On one day in 1946, there were 32 infants in the maternity ward at Corning Hospital… part of the first cohort of Baby Boomers. What was our region like in the days of the Baby Boom?
*The period of the 1950s saw monumental changes in our area. More changes would come following the 1972 flood, and still more as Corning Incorporated changed the focus of its local activities. But in many ways, the area we know was largely formed in this period, by such significant events as these.
*Corning introduced zoning of January 1, 1950. Painted Post Indian statue installed, 1950. The current statue in Painted Post is the fourth in a series — the first two were flat sheet metal. A fully-rounded statue was blown down and broken during a 1948 windstorm, and the current statue installed two years later. All three earlier Indians are at the Erwin Depot Museum.
*Corning Glass Center/Corning Museum of Glass opened, 1951. It’s been through several major revampings and expansions (not to mention a major flood), but the Museum of Glass came in with the new decade.
*Erie Railroad tracks moved north Corning, 1952. Until than, multiple tracks ran right through the city. People in Corning lived with the noise, the smoke, the danger, and the snarled traffic until the lines were moved to what’s essentially their current routes. The yards were moved down to Gang Mills at the same time.
*In 1953, polo was epidemic in Steuben County.
*Erie Avenue becane Denison Parkway in 1954. With the tracks all torn up and removed, the street was renamed to fit with its new identity as a business district. Governor Tom Dewey came for the dedication.
*Corning-Painted Post School District was approved in1954. The proposal sparked fierce controversy, but the area was still served by 62 districts, most operating a single one-room school… and scarcely half the one-room students went on to high school. Even the referendum sparked bitterness. Because of a quirk in the law, folks in the Southside District 9 were not allowed to vote. Folks in the rural towns were angry that there was only one polling place, and they had to come into the city in order to vote. Then it snowed. But the proposal passed, new modern facilities started going up, and the last set of one-room schools finally closed in 1957.
*Watkins Glen International opened its dedicated track in 1956. After an accidental death on a crowded sidewalk, the auto races moved for several years to rural roads in the Town of Dix. In 1956 the new closed course was opened, with enthusiastic drivers voluntarily taking their chances on a surface that was not yet cured.
*At this time there were 300 dairies in the Town of Bath, half-a-dozen of them within the Village limits.
*Watson Homestead opened in 1957. A year before his death in 1956 Thomas Watson established a Declaration of Trust for the old family farm (his birthplace) and started working with an architect. In 1957 the retreat and conference center opened its doors for the first time.
*In 1958 the Courier and Advocate newspapers merged in Bath and became a general newspaper, ending over a hundred years of partisan newspapers operated on behalf of political parties.
*Corning Community College opened in 1958. The old School 3 on Chemung Street was home to 118 students and ten faculty (six of them full-time). Also in 1958, the Davenport Home for Girls closed.
*At about the same time, Steuben County Fair switched from a September date to an August date.
*Southern Tier Library System opened in 1959.
*The sixties, of course, continued the theme of great change.
*Ira Davenport Memorial Hospital opened in 1960, helped along by assets transferred from the defunct Davenport Home.
*Reportedly the Gardiner Road School in Bath closed in 1961. That’s the latest date I’ve seen for a one-room school operating.
*A 1962 meeting at Keuka College formed the Finger Lakes Trail Conference, and began building what is today a thousand-mile trail system. That same year, Glenn Curtiss Museum opened up in the old Hammondsport Academy building.
*The Southern Tier expressway was coming into existence by fits and starts. The Erie Railroad merged with the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad in 1960, and passenger traffic for Steuben County ended in the 1960s.
*In 1963 a multi-day forest fire raged above Bath between Cameron Road and Babcock Hollow Road. In the following year the Village began the process of buying land and creating Mossy Bank Park.
*BOCES came into existance in 1965, and in 1968 we switched from a Board of Supervisors to a County Legislature.
*Much of that didn’t matter much if you were a kid. Life revolved around school – very likely shiney and new – Scouts, Little League, TV, drive-ins, toys, games, music on the radio – it was, in many ways, a very child-centered age. All in all, there were worse ways to grow up. We’ll be talking about those days in our September presentation, “Back to the Bay Boom,” 4 PM Friday, September 7, at Bath Fire Hall. It’s free and open to the public – we hope you’ll join us!