Iszard's Holiday Parade

by Rachel Dworkin, Archivist

In case you missed it, last Friday was Elmira’s annual holiday parade. The beloved community tradition began life as a crass marketing ploy. In 1957, the S.F. Iszard Company was looking to boost their pre-Christmas sales, and decided to borrow the idea behind the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. For the next 31 years, Iszard’s hosted their annual holiday extravaganza on the Friday after Thanksgiving.

Second Iszard's Holiday Parade, 1958

Preparation for the parade began months in advance and nearly every Iszard’s employee was involved in one way or another. Float construction began in the spring. The team from the display department would design and construct the floats at the company’s warehouse on Sullivan Street. Bill Warner, the display department manager, and Leonor Strauss, merchandise manager for ladies’ clothing, were in charge of selecting character costumes and recruiting staff and volunteers to wear them. Every parade had to feature recurring favorites like Santa, Santa’s elves, and popular cartoons like Mickey Mouse, but Warner and Strauss tried to keep it fresh, adding in new characters from the latest cartoon craze. New costumes and alterations were handled by the tailors and seamstresses of the clothing departments. 

Al Viele works on the story book float for the 1974 parade

 The day of the parade, staff would arrive hours in advance to get everyone into their costumes and in proper marching order. The whole procession was divided up into segments and, in turn, each one was overseen by a supervisor whose job it was to keep the whole thing flowing smoothly. The parade route varied from year to year, but the ending was always the same. Santa’s float at the tail end of the parade would stop at Iszard’s front door. Santa would dismount and take up his throne in the 4^th floor Christmas Court. During the late-1970s, they changed things up. Under the original system, children were so eager to visit Santa that they would often swarm him, packing themselves into his elevator, creating a safety hazard. Under the new system, the parade Santa would be helped down from his float and whisked into the Mark Twain Building where he could change back into his street clothes, while a second Santa would be waiting in the store to greet his adoring public.

Santa parade float, 1969

The Iszard’s Annual Holiday Parade was an instant success. An average of 15,000 people attended each year, lining the parade route and flocking to the store. Coupled with an extravagant Toyland display featuring a Christmas Court and giant Lionel model train set up, Iszard’s was the place to shop for Christmas in the Twin Tiers.

Start of the Iszard's Holiday Parade, 1973

The last Iszard’s parade was in 1988, but the tradition continued. In 1989, the Elmira Business Association took over as the parade’s sponsor. All of the old parade floats and supplies were transferred to the old LeValley McLeod building where volunteers could work on them.  Despite changing sponsor’s multiple times since 1988, the parade is still going strong. Community Bank N.A. is currently the parade’s lead corporate sponsor.

The Trolley Card Game: Look Out For It!

by Erin Doane, Curator

In 1904, the Snyder Bros. of Elmira put out a new card game called Trolley. It was marketed as “Society’s Card Game for 1904,” and it seemed to have sold fairly well. In 1906, according to Geyer’s Stationer (a trade publication), while sales of new card games of any kind had been down for the past two seasons, Trolley was having very good success. After 1907, however, the game seems to disappear into the mists of history.

Trolley card game made by Snyder Bros. of Elmira

Brothers Claude and William Snyder established the Snyder Bros. Printing Company in 1893 in a small building at 405 Baldwin Street. Both brothers had gotten their start in printing in the 1880s working at the Elmira Telegram. Among other things, their company printed the programs for the Lyceum Theater. The company was successful from early on and quickly expanded. Just a year after its founding, it moved into a larger space at 109 N. Main Street. It moved again in 1898 to the Wyckoff Building on West Water Street. Finally, in 1910, the brothers decided to build their own building for the company at 111-114 North Main Street. Snyder Bros. stayed there until 1948 when it finally closed. At the time of its closing, it was one of the oldest businesses in Elmira.

Arrow indicates the Snyder Building on North

Main Street shortly after it was built in 1910

In 1904, the brothers decided to go into the game business. Their Trolley game was made up of a deck of 60 cards divided into six categories – Car, Conductor, Motorman, Passenger, Fare, and Transfer.

The six categories of Trolley cards

Three different games could be played with the deck. “Trolley” involved trick-taking to accumulate point-scoring sets. “Transfer” was a game of passing cards to the opponents until one player has a hand consisting of six identical cards. “Matchem” was a game of matching cards in hand with face-up cards on the table. The game sold for 40 cents per pack at retailers in Elmira and throughout the region, as far as Buffalo and Binghamton.

Trolley game advertisement, Star-Gazette, April 15, 1904

CCHS has several sets of Trolley cards. One set without a box is interesting because both sides of the cards are covered in advertisements. The backs of the cards are all the same, advertising Vilas bookcases manufactured by Vilas-Diven Co. of Elmira. The faces of the cards each have two different advertisers ranging from grocery stores and pharmacies to heating businesses and law firms. All of the other sets of Trolley cards in our collection have an image of a trolley on the back (some decks are orange, some red) and no advertising on the faces.

Two versions of Trolley cards in CCHS’s collection

The bottom cards have advertising on both sides

I am not sure which set of cards came first but I suspect that the set with the advertising was the earlier version. The advertising would almost guarantee that Snyder Bros. wouldn’t lose money on the venture. Once the game had caught on, a set without advertising could be sold. In December 1904, Snyder Bros. promoted a new edition of the Trolley game. Perhaps that was when the advertising was removed from the cards.

Trolley game advertisement, American Stationer, December 10, 1904

In September 1905, the company, now going by the name Snyder Bros. Game Co., release another new version of Trolley. This version included new, simpler instructions. Anyone who owned the older version of the game could get the new version in exchange for their old deck plus 15 cents.

CCHS has two versions of Trolley with different instructions.

Snyder Bros. Game Co. is listed on the larger box, so it may

be the newer version of the game, though the instructions did

not seem that much simpler to me.

The last mention of the Trolley game that I could find in local newspapers was in a Star-Gazette from December 1907. S.F. Iszard Co. was advertising a holiday sale that included games. Trolley was on sale for 10 cents, marked down from its usual 98 cent price. I could not find out what happened to the game after that. Today, you can occasionally still find an antique deck of Trolley cards for sale on an auction website, in case anyone is interested in trying this locally-produced game.

Trolley advertisement, Buffalo Courier, October 14, 1904

Stough It!

by Rachel Dworkin, archivist

On New Year’s Eve 1912, a new preacher rolled into town and he was looking to stir things up. Dr. Reverend H.W. Stough was a traveling revivalist with a serious beef against the alcohol industry. He settled into a specially-built tabernacle on the corner of William and Clinton Streets and got to work. Right away Stough made his goals clear.  “I am here,” he said at a dinner held in his honor by the Elmira Businessmen’s Association, “to awaken the moral conscience in your city.”   Almost at once he got down to the business of antagonizing the brewing industry and its allies.  “I want to serve briefs on the brewery, the stockholders, the saloon, the bartender, the thieves and the liars,” he announced in his first sermon. “The fight is on.”  

Dr. Rev. H.W. Stough

 In the early 1910s, the City of Elmira was awash with sin and alcohol. In a city with a population of 37,176 there were 93 saloons, or one for every 400 residents.  People could also drink at any one of the 33 hotels or 9 billiard halls with a liquor license and even buy hard liquor for ‘medicinal’ purposes at one of the city’s 27 drug stores.  The alcohol trade was highly profitable.  One hotel manager estimated in 1913 that he sold $37,620 worth of beer and liquor annually which amounts to approximately $887,315 in today’s dollars.  In addition to monies made from alcohol, saloons and billiard halls often made additional revenue from illegal card games or making book on baseball games while hotels cashed in on prostitution.  Despite the widespread criminal activity, there were rarely any arrests made.  In fact, Briggs Brewery would frequently send a car around to warn saloon owners in advance of a police raid.    

 

Stough was having none of it. Throughout the month of January, Stough claimed the saloons were violating the statewide ban on Sunday liquor sales; accused the police of rampant corruption and called for the resignation of Police Chief Frank Cassada; called Mayor Daniel Sheehan a lackey of the brewers; and promised to personally root out evidence of criminal behavior.  On the night of Saturday, January 25^th, he led a parade of followers through the red light district around Railroad Avenue at midnight to make sure saloons were closing for Sunday during. Stough’s antics made him more popular by the day.  At the start of the month there were only several hundred in attendance but on the 25^th there were so many people packed into the tabernacle they had to turn over 2,000 people away.  

 

Stough's specially built tabernacle

Stough was, in short, a threat to the city’s breweries and their allies in the saloons, police station and mayor’s office.  Forced to actually close on Sunday, January 26^th, the saloons and the breweries which supplied them lost money.  Stough managed to collect and publically preach about evidence of illegal doings by one Railroad Avenue saloonkeeper and the man was forced to flee the city to avoid arrest. During the 1880s, two muckraking preachers had been murdered by saloon owners in Sioux City, Iowa and Jackson, Mississippi for doing exactly the same thing as Stough. The Reverend himself had been threatened and was nearly assaulted during the January 25^th parade. His followers were harassed by the police, his lodgings were broken into and a lawsuit for slander was filed by Briggs Brewery, but none of it was enough to make him stop.

The city’s alcohol interests did the only thing they could do: frame two of the Stough campaign members for adultery. Yes, adultery. It was literally a crime in those days. On the night of February 10, they arrested Hester Cartwright, a choir singer, in the room of Duncan Spooner, the campaign’s music director, and, by February 19, the case was in court. The city’s brewing interests hoped the case would drag Stough’s name through the mud and drive him from town, but they were sadly mistaken.  

Hester Cartwright

 

Duncan Spooner

The following morning over 6,000 supporters showed up at the tabernacle to protest the arrests and raise a legal defense fund.  Throughout February, local pastors including those from First Baptist Church, Park Church and the Episcopalian churches threw their support behind Stough.  Both the Elmira Star-Gazette and the Elmira Advertiser came out in favor of real reform.  The trial was over and the couple acquitted by mid-April, but it didn’t stop the formation of several civic improvement leagues, a police commission investigation into Police Chief Frank Cassada or Mayor Sheehan being voted out of office in November.  During the trial, Briggs Brewery manager J. John Hassett said that the frame up was a matter of good business policy but clearly it was anything but. Briggs Brewery’s efforts to silence Dr. Stough in the winter of 1913 ultimately cost them hundreds of dollars in lost revenue, their ally in the mayor’s office and their good name.  Public sentiment had turned against them and in April 1918 the city voted itself bone dry, shutting down the saloons and hotels Briggs had fought so hard to keep open.

“Clothes of Charm” - The Gorton Coy

by Erin Doane, Curator

The Gorton Coy, northeast corner of Main and Water Streets, 1949

For 56 years, the Gorton Coy was Elmira’s leading specialty shop. Women of discerning taste shopped there for all of their fashion needs. On July 3, 1916, Warren A. Gorton of Batavia purchased E. N. Crandall’s store, a small shop at 127 West Water Street in Elmira. Within days of the purchase, Gorton announced he would be selling off all of Crandall’s stock in order to make way for the new Gorton Company fashions. Gorton’s partner and co-owner of the store, Morris A. Black, was president of the Lindner Company of Cleveland and the manufacturer of “Wooltex” clothing. Their store in Elmira became the area’s exclusive seller of the Wooltex line. In 1917, they moved the store to 107 East Water Street.

Elmira Star-Gazette, July 10, 1916

George H. Danzig became manager of the store in 1919 and worked to transform it into a fashion center for the city. He had a second floor added to the single-story building and brought in a shoe department and a millinery department, the Charm Hat Shop. He built the store’s reputation among fashionable, discriminating women in the 1920s by stocking exclusive brands.  He was also the one who decided that the company’s name would be abbreviated to the Gorton Co’y, as was common in England. A sign painter, not understanding the abbreviation, produced a sign for the store that simply read “Gorton Coy” and the name stuck. In 1923, Danzig purchased 51 percent of stock in the company and took effective control of the business. Six years later, when his health began to fail, he sold his share of the store to Morris Black.

Elmira Star-Gazette, September 19, 1928

In the late 1920s, plans started being made to move the Gorton Coy to a new, larger building. A desirable location at the corner of Main and Water Streets was selected and a lease was secured. Then, the work began on building the store’s new home. On June 13, 1930, as excavation at the site was just nearing completion, tragedy struck. A wooden walkway that had been constructed along the west side of the work area collapsed under more than twenty pedestrians. Eleven-year-old Maria Smolka died in the accident and Effie W. Corey died the next day from her injuries after spending 45 minutes pinned in the wreckage. Nineteen others were sent to the hospital. Twenty lawsuits were subsequently filed against the Lowman Construction Company, which was in charge of the building project.

Building site after the walkway’s collapse, June 1930

The project continued, however, and on March 12, 1931 at 9:30am the new Gorton Coy store opened for business. The building was one of the last projects designed by Pierce and Bickford and is one of the only known examples of Art Deco architecture associated with the firm. The building’s three floors were filled with fashion, from coats and dresses to sportswear and undergarments. There was a beauty salon conducted by M. Henri of Paris on the third floor and a modern tearoom with two private dining rooms. The general offices were also on the third floor and the building was plumbed with a pneumatic tube system for transporting paperwork.

Pneumatic tube carrier used at the Gorton Coy

In 1938, Richard G. Raitt moved to Elmira to work as manager of the Gorton Coy. In 1941, he purchased the company outright and became the sole owner. In the mid-1940s, a department with electrical appliances for the home was added, the beauty salon was renovated and enlarged, and five toddler, child, and teen departments were combined to form Gorton’s Youth Center. Two new stores were also opened in Penn Yan and Geneva.

Electric City shop at Gorton Coy, 1946

Younger Set Shop at Gorton Coy, 1950

In 1967, Lane Bryant Inc. purchased Gorton Coy. Two years later, $250,000 was spent on a modernization program to make improvements to the entire store. Two new departments catering to tall women and larger women were added and one of the two manual elevators was replaced by a self-service elevator.

Buttons from one of the Gorton Coy’s manual elevators

Gorton Coy hatboxes, c. 1940s-1960s

The flood of June 1972 did considerable damage to the basement and first floor of the Gorton Coy. As a result, the store closed and its forty employees were laid off. In September of that year, Lane Bryant announced that the store was closing for good. In October, Luckey-Platt & Co. purchased the company and continued operating the store with marginal success under the Gorton Coy name until 1975 when it finally closed its doors for the last time. In 1988, the words “Gorton Coy” were removed from the building and in April 1991, the building was renamed the Komer Center.

Elmira Star-Gazette, November 6, 1972