Monthly Archives: August 2013

Quirky Bath — “Queen City of the Southern Tier”

Leave a reply

Most every community has its own personality. Sometimes this derives from the circumstances of its founding, or from the nature of the work done there, or from its religious and ethnic groups. Larger communities have a different feel than smaller ones, and communities blessed with the experience of many varying people are far healthier and happier than those where a great sameness prevails.
Even similarly-sized communities in the same county — Bath, Corning, Hornell — each have their own personalities. Addison, Canisteo, and Hammondsport likewise are each distinct from the other.
Arch Merrill called Bath the Queen City of the Southern Tier, an observation that would have warmed the Scottish cockles of Charles Williamson’s heart.
Williamson was one of those men who decided early in life that if you were going to dream, you ought to dream big. Where most people saw a huge forest recently stolen from the Iroquois, Williamson saw great cities and vast estates. Where most people saw a small clearing hacked by hand from the trees along the Conhocton, Williamson saw an elegant capital.
The space he cleared is now Pulteney Square in Bath, and he kept the faith even though the first person interred in the nearby Pioneer Cemetery was his own young daughter. The Land Office he set up in 1793 didn’t finish selling off 1.3 million acres until almost 1910, but the site did become the seat of a brand-new county in 1796.
Until some busybody went and put in the Erie Canal (elevating no-account shanty towns like Syracuse, Buffalo, and Rochester), the river chain of Susquehanna, Chemung, and Conhocton was the key travel route. Williamson foresaw Bath as the great metropolis of the region, endowing it with straight broad boulevards and green grassy squares. Metropolitan dreams died, but the layout lasts to this day. In its tiny scale it seems to echo the layouts of Paris and Washington… except that Bath had its layout long before Paris and Washington did.
So the history, the lovely layout, and the county seat all contribute to Bath’s personality. So do two great institutions begun during or after the Civil War… the Davenport Asylum for Female Orphans, and the New York State Soldiers and Sailors Home.
The “Davenport Home,” by all reports, furnished a true home for something like 800 girls over 90 years. “Alumnae” relate, for instance, that young men frequently came calling, and not just because it is in the nature of young men to pay such calls. They often arrived at a time when they knew they’d be invited to dinner, and everybody ate very well at the Davenport Home. Even during the Depression the girls rode horseback, played tennis, went camping, visited amusement parks, had their own Girl Scout troop.
In 2004 Chuck Mitchell and I published “Bath,” a book of historic photos in the Images of America series. For the cover image, publishers selected am 1892 photo of the girls gathered on an ornate set of steps, seated primly and properly, clad in uniform and, of course, entirely covered save for head, neck, and hands.
The photo of a similar gathering 50 years later shows the girls variously dressed and casually seated, little ones in sun suits, older girls in shorts and short sleeves, or even sleeveless. Women by then could vote and hold office. They could work, and largely control their own income. They could even join the army, and even as girls they were increasingly free from rigid convention.
That other great Bath institution, now the VA, started as a way to care for New York’s Civil War veterans — and some of them were furious when Spanish War veterans were admitted after 1898! Now much of the facility’s work is treatment for alcohol and drug problems. Stones in the national cemetery now feature symbols identifying the honored dead as Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Wiccan, Bahai, and more, in addition to the traditional crosses and Magen Davids.
In doing our book we dedicated a combined chapter to the Girls Home and the Soldiers Home, and another to the Steuben County Fair. Not many towns have a fairground right in the center of things, but it’s part of the busy-ness of Bath.
We also found photos of pioneer pilots, bicycling postmen, and the Old-Timers Band, which played for the departure of Bath’s draft contingent every month through World War II. Bath is still a busy place. Arch Merrill would approve, and “Charles the Magnificent” would be delighted.

"Davenport Girls" in 1892

“Davenport Girls” in 1892

The Hidden Chapel

Folks driving north on State Route 54 often look up toward the crest of Keuka Bluff and remark upon the sight of Garrett Chapel.  They are wrong.  What they’re looking at is the Wagener Mansion.
They are RIGHT, though, to be interested in the chapel, which lies a little below the mansion, mostly screened by forest.  Garrett Chapel is one of the jewels of our region, too little known, too seldom visited, too poorly appreciated.
Its origins lie, as is so often the case with the extraordinary, in grief and tragedy.   Paul and Evelyn Garrett operated one of the world’s largest wine producers, harvesting grapes from 4000 acres of Finger Lakes vineyards.  In those days, as today, medical care was rationed to the well-to-do, which certainly included the Garretts.  But in those days, UNLIKE today, medical care was horribly limited.  Despite their access to health care, only one of the Garrett sons survived to adulthood.  But even Charles Williams Garrett died far too young, in 1929, from the then-untreatable “white plague” of tuberculosis.  His death extinguished the Garrett name, and many of his family’s dreams.
Mother and father dreamed a new dream… to memorialize their son by creating the Little Chapel on the Mount, overlooking Keuka Lake, on a site that Charles had deeply loved.  They brought in granite from Pennsylvania — slate from Vermont, and from the Netherlands — onyx from Algeria — marble from Tennessee — and erected a chapel in the style of the sixth century.
Taking one of a few dozen seats in the jewel-box sanctuary, you are surrounded with windows illustrating the life of Christ, from Nativity to Ascension.  The chapel belongs to and is operated by the Episcopal diocese of Rochester, but Sunday services (Fourth of July through Labor Day) are conducted by visiting clergy, resulting in a more-or-less Episcopalian service.  When we last worshiped there on August 4, the chapel was nearly full, with congregants running from the toddlers through the elderly.  Despite the stone setting, the feeling seems always warm.
Windows in the crypt below the sanctuary have their own theme, drawn from such well-loved poems as “Abou Ben Adhem,” “The Children’s Hour,” “The Brook,” “Sir Galahad,” “Wynken and Blynken and Nod,” and “Crossing the Bar.”  They shine the light on youth with its hopes and dreams, and the commandment to love thy neighbor as thyself, “to emphasize that an enduring civilization can be built only on the foundation of family life, with love the keynote.”
Figures on the bronze door of the crypt, crowned by Motherhood, illustrate such human roles as the Fisher, the Sower, the Student, the Scientist, the Artisan, the Athlete, the Musician, and the Painter — potential futures closed with each death of a Garrett child.
Apart from the chapel itself, the quiet wooded setting on the dramatic slope overlooking Keuka is unforgettable.  The grounds are landscaped, with flowers and paths, shrubs and ferns, enhancing the experience.  Garrett Memorial Chapel is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
You approach Garrett Chapel from Skyline Drive on the Bluff.  Now if you’re driving in from the north you’re likely to be doing something silly, like keeping your eyes on the road as it drops.  If you reach Bluff Road, you went a little too far.  The chapel actually lies below the level of Skyline Drive, just barely noticeable.  Look for a metal rail fence on the east side of Skyline, with a small sign announcing the chapel.
There’s a dirt drive below the fence, hard to turn into from the north.  This leads to a small parking area near the chapel.  Otherwise many visitors park along Skyline, then descend to the chapel by a long set of steps.
Chapel supporters have completed three phases of a five-phase restoration plan.  They are currently seeking support for phase four, an $80,000 project for stone repairs allowing them to reopen the south end of the terrace.  The final phase, which could require up to a million dollars, concludes the work on a broad front, including accessible rest rooms and wheelchair access to the sanctuary.  I have made a gift to the project, because I’d like the 82-year-old chapel still to be welcoming visitors when another 82 years have passed.
It must have been quite a project to get out to Garrett Chapel in 1931, over dirt roads and steep grades and at a fair distance from either Branchport or Penn Yan.  Even today you have to approach it deliberately, and search for it diligently.  The chapel lies hidden in the woods, concealed by the folds of the earth.  The sounds of autos, airplanes, and speedboats are heard only distantly, if they’re heard at all.  Most people approach the chapel gladly but quietly, as they would at the end of a quest.