The Lindenwald Haus

 by Rachel Dworkin, archivist

Around 7:30pm on the night of March 28, 2022, flames erupted from the Lindenwald Haus at 1526 Grand Central Avenue in Elmira. The fire began in the attic and quickly engulfed the roof. For two hours, firefighters battled the blaze, leaving extensive water damage behind in their wake. The cause of the fire still remains under investigation and the fate of the building is uncertain. 

 While today the home at 1526 Grand Central Avenue is best remembered as a bed and breakfast, it did not begin that way, but rather as a social service. In 1874, Mrs. Sarah Jones proposed a Home for the Aged where Elmira’s elderly citizens without families could live and be cared for in their old age. Jones was involved in a number of charities. During the Civil War, she had volunteered as a nurse and helped to organize the Elmira Sanitary Commission. After the war, she was instrumental in the creation of the Orphan’s Home. The first meeting of the Society for the Home for the Aged was held in her parlor and within three years, Jones and her allies managed to raise enough funds to begin construction of the home. Dr. Edwin Eldridge of Eldridge Park fame donated the land. On July 1, 1880, the Home for the Aged at 1526 Grand Central Avenue opened for residents.

During its 109 years of operation, the Home for the Aged housed over 500 hundred of Elmira’s elderly residents. Anyone over the age of 60 could apply to live there. They would pay an entrance fee and then sign over all of their financial assets to the Home in order to pay for their continued care. Life at the Home was like a cross between a boarding house and a retirement community. Residents had their own bedrooms. There were parlors for socializing and meals were served in a communal dining room. Staff were on hand to provide assistance and nursing as residents’ health deteriorated. In many ways, it was a pre-cursor to the type of assisted living facilities common now.

Over the years, the Home for the Aged struggled to find space for everyone who wanted to live there. In 1906, a 2-story annex was added. The annex brought the total number of available rooms up to 48. In 1989, the Home for the Aged moved to a new facility on the Southside and the house at 1526 Grand Central Avenue soon took on a new purpose and a new name.

The Lindenwald Haus was born from a case of mistaken identity. In 1990, Sharon and Michael Dowd purchased the house at 1526 Grand Central Avenue in the hopes of turning it into a bed and breakfast. During their initial visit, Sharon thought she spotted a linden tree in the front yard and thought Lindenwald (meaning linden forest) would be a nice nod to her German heritage. It turned out the tree was actually a red maple. Shortly after they purchased the house, the couple planted a bunch of linden trees around the property to make the name accurate.

The Dowds opened their Lindenwald Haus for business on February 26, 1992. In the two years since they’d purchased it, they had invested a great deal of time and money renovating the building. Local interior designer Annie Werner redid the dining room and parlors to reflect their original gilded age glory. On the upper floors, the Dowds combined rooms to make larger suites, each with their own bathrooms. In 1998, they sold to Sara and Cortland Woodward who ran it, along with their children, until 2014 when they sold it to the Elmira Jackals to be used as a team boarding house. By 2019, it was back on the market and it has been empty since. 

 

Given the extensive damage to the roof, it will likely be awhile before the Lindenwald Haus is ready to open again, assuming it ever will. Still, no cultural landmark is dead so long as there’s someone to remember it. If you have images, artifacts, or stories to share about the Lindenwald Haus or Home for the Aged, we would love to add them to our collections. Please call me at (607) 734-4167 ex 207 or e-mail me at archivist@chemungvalleymuseum.org if you have something you’d like to share.

Federation Farm

by Erin Doane, Curator

Federation Farm was a residential treatments center for children who were undernourished, anemic, or had been exposed to tuberculosis. The farmhouse, located on six acres of land on Hoffman Street in Elmira, opened its doors on April 14, 1917. Creation of the farm was spearheaded by two members of the Women’s Federation of Social Services, Mrs. John M. Connelly and Mrs. Thomas Fitzgerald. They were able to purchase the farm property with money from the sale of Red Cross seals and a donation from Mrs. J. Sloat Fassett.

Federation Farm

Tuberculosis was a major problem in the early 1900s. The disease mainly affects the lungs and is spread through the air from one person to another. Crowded living conditions and poor hygiene could increase rates of infection. The purpose of the Federation Farm was to help prevent the spread of the disease by removing children from poor conditions and building up their health. It was estimated that it would cost six times as much to treat and care for someone with tuberculosis as to prevent its onset through good nutrition and a healthy outdoor environment. Children between the ages of five and twelve in homes where there had been cases of tuberculosis were recommended for treatment at the farm with no cost to the families.

Children playing at Federation Farm

Federation Farm was seen as an ideal place for children to gain weight and build up their health. Situated on the outskirts of the city, there was plenty of open space and fresh air. Skinny, pale children would be kept at the farm fulltime from as little as a month to up to two years until they were robust and healthy. Physicians examined the children when they first arrived and continued treating them throughout their stay. Parents were allowed to visit on weekends but otherwise the children were under the full charge of the matron. Most of their time was spent outdoors, playing and helping in the garden or with the chickens. A teacher appointed by the Elmira City School District came daily to teach lessons on the porch.

A class on the porch

When the farm first opened in 1917, it could accommodate 12 children. Before any of them arrived, the public was invited to tour the home. It was reported that the children would enjoy the most modern conveniences including electric lights, a water heater, and a hot air furnace. The bedrooms on the first floor for the girls and second floor for the boys were all prettily decorated with blue checkered blankets on the beds. There were also sleeping porches. They were sure to benefit from the wholesome environment and five healthy meals a day.

Children helping in the garden

The Federation Farm operated entirely on donations – both money and materials. Toys, books, ice skates, canned fruit and vegetables, and even the beds that the children slept in were all donated. Proceeds from the sale of Christmas seals by the Red Cross went to keeping the farm operating and donations from private individuals and organizations were solicited to meet deficits.

The Odd Fellows and Rebekahs held

fundraisers to help support Federation

Farm throughout the 1920s

While many people contributed to keep the farm open, it perpetually struggled to find funding. It was close to shutting down in 1919 before New York State Governor Alfred E. Smith helped push the sale of Christmas Seals, its main source of revenue. In 1927, the Exchange Club in Elmira held an emergency vote and decided to finance the farm to keep it from closing due to lack of funds. Later that year, the Chemung County Board of Supervisors voted to take over management. With the county in control, tax dollars were then used to fund operations and maintenance. The farm became known as the Chemung County Preventorium and was placed under the same management as the Chemung County Sanatorium.

By 1940, the number of children being treated at the farm had dropped significantly. Over the years, hundreds of children had been treated there. In 1926 alone, 49 children had been in residence and 143 medical treatments and operations of various kinds were provided. In his statement to the Board of Supervisors in November of that year, Dr. Arthur W. Booth reported that only eight patients remained on the farm. With reluctance, he recommended that the Preventorium discontinue its activities and he submitted no budget for the next year. Parents took the last children home after a Christmas party on December 18, 1940. In 1943, the building was razed and the property became part of the federal housing project that was built to accommodate workers in the local wartime defense industries.