Historic Photos of Syracuse (Turner Publishing
Company, Nashville, Tenn.; 206 pages; $39.95/hardcover) traces the Salt
City’s past in black and white from the mid-19th century until 1980.
The story begins with photos of the salt-making process and concludes
with images of young Christmas shoppers riding an indoor monorail
downtown back when neither the Carrier Dome nor the Congel cathedral
were part of our skyline.
“One of the things I get a kick out of when people find
out I’m a historian,” said Connors, “is when they say we should restore
the Erie Canal. People have a nostalgic image of the canal, based on
those classic shots. That was a distinctive feature of Syracuse, that
we embraced the canal going right through town and that looked lovely,
but along the way there were many grimy-looking buildings, lumberyards,
plants, coal pits. The canal in Syracuse was an industrial feature but
not particularly attractive. It was not like Venice with the beautiful
houses bordering it. Here it was grimy and dirty.”
Historic Photos of Syracuse covers four eras in
the city’s history. The first chapter, “A City Born of Salt
(1854-1900),” depicts downtown from the incorporation of Syracuse in
1854 through the dawn of the 20th century. In
“Syracuse Matures (1901-1920),” we see the continued impact of the Erie
Canal and the decline of the salt industry that first gave life to the
city.
For “Old Challenges and New Opportunities (1920-1945)”
Connors shows the transformation that ensued when the canal and
railroad lines were removed from downtown and the Roaring ’20s
lifestyle moved in. The final chapter, “Changing Times 1946-1980,”
brings us joyfully through the post-World War II period and then
face-to-face with the hollowing out of the city core when cheap labor
drew our factories overseas and the nearby suburbs sucked half the
population out of the city.
Salina and Jefferson: One of downtown’s major intersections teems with pedestrians in this 1942 picture from Historic Photos of Syracuse.
It’s all here: the theaters, the factories, the Syracuse
University marching band, even some shots of Syracuse making the
transition from the horse and buggy to the automobile. There is a
tantalizing photo of a picnic outing that the owners of Franklin
Automobile threw for their clerical workers, giving the ladies rides in
a fleet of Franklins.
Kids hanging around today outside the Westcott Community
Center will be amused to see images of the building at Euclid Avenue
and Westcott Street from when it was a firehouse, with two shiny trucks
standing ready in the driveway. City planners contemplating the
rebuilding or removal of Interstate 81 should spend more than a few
moments looking over the photos Connors has found of the construction
of Routes 690 and 81 that cut the city into quadrants.
In his rummaging through the archives, Connors discovered
some spectacular images of fires, including one at the Labor Temple
Building on South Franklin Street. The later restoration of that
building sparked the redevelopment of Armory Square. Another blaze at
the corner of West Onondaga and South Salina streets—in the Mowry
Apartment building, just across from the Chimes Building at 500 S. Salina St.—resulted in nothing more than an ash heap and, today, a parking lot.
This is the third photo book of Syracuse to come out of
the OHA, but the first one in hardcover. “We did two books with Arcadia
Press,” noted Connors. “This is done at a much higher quality.” In
2006, SU Press published Crossroads in Time for the OHA, an
illustrated history of our town. “This is really the third photo book,
but certainly the highest quality,” Connors said. “Turner Publishers
does a very high-quality, good paper, hardcover.”
Turner approached Connors with the idea of a photo book
on Syracuse, which sent him on a journey to revisit old files that
hadn’t been looked at in decades. “We have a lot of photographs in the
resource center reading room but we have other, separate types of
collections. I’m sure some of them hadn’t been looked at in 30 to 40
years. We went through and found some gems that have not been published
before.”
Connors lamented the effect of the automobile on the
cityscape. “We have replaced so much of our urban fabric with lot after
lot. So much has been replaced with open surface parking lots. That
creates a certain ugliness that we have to deal with.”
If you can find parking in one of those ugly lots, which,
we recently learned, apparently pay their attendants a sub-living wage,
it would be worthwhile to stop by the OHA this Thursday, Nov. 20, and
pick up a copy of this photographic history. The book will be unveiled
as part of Third Thursday (Th3). Connors will be signing copies of the
book from 5 to 6 p.m. at the OHA Museum, 321 Montgomery St., and anyone
purchasing the book at the event will receive a special gift. At
$39.95, it may be just the right holiday present for that history buff
on your list.
For more information, call 428-1864.
—Ed Griffin-Nolan
