for the local residents mainly. We just want to make it a nicer place. We've got Eisenhower College here now and the idea of spending four years in a community that's kind of snappy and [and a] fun to be in and have some places where you can have a good recreational sort of time is much better for attracting students to Eisenhower than a community that is kind of just sort of. Slowly going along not really exciting or changing or keeping up really with what it should be. We'd like to have Seneca Falls become a seat for research and and a general continuing education in the women's women's studies field and both the Hall of Fame and the Elizabeth Cady Stanton foundation are planning on serving as a research facility for these

areas. [Host]:To get a better idea of what Seneca Falls could be like. Two architects: Phil Prigmore and Burt Fortner were hired to figure out how historical preservation could be accomplished in Seneca Falls. [Different speaker]: Probably the first thing is building local understanding and commitment of the kinds of resources that are here. Nothing really that could happen from the outside would be nearly as effective or powerful without the support of the local village population. Local industry and business, local organizations and the local government. And so in order to try to facilitate that. We've been putting out some information. This is called the 'befuddling ordinance'. It is an explanation of what happens when a local community adopts an Historic Preservation District. [Host]: Exactly what all these state and federal programs mean to the community will be discussed in public meetings over the coming months. So the debate over the town's future has just started.

[Architect]: What our hopes are is to bring the full knowledge of what we would like to see happen here with both the national parks and the state program to the public over this winter period and get public feedback. If there is excitement and a feeling that we're doing it properly. We'll go along and press on with it. If there are fears or questions we'll take care of them at this time so that when we really do our final product it will be something that is hopefully universally agreed on. There's always going to be people who feel we're going in one direction or another that's not proper. But. [ah] We've got to move one way or another or else fall back back as we see it with the competition from the outside malls and business areas and other communities, such as, Ithaca and Newark, Geneva and Auburn dressing themselves up somewhat. We feel that Seneca Falls should move forward in that way and we've hopefully got the program for it now. [Host]: The program being planned for Seneca Falls today is a package of sorts.

It will try to bundle up all the parts of Seneca Falls and present them as a single experience. It brings together parts of what the town has been in the past. And what the town wants to be in the future. In the program there will be places in the town devoted to women, other places will recall the days of the canal and early businesses. Each section of the town has its part to play from the restoration of its buildings to the strength of its industry. All the moments that have left their reminders, all the influences that have and that will shape the character of the town. All these things will be taken along and will have new roles to play in the future of Seneca Falls. Well there you have it. Some of the things people think about Seneca Falls in Seneca Falls. Til next time on "Upstate Travels". This is Bob Payden. We'll see you on the road somewhere in central New York.

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