Racial Housing Covenants

 by Rachel Dworkin, archivist

In February 1958, Ganung Realty Company listed 917 Lake Street in Elmira for sale. The spacious home had 4 bedrooms, 1 bath, an attic playroom, multiple fireplaces, and an enclosed front porch. It also boasted a 2-car garage and a fenced-in back yard perfect for pets. The list price as $10,800 or approximately $125,000 in today’s dollars. There was one catch: no coloreds.

917 Lake Street

 

917 Lake Street realtor's notes.

Real covenants, or legal agreements related to land use, have a long history in American law. These agreements can be between the current owner and buyer, between the current owner and all future buyers, and between neighbors as in a home owners’ association. Covenants can lay out an action which must be performed or forbid an action. In the case of covenants between owners and buyers, the terms of the agreement are written right into the deed of sale. Up until fairly recently, it was legal to restrict the race of who could buy or rent a property.

In America, the first racially restrictive housing covenants emerged in the mid-19^th century. They didn’t become widespread, however, until 1917 when the Supreme Court struck down race-based municipal zoning laws in the case Buchanan v. Warley. White landowners turned to racial covenants to keep racial minorities out of their neighborhoods. The specific language used varied wildly. Some simply specified that owners must be white or American-born. Others named specific groups blocked from buying, most often Blacks, but frequently including Asians, Jews, and immigrants.

Locally, there is little evidence of racial zoning laws. There were, however, multiple housing developments with racial restrictions. From 1914 through 1916, the Glen View Manor development, located in West Elmira between Water and Church Streets across from Rorick’s Glen, was billed as “fully restricted” and “carefully restricted” with “not a lot sold to an undesirable party.” The Fairfax development, located on the Southside off Broadway, was more explicit with regard to racial segregation. A 1929 ad proudly proclaimed the development was restricted to white people only. Just a year later, the Blemont tract, between Lake and Grand Central Avenue on the northside, was similarly restricted. Most of West Elmira’s post-war construction was advertised as being a “restricted neighborhood.”

Ad for Fairfax development, June 28, 1929

 Civil rights activists did not take this lying down. The NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) and various buyers of color brought a series of lawsuits related to racial covenants. In 1926, the Supreme Court upheld them as legal in Corrigan v. Buckley as they were private and not government action. In 1948, however, the court reversed course in Shelley v. Kraemer, finding that, while having a housing covenant in and of itself didn’t violate the Fourteenth Amendment, using a court to enforce it did. Despite this, homeowners continued to use racial covenants until 1968 when Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act, better known as the Fair Housing Act, explicitly prohibited racial covenants and discrimination against renters and buyers based on race, color, religion, or nation of origin. The law was later expanded to include sex, family status, disability, and LGBTQ status.

Despite no longer being legal, the effects of racial housing covenants still linger today. The racist language is still written into historic deeds and appears on abstracts of title. Moreover, the economic impact still persists. Multiple generations of Black families were unable to build generational wealth through homeownership. Generally speaking, homeownership accounts for as much as two-thirds of individual household wealth. White families are four times more likely to inherit a house or received funds from the sale of one as Black families. Economists estimate that between 12 and 16% of the nation’s persistent racial wealth gap stems from this disparity. The house on Lake Street was far from an isolated incident and racial covenants restricted far more than where people could live.

 

When Lovell’s Drug Store Ran Out of Ice Cream

by Erin Doane, Senior Curator

Postcard of a watercolor painting of Lovell’s Snack Bar by Talitha Botsford

“Sorry! No More Ice Cream This Month!” read the advertisement in the Star-Gazette. It was November 15, 1944 and Lovell’s Drug Store has sold its quota of ice cream for the month. World War II was raging, cream and sugar were being rationed, and a milk shortage was looming. Yet, people still wanted their ice cream and local sellers were allowed a certain amount each month.

Star-Gazette, November 15, 1944

Lovell’s Drug Store at 1131 Lake Street had been in business for over 40 years by the time the U.S. entered World War II. It was started by Charles Lovell in 1900. Charles was born in Elmira in 1872. He attended School No. 4 (now Diven School) then went to the Elmira Free Academy. In 1891, he began his apprenticeship at E.A. Jones Drug Store. With the hands-on experience and correspondence courses, he passed the examination of the state board of pharmacy in 1897 and became a licensed pharmacist.

Charles Lovell and his wife Stella, c. 1900

He went to work at Hooker & Dorr’s Drug Store at the corner of Main and 3rd Streets in 1898. That same year, he was elected as a member of the New York Pharmaceutical Association.

Hooker & Dorr’s Drug Store, 1890s

Two years later, when an opportunity to purchase Frederick A. West’s drug store at 1134 Lake Street came up, Charles took it. In 1905, he moved the store across the road to 1131 Lake Street. Along with selling pharmaceuticals and health-related items, Charles added a soda fountain which offered ice cream and other treats. In later years, there was also a wide selection of candy and comic books that were enjoyed by students at near-by Diven School. 

Lovell’s Drug Store, 1908

Interior of Lovell’s Drug Store, Charles standing at left, 1910

Clayton Lovell took over the business from his father in 1939, though Charles remained working as pharmacist at the store until about a year before his death in 1953. It was Clayton who had to deal with the ice cream shortages in the 1940s.  

Ice cream had become an important part of the United States’ armed forces starting in World War I. On Navy hospital ships, ice cream was considered a nutritious, healthful food for sick and injured sailors and soldiers. By World War II, ice cream was officially designated by the War Production Board as a “wartime essential” alongside medical supplies and ammunition. Battleships and aircraft carriers were equipped with ice cream making machinery. Not only was ice cream considered important for health as a good source of vitamins, proteins, and minerals, it was also good for morale.

Members of the Women’s Ambulance and Defense Corps enjoying ice cream, 1944

Two of the main ingredients of ice cream, sugar and cream, were rationed on the home front to make sure the military had enough. In January 1944, it was reported that four-fifths of New York State’s milk and ice cream stocks had been taken to supply the troops. That year, there was concern that there would be a nationwide milk shortage as dairy farmers suffered from feed scarcity and lack of manpower and equipment for their operations. Fortunately, they were able to overcome these difficulties and by May 1944 more ice cream was promised for civilians. The War Food Administration approved the manufacture of about 30 million more gallons of ice cream for consumers at home.

Lovell’s advertisement, Star-Gazette, June 27, 1945

That boost really helped the local supply. In both February and March of 1944, Lovell’s Drug Store had run out of its quota of ice cream before the end of the month. They didn’t run short again until November 1944. The demand for ice cream at Lovell’s exceeded demand again in 1945 when sugar allotments were cut for manufacturers of sweets. In every month from the beginning of the year through August, except for May, Lovell’s ran out of ice cream. In February, they had already gone through their quote by the 12^th. The supply picked up right after the war ended in September 1945 and Lovell’s never advertised being out of ice cream again.

Back before the war, in 1939, Harry Pack started working at Lovell’s as a part-time carhop for the soda fountain. He was 16 years old at the time. In 1957, he bought the store from the Lovell family and kept the name, running it as Lovell’s Gay Nineties Original Soda Fountain. Harry’s grandson Theodore “Ted” Pack, Jr. took over operations in 1993 and ran it for two more years before having to close for good in 1995. The building was torn down in 2012, but many people have fond memories of the store, its ice cream treats, and the generations of families who served them.

Lovell’s advertisement, Star-Gazette, August 13, 1966

 

Lights, Camera, Action: Oliver Smith

By Susan Zehnder, Education Director

Recently, Kelsey Jones, the Chemung County historian, passed along the name of someone buried in Woodlawn Cemetery with impressive Hollywood ties. It’s not Hal Roach, who comes first to mind, but Oliver Lemuel Smith. His story was hidden because he doesn’t have an individual headstone. He is also interred in a family plot that has a different last name. With a little digging, here’s part of his story.

Oliver Lemeul Smith

Oliver Lemeul Smith was born on February 13, 1918, in Waupun, Wisconsin. He was the second of four children, having arrived seven years after an older brother. His father, Larue Free Smith, was a high school principal. His mother, Nina Kincaid, had graduated from Oberlin College and was the only child and heir to a wealthy family who owned a corset-making business with factories around the world. In 1908, the young couple had a lavish marriage ceremony at her parents’ home in Pennsylvania.

After Oliver, two more boys were born, and not ten years later, the couple divorced. Sometime before 1933, Nina married Ivan Max Bernkopf, from Waverly, NY, and moved to Corning. Bernkopf was a co-owner of successful department stores in Waverly and Corning and was active in local civic organizations including the Elks Club.

Despite the Great Depression, Oliver went to Penn State, then moved to New York City. In 1940 he joined other creative people living in Brooklyn Heights in a Victorian brownstone located at 7 Meddagh Street. Since all its residents had been born in February, it became known as the February House. Under the loose leadership of literary critic George Davis, it was to be a utopian commune offering its members a balance between spontaneity and creativity, and structure and domestic routine.

In addition to Oliver Smith, residents included writers A. H. Auden, Carson McCullers, and Jane and Paul Bowles; composer Benjamin Britten; and performer Gypsy Rose Lee. Frequent visitors to the house included Salvador Dali, Anais Nin, and Thomas Mann’s son, Klaus. Smith was apparently responsible for tending the furnace, washing dishes, and generally helping keep various creative tempers calm. Unfortunately, when Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941, vehement disagreements about U.S. entry into the war fractured relationships beyond repair and the commune was disbanded.

Around this time Smith found his career on the rise. He designed sets for the ballets Saratoga (1941) and Rodeo (1942), and his work caught the eye of choreographer Jerome Robbins and composer Leonard Bernstein. Soon he was designing for Broadway and the movies.

My Fair Lady, Sketch and Photo

Like many artists associated with the February House group, Smith was openly homosexual, and his name is connected to many creative men of the time. Eventually he found his life partner, Richard “Dick” D’Arcy, a Broadway dancer, and they would be together until Smith’s death.

In 1944 Smith was hired to be co-director of the American Ballet Theater, a position he held until 1980. He was reappointed co-director again from 1990 to 1992, before being named director emeritus. Over the span of his design career, Smith received more than twenty-five Tony nominations for his work on plays and musicals, and he won ten. This made him the most recognized designer of his time. Shows he worked on included My Fair Lady (1957), West Side Story (1958), The Sound of Music (1960), Becket (1961), Camelot (1961), Hello, Dolly! (1964), and Baker Street (1965). He also designed for the movies, notably On the Town (1949), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), and Guys and Dolls (1955). He was nominated for an Academy Award in the category of Best Art Direction (Color) for Guys and Dolls, but lost to the designer for the movie Picnic.

Guys and Dolls, sketch and photo

In addition to his professional work, Smith was on the faculty of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. For over 23 years, he taught and mentored many young students who went on to become influential designers. In 1981 Oliver Smith was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. The Library of Congress archives contain 305 boxes of his design sketches and notes.

In the studio

In 1994 Oliver Lemuel Smith died of emphysema in Brooklyn at the age of 76. His body was cremated and his ashes were placed with his mother’s grave in Woodlawn. Near her grave is a headstone for his youngest brother, who had died in 1982. Smith’s partner, dancer Richard D’Arcy, lived another eight years. He was cremated and interred elsewhere.

It is curious that Oliver Smith ended up in Woodlawn. His ties seem to be through his mother’s second husband’s family, the Bernkopfs. They were related to the Rosenbaum family, who also owned a department store. When Oliver’s stepfather Ivan Max Bernkopf died in 1951, he was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, not far from the Rosenbaum family plot. Two weeks after his death, Nina lost her mother as well. She moved to Brooklyn, NY, where she died in 1979. She was buried near her husband in the Bernkopf plot at Woodlawn, though no obituary was published. So, no marker for Oliver Smith exists, but at the very least, some of his story can now be retold.

Some of these photos came from a profile on Oliver Smith published by the Waupun, WI, Historical Society. When I contacted them about using the photos, they shared that they do a Ghost Walk and one year, Smith had been a featured character.

The Tale of Katie Bredehoft or How to Conduct an Investigation

 By Rachel Dworkin, archivist

Bredehoft marker, 2026

 

On April 14, 2026, the Chemung County Historical Society unveiled our latest historic marker on Bancroft Road. It marks the spot where a group of boys found the body of Katie Bredehoft in the creek under a bridge on January 6, 1884. She had been murdered there by her fiancé William Menken two days earlier. Bredehoft was a German immigrant and resident of New York City. She had been in Elmira for less than a week at the time of her murder. Upon learning of her story, I wondered how the police had ever identified her, let alone solved her murder.

 

Sketch of crime scene from Elmira Advertiser, 1884

Police today have a number of advantages when it comes to identifying unknown victims. For fresher finds, there are fingerprints. They were first used in 1882 as part of a wider system of biometric data on people being arrested collected by the Paris police department by clerk Alphonse Bertillon. By 1892, a detective in Buenos Aires, Argentina, had successfully used fingerprints found at a crime scene to identify a suspect. By the 1900s, fingerprinting became widely used. In 1999, the United States introduced the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS). The database, which is maintained by the FBI, contains fingerprints from convicted criminals, as well as anyone fingerprinted for employment, immigration, or other purposes. Today, one out of every six Americans is in the IAFIS database. As an immigrant, Katie Bredehoft would have been in the database if she were murdered today.

DNA is another valuable tool. Like fingerprints, everyone’s DNA is distinct. Unlike fingerprints, however, the DNA of related individuals is similar enough that unidentified victims can be identified through their relatives. In 1998, the FBI launched CODIS (Combined DNA Index System), a national DNA database that includes convicted criminals, missing persons, and families of missing persons. Since 2020, immigrants have also been required to submit DNA samples for CODIS. In addition to using governmental databases, there are a couple of cases where police departments across the nation have turned to commercial DNA databases to identify both victims and criminals. In 2017, investigators used the personal genomics website GEDmatch to identify the family of the Golden State Killer, eventually leading to the conviction of Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. In 2023, police in San Diego used 23andme to find the relatives of an unidentified woman killed in 1986.

In addition to fingerprints and DNA, since 2005, the FBI has maintained a database of dental records called the National Dental Image/Information Repository (NDIR). The database contains dental records of known missing persons and unidentified remains. When someone is reported missing by their family, the police request their records and upload them to the database. When an unidentified body is found, x-rays of their teeth are crosschecked against the database. While a modern Katie Bredehoft would have been in IAFIS and CODIS, she was never reported missing. She and her killer, William Menken, were supposed to be heading to their wedding in Baltimore.

Of course, the detectives handling the Bredehoft investigation in 1884 didn’t have access to any of those technologies and database. Instead, they relied on the public to help identify her. On the Monday after her body was removed from the ice, it was taken to the morgue where literally hundreds of people were invited to come view it. She was placed, frozen, in a doorway adjacent to a hallway through which the viewers would pass. On the Wednesday following her discovery, local photographer Charles Tomlinson took a series of photographs of her face and body.

In the end, the method bore fruit. Mrs. Tubbs, a housekeeper at the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western train depot, recognized Bredehoft as one half of a couple that she had seen getting off a train the morning of January 2nd. Another woman, Mrs. Kelly, who ran an eatery where the couple had stopped for lunch on the day of the murder, also recognized Bredehoft. Moreover, she provided the clue that lead to the identification of her killer. William Menken had a nasty scar and glass eye. While at Kelly’s eatery, he asked her if Norton still lived in the area.

Sketch of Menken & Bredehoft from Sunday Tidings, 1884

 

As it turned out, William Menken had been imprisoned at the Elmira Reformatory for burglary until 1882 when he was paroled to work under supervision at the nearby Norton farm. Thanks to the carefully maintained records at the Reformatory, officials were able to quickly identify Menken as the man seen with their unidentified victim. They tracked him to his sister’s home in Flatbush, New York. Detectives in New York City quickly learned that Menken had been courting a Miss Katie Bredehoft. Using Tomlinson’s photographs, her younger sister, Mary, confirmed that the body found in Elmira was that of her sister. Within four days after the discovery of her body, the police had found her killer and successfully identified her body thanks, not to forensic technologies or databases, but to the power of crowd sourcing.

Menken was tried and convicted twice for the murder. The first time was in Elmira, but verdict was thrown out when it was learned that the jury had gone to inspect the crime scene themselves. A new jury was impaneled in December 1884 in Binghamton. They too found him guilty. He was hanged on July 2, 1885.

The AIDS Memorial Quilt: 40 Years Later

 by Erin Doane, Senior Curator

In 1981, doctors in Los Angeles reported a rare lung infection in five previously healthy young gay men. Doctors in New York and California also reported cases of a rare, aggressive cancer among gay men. This was the start of the AIDS Epidemic. In September 1982, the U.S. CDC used the term Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) for the first time. French researchers discovered that a retrovirus caused AIDS and it was official named Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) in 1986.

Between 1980 and 1987, more than 1,000 San Franciscans died of AIDS. In June 1987, Cleve Jones gathered a small group in that city “to take all of our individual experiences, and stitch them together to make something that had strength and beauty.” That was how the AIDS Memorial Quilt was born. Jones, along with Mike Smith, Gert McMullin, and several others, established the NAMES Project Foundation to formally organize their efforts.

Word of the Quilt project spread quickly to major cities throughout the country. On October 11, 1987, the NAMES Project Foundation displayed the AIDS Memorial Quilt for the first time in Washington, D.C., laying out nearly 2,000 panels on the Capitol Mall. Each fabric panel measures 3-feet by 6-feet and nine panels are sewn together into a 12-foot by 12-foot block. 

Pieces of the quilt were first displayed in the Southern Tier in the late 1980s. In 1989, the Arnot Art Museum hosted two 12-foot by 12-foot blocks while the Corning Museum of Glass and the Rockwell Museum each hosted one. Arnot Art Museum director John D. O’Hern called the Quilt a moving artifact saying, “AIDS doesn’t just affect statistics, it affects people.”

Arnot Art Museum director John D. O’Hern with 
an AIDS Quilt block, Star-Gazette, November 24, 1989

More displays took place throughout the 1990s including at Elmira College, Ithaca College, Cornell University, Corning Community College, Binghamton University, Schuyler-Chemung-Tioga BOCES in Horseheads, the Steele Memorial Library, and the Southern Steuben County Library in Corning.

Evelyn O’Buckley (left) and Wendy Richardson at Elmira College with one of six new 
local AIDS Quilt panels in the background, Star-Gazette, December 12, 1990

Nine blocks of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, made up of 472 individual panels, were laid out at the Murray Athletic Center (the Domes) in Horseheads April 20-22, 1996. Panels on display included those of famous people who had died of AIDS including Rock Hudson, Freddy Mercury, Liberace, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Ryan White. The event was sponsored by Elmira College, Arnot Ogden Medical Center, The Southern Tier AIDS Program, the Southern Tier Interfaith Coalition, Planned Parenthood of the Southern Tier, the Chemung County Health Department, and the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. Donations benefitted the Southern Tier AIDS Program, Southern Tier Hospice, HIV Primary Care Clinic at the Arnot Ogden Medical Center, and AIDS Rochester.

Visitors to the event were encouraged to sign their names and share their thoughts on a 12-foot by 12-foot signature block. Over the course of three days, nearly 5,000 people visited the Quilt, including 1,925 students.

Horseheads host signature block created during the Quilt display at the Domes, 
April 20-22, 1996, in the collection of the Chemung County Historical Society

During the event, 29 new panels honoring local residents who had died of AIDS were dedicated and added to the Quilt. One of the panels was made in honor of Rick Teachman, a local AIDS activist. Teachman tested positive for HIV in 1986. He began volunteering with the Chemung County AIDS Task Force and was its president by 1993. He was one of the first people in the Twin Tiers to publicly admit to having the disease and made about 200 speeches around the region trying to put a face on the epidemic. He died on February 10, 1996 at the Arnot Ogden Medical Center due to complication from AIDS. He was 34 years old.

Rick Teachman’s panel being dedicated during the Quilt 
display at the Domes, Star-Gazette, April 22, 1996

When the AIDS Memorial Quilt was on display in Horseheads, the Star-Gazette published statistics on AIDS in the Southern Tier. Local cases of AIDS increased between June 1993 to April 1995:
    ·        Chemung: from 39 cases to 63 
    ·        Tioga: from 9 cases to 16
    ·        Steuben: from 20 cases to 34
    ·        Schuyler: from 5 cases to 11

At the height of the epidemic in the early 1990s, nearly 80,000 new cases of HIV were being reported in the U.S. each year with more than 50,000 deaths. Educational campaigns, the increased availability of HIV testing, and the use of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and antiretroviral therapy (ART) after exposure have contributed to a decline in new cases and deaths. In 2022, 31,800 new cases of HIV were reported along with 19,310 deaths. Today, more than 1.2 million people in the United States are living with HIV. 

The AIDS Memorial Quilt is considered the largest community art project in history. Today, the 54-ton tapestry has roughly 50,000 panels with more than 110,000 names. It has increased public awareness of the AIDS epidemic through thousands of displays around the country and helped to show the humanity behind the statistics. The Quilt is now under the stewardship of the National AIDS Memorial. You can visit www.aidsmemorial.org for more information about how to create a Quilt panel, make a donation, or host a community display. The National AIDS Memorial has also digitized all of the Quilt panels and created an interactive website where you can search for the panels of friends and loved ones.

The 1996 Horseheads host signature block is on display at CCHS now through April 30, 2026.

Strike! The Secret History of Elmira's 1840s Bowling Saloons

By Milo Miller, CCHS Volunteer

Lucy Rossi Cesari, 1950s, CCHS Collection

Because bowling surged in popularity during the twentieth-century, many in today’s Elmira would be surprised to learn that the sport first became popular downtown in the 1840s. In those days, bowling was not played in lanes with automated pinsetters. Instead, it was more likely for city goers to play the game in establishments known as bowling saloons. Bowling saloons typically had an upstairs that contained a standard saloon along with bowling alleys in the basement. In the alleys, working-class men would meet, bowl, drink, gamble, and socialize. Due to these activities, those who gathered at the bowling saloons developed unsavory reputations, influencing the public perception of the sport.

Before the 1830s, when New York City’s Knickerbocker Hotel began to house indoor lanes, bowling was an exclusively outdoor sport in the United States. Often, establishments had side lots where they hosted lawn bowling on bowling greens. With the rise of bowling saloons, this changed rapidly, and indoor alleys sprang up across the country during the 1840s. By 1850, New York City alone had over 400 indoor alleys, all of which had sprung up within a 15-year span. This rise in popularity catalyzed changes to bowling that have carried over to today’s game. On bowling greens, early Americans usually played nine-pin bowling rather than the now-popular ten-pin game. During the 1840s boom of indoor bowling, several cities and states outlawed nine-pin bowling in an attempt to curb the drinking and gambling that became associated with the sport.  Many alleys quickly switched to ten-pin bowling to circumvent these laws. Even though lawmakers caught on to this change quickly, banning all forms of bowling, this switch resulted in the ten-pin game becoming the more popular option in the United States.

In Elmira, early bowling matched the objectionable reputation that plagued bowling alleys nationwide.

Stone Bowling Ball, CCHS Collection

Though the location and inception date of the first bowling alley in Elmira are unknown, the first mention of the game in Elmira’s newspapers occurred in The Elmira Gazette on January 2nd, 1841. In the story, a writer for the Elmira Gazette lists a number of places he thought that young men ought not go, explaining that when he saw the “young entering the gin palaces, or the rum shops, or the illuminated billiard rooms, or the dark bowling alleys...I could wish some spirit would put the thought into their minds- ‘Never go there.’”

This reputation prevailed for years- in one extreme instance, quoting a Baptist pastor, Elder Knapp, an 1846 article from the Elmira Gazette claimed “the devil was rolling ten pins, and the little devils [set] them up; and that the devil rolled three balls, the first of Infidelity, the second Universalism, and the third ball of Damnation.” By 1850, it seems there were several bowling saloons in Elmira. On Main Street, in the Globe Hotel, R.P. Kinyon and E.A. Darling operated one bowling saloon until the hotel burned down in 1850. On Lake Street, Thomas B. Borden operated an alley in Knickerbocker Hall, and Miles Cook operated the Old Soldier’s Bowling Saloon, which appeared to be quite popular.

Unfortunately, bowling at the Old Soldier’s may have claimed a child’s life in Elmira. An 1854 story in The Elmira Gazette reported that a boy named Thomas Doolin was hit in the stomach by a ball. Though he was still alive, the newspaper was not optimistic about his recovery. There likely were other Elmira bowling saloons that went unreported. In a unique case, after a Maine ban on alcohol an 1855 article in the Elmira Advertiser speaks of an underground alley on Water Street that flew a white banner, “though not [one] of truce,” exclaiming “Maine Law Drinks Below.” The days of the bowling saloon were relatively short, losing popularity quickly after the 1850s. In Elmira, they leave few traces, existing only in old newspapers and business directories.

Elmira Bowling Alley, 1900-1932, CCHS Collection