So how about Bath? Arch Merrill, half a century ago, called it “the grande dame of the Southern Tier.” Older folks remember it as the region’s market town, lit up like a Christmas tree on Friday and Saturday nights as farm families came in from miles around. Charles Williamson planned it as the great metropolis of western New York, and accordingly laid it out with the green squares and broad straight boulevards that it still enjoys.
*Bath is the seat of Steuben, home to the clerk, the courthouse, the surrogate, the county office building, the prison, the county historical society – not to mention the county fairgrounds. It’s the place where people go to get help.. from the ARC, the V.A., the Davenport Hospital, and (from 1863 to 1958) the Davenport Home (or orphanage) for Girls.
*At 4 PM on Friday (June 2) I’m leading a free historic walk through the village, sponsored by Steuben County Historical Society. We’re going to start at Historical Society headquarters, the 1831 Magee House (old Bath library, next to the new Bath library). It’s going to be kind of a mixed bag, taking in architecture, church history, transportation history, community history, and tales of days gone by.
*Take Pulteney Square, for instance. This is said to be where Charles Williamson and his party first started clearing trees in 1793, making space for the new home that he had already named Bath. Until 1910 the Land Office faced the Square, still selling off those 1.2 million acres that Williamson represented. Desperate farmers sent angry delegates where after the Erie Canal opened and collapsed their land values. They demanded, and finally received, revaluations on their mortgages.
*William Jennings Bryan thundered forth here in the 1900 presidential campaign, condemning imperialism and calling for a government that worked on behalf of its people.
*The courthouse faces the Square from the east side. This is where draft contingents gathered every month during World War II, to be sworn in and then marched (very badly, I suppose) to the depot and off to their fates, while the Old-Timers Band (augmented by a few callow youths awaiting their own call-ups) serenaded them.
*John Magee erected the large brick building facing the Square from the west as home for the Bank of Steuben, the first bank in this county. He built it at the same time as he built the Magee House, and later generations would know it as the Masonic temple.
*Facing the Square from the south is the magnificent First Presbyterian Church, with its rose window, its monumental stonework, and the carillon that from time to time fills the Square with music.
*Running straight north from the Square is Liberty Street, long the business and shopping district of Bath and indeed, as we said earlier, of the whole countryside. Alexander Graham Bell knew this street, while Glenn Curtiss and Charles Champlin knew it intimately. Civil War general William Woods Averell made his home on Liberty Street. James Wetmore, who grew up in Bath and became Acting Supervising Architect of the Treasury Department, made sure that Liberty Street got a fine new post office in 1928. He came to lay the cornerstone himself, and treasured that trowel forever after.
*Liberty Street is where you went to the movies (at the Babcock); where you bought shoes (from Orr’s or Castle’s); where you sent or received funds at Western Union; where you got your prescriptions (at Dildine’s, among others); where you did your Christmas shopping (at Grant’s), got an ice cream (the Olympia), grabbed some lunch, or even had Thanksgiving dinner (at the Chat). You could even go bowling on Liberty Street.
*You can do Town or Village business on Liberty Street, or get help from the Village police. Up at the north end, you can go to church (Methodist or Episcopal). Take a few more steps, and until fairly recently you could go to school. A few steps more, down East Washington, and you could go to the fair… since before the Civil War.
*All in all, Bath is worth a visit! Come join us, hear some stories, and share a few of your own.