Tuesday, August 7, 2012

First Erie County Fair Held in Buffalo Courthouse

  The Ladies were a bit reluctant to attend the first Erie County Fair in 1841, so officials announced: "Constables will be on grounds to preserve order and the visits of the ladies will be welcomed to the exhibition."
Old Courthouse Where The First Annual Erie County Fair 
was Held in 1841 at Lafayette Square. Cleared Away 1876
  Thus reassured, the ladies tied on there bonnets, and sallied forth. They even attended the plowing matches, one of the main attractions of early fairs, and it was reported "more than 2,000 people gathered in carriages and on horseback. A great many ladies, lured by delicious weather and the interest of the occasion, graced the attendance, adding interest and brilliancy to the scene." Even in those days the ladies did not like to miss any of the fun.
  The Erie County Agricultural Society had been formed in 1819, Dr. Cyranius Chapin, President. The first large gathering of livestock in the Village of Buffalo was at the first county fair, held in Buffalo in the autumn of 1820 before Erie County was divided from Niagara County in 1821.  The gathering may have been the occasion of some transactions in livestock.  This was at Main St. at the Terrace. Dr. Cyrenius Chapin caused twenty head of cattle and sheep to be driven in from one of his five farms; and another farmer, "rather against his will," selected forty of his best sheep and sent them in to the fair, but it did not become an annual event till 1841. On Wednesday, October 6, 1841 a fair was held in Buffalo's old Courthouse. This was a white pillared building that stood on the present site of the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library. 
Dr. Ebenezer Johnson's Estate on Delaware Ave. where 
Fair was Held in 1842
   Exhibits of needlework, fruit, flowers and vegetables were arranged on tables in the grand jury rooms, and behind the courthouse were the livestock and farm machinery. Among the premiums awarded were a first of $10 to Stephen Osborn of Clarence for the finest stallion; Lewis F. Allen of Black Rock received $6 for the best full-blooded bull.
  The following year the fair was held on Tuesday October 11, on the grounds of the Dr. Ebenezer Johnson Estate on Delaware Ave. at Johnson Park. Premiums up to $400 were awarded and a few of them were; Best Stallion, Philip Enders, "Belport", Amherst $6; Best Durham Bull -- Cha's Sweetapple, Colden, $6; sheep--Best fine wooled buck--Levi Pratt, Aurora, $3; swine--Best boar royal-V.Gould, Hamburg, $5.
  That year, premium crop Indian Corn yielded 57 bushels to the acre: oats, 67 bushels, and barley, 42 bushels. There was also a fine display of Honey, apples, squashes, fowls, flowers--and the cheeses entered by H. Arnold and Truman Austin of Hamburg "were truly magnificent." Fine Patchwork quilts, rag rugs and samplers were among the household articles exhibited. One enterprising husband and wife team exhibited silk of homemade manufacture.  Matthew Conklin of Clarence won $3 for the best silk cocoons and $2 for the best 20 skeins of silk. His wife was awarded a diploma for "one pair of superior silk stockings." 
  Crowds at the early fairs, really turned out to watch the plowing matches and marvel at the powerful horses pulling with all their might. First the ground was measured off and staked. Each contestant was allotted a quarter of an acre, and the time allowed was one hour and fifteen minutes. In 1842, a beautifully matched chestnut team, belonging to Peter Curtiss of Buffalo, worked the hardest, plowed the deepest and finished in 51 minutes, winning the first premium of $10. A team belonging to J. Frick finished second in 54 minutes, but did not plow so deep. There was only one ox team entered, a team of young red oxen belonging to Henry Johnson of Lancaster. There was no competition, but the oxen plowed the ground in 47 minutes, so were awarded second premium of $7.  
   In 1873 it was announced in the paper, the annual Exhibition and Fair of the Erie County Agricultural Society will be held on the grounds of the Society at Hamburgh on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday Commencing September 30th.  A liberal and comprehensive premium list is offered which cannot fail to draw out a good exhibition.  The grounds of the Society which are among the most beautiful and picturesque in the State, have been put in capital order.  The half mile track will be in first rate condition.  In addition to the liberal Society premiums for speed, a special purse of $100 is offered by C.J. Hamlin, Esq., to be trotted for by horses six years old or under, raised in the county, and whose sires are kept in the county for stock purposes.
   A refreshment saloon will be kept on the grounds during the fair by Daniel Prindle.  The opening of the Buffalo & Jamestown Railroad has added greatly to the facilities for reaching the grounds.  Special trains will be run during each day of the fair.

    By 1850 however, it was thought wise to find a country location for the fair, so that year it was held in Aurora. In 1851, it was in Lancaster, in 1852 in East Hamburg, 1853 in Cold Spring, 1854 in Aurora again. In 1855 the first admission fee, 12 1/2 cents, was charged. Then for nine years the fair was held near the Indian Church in West Seneca, and an omnibus left Exchange street every half hour for the fair grounds. In 1866 and 1867 the location was changed to Springville. In 1868 the site was moved to  Hamburg where it has been held ever since.



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Sunday, February 12, 2012

Dennis Gallagher "Any Style, Any Place, Anybody"

Rassle Champ of 1888 Hasn't Yielded His Throne 
   It took 89 years to pin Dennis Gallagher. Dinny Gallagher, the First Ward Irishman, was a magic name in the 1880's and '90's throughout the world. He was famous in Paris. He was the toast of London. He was a 165 pound Buffalo Irishman who met every heavyweight wrestling challenger in the world. And won...

 January 15, 1936 & September 10, 1951
Dennis Gallagher Demonstrating a Reversible
Half-Nelson Hold
   Dennis Gallagher would like to defend the world's wrestling championship he won 48 years ago and never relinquished. The Gallagher spirit is willing but the Gallagher body is weak. For Dennis is 71 now and although he looks a score years younger and still carries himself with all the poise of a true athlete, the verve has left his muscles. In fact when you look back at the record of the Buffalo champion, you wonder that he is still included in our list of active citizens. 
  Thirty three winters and summers he spent in the wrestling game when there was little taint of suspicion associated with the grapplers, when it was at it's peak and tough. He gave away tremendous odds in weight for at his best Dennis Gallagher tipped the scales at not more than 175 pounds. He met all comers and took the short end of the decision very seldom.
  Grayed, with bushy eyebrows, springy step, and enough physical power left to hold his own in some parts, Gallagher entertains few briefs for the present crop of rasslers. "The very best of today would not even be third raters back in the nineties," said Gallagher. "Frank Gotch who was of a later day than I, could lick three or four of the better men today in the same night. And there were some pretty fair wrestlers before Gotch's time. Today, they don't wrestle as we knew wrestling. They act. If I were 40 years, yes, even 30 years younger, I would like to climb under the ropes with some of our modern wrestlers. But.....well, just but. Why waste time in day dreaming."
  DENNIS GALLAGHER, BUFFALO'S FAMOUS WRESTLER.
     This splendidly developed young Buffalonian is now famed the country over. He was born 
   in this city in 1864. When a mere youngster he and his brother used to wrestle together. 
   Dennis's first public wrestling was in 1881. During the last six years he has met the most 
   famous wrestlers—Duncan Ross, Mervine Thompson, Dufur, Flagg, Andre, Christol,
   Martin and William Muldoon, the Jap, Sorakichi, Quigley and others. 
       He has never lost a match, excels in mixed wrestling, and stands ready today to wrestle
   a mixed match with any man in the world. He weighs 165 pounds, and with his compact, 
   clean muscles without one ounce of superfluous weight, is a picture of health and physical
   development. (1880s newspaper)
  Dennis, and if you were Irish you'll pronounce it Dinnis,  won the world's three style wrestling title from William Muldoon in Turn Verein Hall, Sacramento, in 1888. He added two styles in order to meet the challenges of foreign invaders, established himself as the king and never vacated his throne. The five methods were catch-as-catch-can, Graeco Roman, side hold and harness, collar and elbow and back hold. Dennis never lost his title because no man could ever beat him three out out of the five styles.
  He opened a concert hall where Kleinhan's Building now stands but sold out to Mike Eagan to tour Europe. Eagan later joined with Mike Shea. When the Academy of Music was in it's heyday in Buffalo He was invited to play the part of "Charles the Wrestler" in "As You Like It," a play starring Margeret Mather. It was the only "fixed" match he ever participated in, that with Orlando.    
   Dinny Gallagher, the First Ward Irishman, was a magic name in the 1880's and '90's throughout the world. He was famous in Paris. He was the toast of London. He was a 165 pound Irishman who met every heavyweight wrestling challenger in the world. And won. That was in the days when they wrestled. Dennis won every wrestling title the world knows. He won the catch-as-catch-can crown, Graeco Roman, side holds or Yankee style, square holds and back holds titles. "Any style, any place, anybody," Dinny used to say. I wrestled 'em all, not this play acting stuff.  "These actors today are Hippodromers, in my time I could have taken three or four of them the same night." Dinny wasn't boasting, 62 years ago he won two titles in two nights at Niagara Falls.
"Dinny" Gallagher

  Dennis weighed 162 then. The first night he threw Georges LaGrange, the French champion, in 15 seconds. The following night he wrestled the 300 pound strongman, Sebastian Miller, a German champion, and won. This took Dinny 15 minutes. "He was pretty hard to reach around," he explained a bit apologetically.  For all this he got $50. Today, men like Gorgeous George, the Great Togo and Lord Blears, average $50,000 to $70,000 a year. Dinny's fame was at it's peak when he wrestled for the Pelican Club, a noblemen's organization  in London, and for the jockey Club of Paris, in the famous Folies Bergere. There he defeated Antoni Perri, the Terrible Greek, and got $1,000. That was his biggest purse.
   At the sunset of his career in 1898, he lost a non title match with Ismaiel Yousouf, the Terrible Turk. Yousouf packed 380 pounds on his six foot seven inch frame, and caught Gallagher at a time when he hadn't fully recovered from an attack of blood poisoning. Dinny operated a tavern at Main and Clinton Streets. People jammed it just to get a look at him. Mothers named there sons after him. Young men followed him, imitated his style of clothes.
  It took 89 years to pin Dennis Gallagher who passed away on September 7, 1951. "When I go," he used to say, "I want a quiet funeral, nothing elaborate." On September 11, he had a quiet funeral, nothing elaborate. Then they took Old Dinny to quiet, tree shrouded Holy Cross Cemetery, where he took his first...and final pin fall.


THE NATIONAL POLICE GAZETTE: NY
OCTOBER 20 1883

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

The Larkin Administration Building - A 'Wright' of Passage in Buffalo


Larkin Building 1930's
  The Larkin Building was designed in 1904 by Frank Lloyd Wright for the Larkin Soap Company of Buffalo, New York, at 680 Seneca Street.  The five story red brick building was noted for many innovations, including air conditioning, stained glass windows, built-in desk furniture, and suspended toilet bowls (hung from the walls, not supported by the floor). Sculptor Richard Bock provided ornamentation for the building.
    Through Martin, Wright got the job of designing the Larkin Company administration building, the first entirely air-conditioned modern office building on record….It is blocklike and extremely simple in its forms, and has very little ornamentation….the Larkin building was decisively vertical…Indeed, it was the first consciously architectural expression of the kind of American structure which Europeans were beginning to discover to their delight: the great clusters of grain silos and similar industrial monuments that men like Corbu and Gropius found so exciting in the early 1920s…” — Peter Blake. Frank Lloyd Wright: Architecture and Space.

Courier Express September 27, 1942
Interior Open Office Atrium with Skylights

  ...The man who has designed hundreds of outstanding buildings, written an autobiography and numerous magazine articles and lectured extensively to young architects in Europe and America, got his first real break in Buffalo. The Larkin Administration Building has profound significance in the history of American Architecture. Erected in 1906, it was the country's first ultra-modern office building, completely reversing the 19th century tendency to lavish ornamentality. It was the country's first air-conditioned office building and was among the first fire-proof structures built. Installed in it, and part of the architects plan, was the first metal furniture made in the United States. Magnesite as architectural material first was employed in it's construction and it boasted the first metal bound plate-glass doors and windows.
   But critics of that day were not impressed. Wright's idea's were denounced as "uncouth" and "in-human" and his innovations were declared to be "without any sympathetic alliance to culture." The leading architectural publication of the day, Architectural Record, declared: "This work may have some claim to consideration as a 'work of art' as an ocean liner, a locomotive or a battleship."....

Larkin Company Office Building Changes Hands
Representative of Pennsylvania Purchaser Says Acquisition of Building by Army 
"Is Still in The Talk Stage"
BEN May 24, 1943
Frank Lloyd Wright
   The Larkin Administration Building, 680 Seneca Street, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, noted architect, has been sold to L.B. Smith, a Harrisburg contractor. The company made no comment on reports the structure, at one time reputed to be the largest private office building in the world, would be taken over by the Army to house many War Department offices in Buffalo. A. H. Miller, comptroller of L.B. Smith, Inc. who handled the negotiations for Mr. Smith, said there is nothing definite with respect to disposition of the building and that acquisition by the Army "is still in the talk stage."
Building Erected in 1906
  It was from this building, completed in 1906, that the Larkin Company, guided by the principles of it's founder, John D. Larkin, directed its "factory to family" dealings in the heyday of a mail order enterprise that flourished long before other similar concerns.  The retail business of the Larkin Store Corporation, which has been carried on in this building for the last five or six years, will be continued at this location. The store corporation has a lease on the building which runs for about nine months., Mr. Miller said. The company also will continue to carry on it's mail order business in household supplies, furniture and soft goods.

 Organ Included In Sale
  The building has a giant Moehler Pipe Organ, said to have been at the time of construction the fifth largest in the world, and which formally was played for the Larkin employees. The organ has been purchased with the building, and Mr. Miller said the purchasers plan to get in touch with the manufacturer, ascertain it's condition, and get an estimate of it's value in the event it is offered for sale. Mr. Smith heads a group of large construction companies. He is engaged in coal-stripping and quarrying enterprises in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. (Photo courtesy of The Organ Historical Society, see OHS website for detailed info about the organ)

Organ was located on the first floor atrium with the pipes
occupying the 4th and 5th floors
   
City May Advertise Larkin Building On National Scale
BEN November 1, 1946
  A national newspaper advertising campaign to sell the Larkin Administration Building, 608 Seneca Street, will be recommended to the Council Finance Committee Tuesday by Comptroller George W. Wannamaker. The building was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, nationally famous architect, and is said to have cost $4,000,000. The city acquired title through tax foreclosure.
  The building assessed at $240,000, has been vacant several years. Wannamaker said if the Finance Committee approves his plan, advertisements will be placed in the Buffalo Evening News, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Chicago Journal of Commerce and other publications with a national circulation.  "The only offer the city has received for this magnificent building is the sum of $26,000. This is only a small fraction of it's value. By use of a national newspaper campaign Buffalo may receive much higher bids and possibly attract a new business or industry to this city."


City's White Elephant Still Puzzles Council
BEN June 4, 1947
  The city is back where it started in its efforts to sell it's "white elephant," the old Larkin Company's Administration building at 680 Seneca Street.  Late Tuesday, the Common Council's Finance Committee decided to receive and file a $500 offer for a 90 day option to buy the building for $25,000. The offer was submitted several weeks ago by Maurice Yellen, attorney for an undisclosed client. The property has an assessed valuation of $221,810.
  On the basis of the offer, the committee two weeks ago recommended to the full membership of the council that the property be re-advertised for sale, even though the committee had already spent $6,000 for advertising. The committee, however, specified that the re-advertising include the city's willingness to give the prospective purchasers a 90 day option, a condition which was not included in the previous sales efforts.  The council approved the re-advertising, but at last week's meeting, the resolution was recalled from the Mayor and re-committed to the Finance Committee.
  "The only way to dispose of this property is to sell it at public auction, just as we do with other City owned property," said Councilman-at-Large George J. Evans, Republican majority leader. "Let somebody give us a bonafied offer, with 10% of the offer in cash. That will give us something on which to conduct an auction. We already spent much money advertising it, everybody ought to know by now that we're anxious to sell it."

BEN October 15, 1947
 Disposal of the City's White Elephant, the Larkin Company's old administration building at 680 Seneca Street, remains the real-estate puzzle, with no possibility of a solution in sight. The five story brick structure, once the most modern office building in the country, gradually is approaching a state in which it will be entirely useless. Every double-paned window is shattered. The tall iron gate which graced the entrance has toppled from rusty hinges. The iron fence topping a low brick wall went into war time scrap collection.
  The Larkin building, a headache to the city since it was acquired in tax foreclosure proceedings June 15, 1945, cost $4,000,000 to build and was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, a nationally famous architect.  Offers to purchase it for around $25,000, far less than it's assessed valuation of $239,000, including land, have been turned down. A national advertising campaign that cost $6,000 brought inquiries but no offers. The state rejected a suggestion that the building be converted  for emergency housing and the county took no action on a proposal to make it  headquarters of the Welfare Department.

BEN September 14, 1949
Committee Approves Larkin Building Sale

 At long last, the city Tuesday took a step toward getting rid of it's biggest real-estate headache, the 'white elephant' old Larkin Company Administration Building at 680 Seneca Street. The Council Finance Committee approved sale of the building for $5,000 to the Hunt Business Agency, acting for an undisclosed client. The agency has agreed to demolish the existing building and replace it with a taxable improvement costing not less than $100,000 within 18 months. Just what use the premises, which have an assessed valuation of $128,960, will be put to, has not been disclosed, however.
  The committee's action now goes to the full Council, which is expected to approve it Tuesday, although Councilman-at-Large George J. Young, Republican, said he was against selling the property for "only $5,000," when he claimed, "it would be used more advantageously for a playground."
   Originally the Larkin building was the most modern office structure in the U.S. It has been a municipal headache since the city acquired it for nonpayment of taxes in 1945. It originally cost around $4,000,000. The city has spent more than $6,000 in advertising for prospective purchasers.


Larkin Building Called Monument
  Buffalo Evening News New York Bureau
New York, Nov. 16 1949
Front Desk in Larkin Building
   Destruction of Buffalo's Larkin Building will be a great loss to coming generations, Architect J. Stanley Sharp contends in a letter to the New York Herald Tribune. The paper had carried remarks of Andrew C. Ritchie of the Museum of Modern Art, former director of Buffalo's Albright Art Gallery, and an editorial of it's own deploring the demolition of such monuments.
  "As an architect," writes Mr. Sharp, "I share the concern of many others over the destruction of the Frank Lloyd Wright's world famous office building in Buffalo. It is not merely a matter of sentiment; from a practical standpoint this structure can function efficiently for centuries. Modern engineering has improved upon the lighting and ventilation systems Mr. Wright used but that is hardly excuse enough to efface the work of the man who successfully pioneered in the solving of such problems. The Larkin Building set a precedent for many an office building we admire today and should be regarded not as an outmoded utilitarian structure but as a monument, if not to Mr. Wright's creative imagination, to the inventiveness of American design."

Built to last Forever, Famed Larkin 
Building is Tough on Wreckers
BEN May 16, 1950 - by Hilton Hornaday
   The Larkin office building in Seneca Street, once the princely throne of a business dynasty that sold soap and household products in 48 states, has come to the end of it's usefulness. It's steel girders will be used to shore up coal mines in West Virginia; it's brick and concrete debris will help fill the Ohio Basin (now Father Conway Park on Louisiana St.). Wreckers who took the job on tearing down the 44 year old building got more than they bargained for. It was built to stand forever.
  The floors of the seven-story structure are made of giant re-inforced concrete slabs, 10 inches thick, 17 feet wide, and 34 feet long. they are so heavy that when they are cut into sections to be removed, they are apt to crash to the floor below.  Structurally, the building is hardly without parallel. The floors are in tiers, around a deep well, and are supported by 24 inch steel girders, much larger in size than are generally used today.
  The wrecking contractors, Morris & Reimann, say the building designed by noted architect Frank Lloyd Wright, would cost  $7,000,000 to $10,000,000 to duplicate at present prices. It was purchased from the city for $5,000 by the Western Trading Corporation, on the condition it would raze the building and erect a new structure to cost around $100,000. The new building planned would be a motor freight terminal.
  The depredations that took place when the Larkin office building stood idle, while in the hands of the city, were not a pretty picture. Nearly every window had been broken, and thieves stripped the building of about 20 tons of copper, including the copper roof. When the Larkin clubs were popular, money from the customers poured into the Larkin building in such volume that it had to be tossed into baskets and barrels. The Larkin office staff performed its tasks while soft music was played on a famous pipe organ.
   View below looking north shows how the razing of the Larkin building on Seneca Street near Swan, is progressing. The building designed by Frank Llyod Wright and constructed in 1906 at a cost exceeding $6,000,000, is making way for a new building. The city sold the structure in November 1949 to the Western Trading Corporation for $5,000.
Famous Larkin Building Being Razed Under Sale Agreement Between City & Purchaser.

  In the end, the Larkin Building was sold for $5,000, a fraction of the cost of earlier offers of $25,000 or more, which were refused! And as the last article relates, the promised structure which was to replace the Larkin, was never built on the site. The end result was the city lost $1,000 on the deal and wound up with a PARKING LOT! As most people in the Buffalo area know, this is a scenario which has repeated itself many times over the past six decades. Buffalo is now graced with many 'historically significant' parking lots that tourists from around the world flock here to see! 
   Most of the Larkin Building itself never left Buffalo. Much of it is now located under Father Conway Park, the old Ohio Basin on Louisiana St., in the Old First Ward. This story is basically the 'rite of passage' most historically or architecturally significant buildings go through in Buffalo. Sometimes the outcome is good, sometimes not, just a roll of the dice, some arguments, lawsuits and if it's lucky it survives. Cultural Tourism is the Buzz Word around WNY this month. But in reality City Hall fights it on a daily basis although it won't admit it. 
   Hopefully, when the National Conference on Historic Preservation leaves here later this month (Oct. 2011), many of the Common Council members and other local representatives will have actually attended the workshops, lectures and tours, and not just use them as photo-ops. They need more than just a photograph taken, they need an education on the advantages and opportunities historic preservation provides for the region. It is Buffalo who needs to learn something from this convention, and start on a new course of understanding of it's heritage and what it means to this city and take advantage of the opportunities it presents for the future.

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