A few weeks ago we looked at things that were happening exactly a hundred years ago, in 1920. Today let’s take a time machine back, and tour our area to see what was new and fresh then, and old friends to us now.
To begin our trip, we can sit in on foundational meetings for the brand-new incorporated Village of South Corning – home to St. Mary’s Cemetery, St. Mary’s Orthodox Cemetery, most of Hope Cemetery, a massive memorial arch for glass workers killed in a train crash, and the Town of Corning offices.
We can start 1921 in Wayland, at the Bennett’s Motors building on Route 15. Sad to say the family business closed at the end of last year, but the building will now be used by the ambulance corps.
Since we have a time machine, zipping over to Painted Post takes no time at all. Here we can see the foursquare old Erwin Muncipal Building, “built like a fortress” according to new owners, which allowed it to survive floods in 1935 and 1972. Keep your eye on it – the owners have great plans.
Just a few blocks down, but a year forward, we enter Riverside, incorporated as a village in 1922. It was formerly named Centerville, and also got hammered by those floods.
Continue on down Pulteney Street, once again jogging a year ahead, and we can look at the still-impressive Hotel Stanton on Bridge Street. In Bath the municipal building (which looks a lot like the Erwin building) was dedicated as a Great War memorial in 1923. That same year the new K-12 Haverling School opened at Liberty and Washington… most people know it nowadays as the old Dana Lyon school.
Up in Prattsburgh the Air-Flo building has been substantially altered, but it also first saw the light of day in 1923. And back at Wayland we can admire the 1923 American Legion hall, which was built to include a movie theater, and operated as such for decades.
Head south on Route 21, smoothly transitioning to 1924 as we go, and we’ll arrive at the Village of North Hornell – the last municipality to be created in Steuben County, and home to the new St. James Mercy Center. Driving on into the City of Hornell we can admire the neoclassical Lincoln School, now on the National Register of Historic Places after providing a neighborhood school for generations of families.
Back in Prattsburgh we’re bound to be impressed by the Franklin Academy (Prattsbugh Central School) and the ornate Presbyterian Church. The side-by-side structures went up in 1924, after their historic side-by-side predecessors burned down together on a memorable winter’s night in 1923. (The school’s been added to considerably in the last century, of course.)
On a less-dramatic note we can stop at the Babcock building on Bath’s Liberty Street, opened as a new-fangled movie theater (silents only) in 1924. The auditorium itself is gone, but many, many folks still fondly remember Friday nights or Saturday afternoons at the Babcock. But the street level later become part of Bath National Bank, now Five Star Bank. Unfortunately that branch has just been closed, so who knows what the Babcock faces as its second century approaches?