Jonathan Cohen's photos with the keyword: Seneca County

A devastating fire occurred in the summer of 1890, leaving half of Main Street in ashes. This was a cruel irony given that Seneca Falls was the place where the world’s first steam operated fire engine was built. It was the product of the Silsby Manufacturing Company, and used Birdsall Holly’s patented rotary pump and engine. It consisted of two elliptical cams working into each other within an air-tight case. They contained four chambers, upon which the stream would act alternately, so as to secure great power with low pressure and a constant supply of water. While one chamber had just discharged, another was discharging, a third was ready, and a fourth would be filling. The invention was wildly successful and was sold worldwide. By 1885 their five-acre plant on the island flats behind Trinity Episcopal Church was the largest of its kind in the world. Over two hundred employees produced half the steam engines in America, with a new engine being completed every week.

Henry Westcott was born in Newport, Rhode Island in 1808 where he learned the sash and blind makers’ trade. Later, he started his own company together with his brother Edwin and an associate called Hiram Miller to manufacture sash, doors and blinds. After retiring from this business, he moved to Seneca Falls in 1847 to embark in the manufacture of an improved churn and butter pail on which he had secured patents. Also this business proved to be a success, mainly because Henry Westcott invented and built machinery to make the wooden products he sold, while competitors were still making them by hand. In 1868, at the age of 60, he sold his interest in this company. In 1872 Henry, along with his two sons Charles and Frank, established the firm Westcott Brothers to manufacture a variety of wood specialties. While Charles concentrated on operating the factory and Frank on selling the products, here too, Henry’s experience and inventive genius were responsible for the company’s growth. When Henry retired in 1890, the company was renamed to Westcott Bros. Co. and expanded into numerous products like toy blocks and other games. The toy blocks advertised above were small six-sided objects, generally each with letter or number on two of its sides. The blocks were grooved to interlock.

The Partridge Building is an outstanding local landmark due to its association with Erastus Partridge, a mid-19th century community leader, banker and industrialist. It was constructed in 1891, after the "great fire" of 1890 destroyed the former building along with eighty-six other buildings within downtown Seneca Falls. The earliest maps of Seneca Falls show a sawmill on this site. A later 1836 map of the area displays the Old Arnett Mill, a flourmill, at this location. Research has shown that portion’s of the mill’s bearing walls have been retained and incorporated into the construction of the present Partridge Building. Throughout the late 1890s and into the mid 1900s, the Partridge Building had many tenants including a wide array of bookstores, clothing, dentists, lawyers, newspapers (the Courier from c. 1891-1940), beauty shops and citizens clubs. A central clock tower adorned the roof line, which lit a large portion of the village. In April 1991 the building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a contributing feature within the Seneca Falls Village Historic District. In March of 1988, a fire once again gutted the Partridge Building. The fire destroyed the roof, and damaged much of the top floor and south wall of the Partridge Block. The remaining portions of the building suffered appreciable water damage from the fire. Portico Properties purchased the property in 1988 and undertook a complete restoration of the building.

From the artist’s statement: My art work is entirely carved in white pine and then painted with acrylics. Each piece is a unique original. I am untaught and untrained as a visual artist. I learned a number of useful skills by building my own house, and during my work in the trades as a signpainter and carpenter. I do pictures of subject matter that is important to me. My artwork documents the events and feelings of my life, with much of it fitting into one of four series: "Diner," "Farm," "Outdoor/vacation" and "Dreams." Since 1974 I have completed approximately 1500 carved and painted wood pictures. For fourteen of those years I supplemented my art income by working as a sign painter/ carpenter. Since 1990 I have worked as a psychotherapist, and thus you might notice a focus in my work on people – their faces, suffering, hopes, endurance and beauty.

The Gould Hotel opened in February 1920 on the site of the Hoag House which had burned on Thanksgiving morning, 1918. That fire had been discovered in the basement and by noon the building had been a total loss and nearly all of the equipment in the hotel had been destroyed. This new Gould Hotel was described in the Syracuse Journal as "the most complete and perfectly equipped of the smaller hotels of New York State. Four stories in height, absolutely fireproof in construction and equipped in perfect taste and convenience, it is scheduled to become the mecca for travelers and autoists between Rochester and Syracuse." A postcard from the time describes it as "the gateway to the beautiful Finger Lakes region." The plans provided for a building of four floors, with a main entrance on State Street. Stores would be located on the Fall Street side of the building. The new hotel building was of concrete and steel construction throughout. The door and window sills and the picture moldings were the only things of the building itself that could burn. In addition to the large lobby, the double dining rooms and a well arranged kitchen, the hotel itself had 72 rooms and 8 apartments. Fifty of the rooms were equipped with baths, including hot and cold water, and telephone connections. The guest rooms had a mahogany dresser, desk, straight and rocker chairs, and portable and fixed lamps. The Simmons’ bed had fine hair mattresses. The dining rooms were so arranged that they could be one big room for banquets or separate so that one could be used as a ball room and the other for dining. The dining room décor was colonial in style, with the walls painted café au lait and ivory white ceilings and Windsor mahogany chairs and tables. The lobby had a Spanish style appearance, with the furniture covered with heavy morocco leather. Heavy rugs covered the lobby floor, with table and floor lamps adding a quiet but luxurious feeling. The walls were finished in imitation Caen Stone and velour drapes. The Gould Hotel eventually closed and the building was turned into apartments. It subsequently sat vacant for quite some time before reopening as the Hotel Clarence.

Born into slavery in 1797, Isabella Baumfree, who later changed her name to Sojourner Truth, would become one of the most powerful advocates for human rights in the nineteenth century. Her early childhood was spent on a New York estate owned by a Dutch American named Colonel Johannes Hardenbergh. Like other slaves, she experienced the miseries of being sold and was cruelly beaten and mistreated. Around 1815 she fell in love with a fellow slave named Robert, but they were forced apart by Robert’s master. Isabella was instead forced to marry a slave named Thomas, with whom she had five children. In 1827, after her master failed to honor his promise to free her or to uphold the New York Anti-Slavery Law of 1827, Isabella ran away, or, as she later informed her master, "I did not run away, I walked away by daylight. …" After experiencing a religious conversion, Isabella became an itinerant preacher and in 1843 changed her name to Sojourner Truth. During this period she became involved in the growing antislavery movement, and by the 1850s she was involved in the woman’s rights movement as well. At the 1851 Women’s Rights Convention held in Akron, Ohio, Sojourner Truth delivered what is now recognized as one of the most famous abolitionist and women’s rights speeches in American history: "That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?"

Born into slavery in 1817 or 1818, Frederick Douglass became one of the most outspoken advocates of abolition and women’s rights in the 19th century. Believing that "Right is of no sex, truth is of no color," Douglass urged an immediate end to slavery and supported Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and other women’s rights activists in their crusade for woman suffrage. Douglass joined the abolitionist movement in 1841 and put his considerable oratorical skills to work as a speaker for the American Anti-Slavery Society. By 1847 he had moved to Rochester, New York, where he published the North Star, a weekly abolitionist newspaper. Douglass was also active with the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society, and it was through this organization that he met Elizabeth M’Clintock. In July of 1848, M’Clintock invited Douglass to attend the First Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls. Douglass readily accepted, and his participation at the convention revealed his commitment to woman suffrage. He was the only African American to attend the convention.

In May 1851, there was a chance encounter on the streets of Seneca Falls which forever altered the struggle for women’s rights. Amelia Jenks Bloomer introduced Susan B. Anthony to Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The friendship that was forged between Stanton and Anthony gave direction and momentum to the seventy-two year struggle for women’s suffrage which culminated on August 26, 1920 in the passage of the 19th Amendment to the United states Constitution. Neither woman lived to see this happen. This montage of sculptures is the work of A.E. Ted Aub.

The Wesleyan Chapel was built in 1843. On July 19 and 20, 1848, the First Women’s Rights Convention was held here. Even though Elizabeth Cady Stanton was the only one of the five organizers to live in Seneca Falls, the Wesleyan Chapel was well known to them all. The church was a local haven for antislavery activity, political rallies, and free speech events. The original red brick Wesleyan Methodist Church was sold by the congregation in 1871 and extensively altered by subsequent owners. When the site was purchased by the National Park Service in 1985, very little original fabric remained. Since then the building has been restored to its original appearance.