If you look closely at the area between the fire department building and the United Community Church, located on High Street, you will notice a set of crumbling cement stairs. Those stairs once provided an easy and direct way – a shortcut, if you will – to access Tallman Hill, Arden Street and a section of the community known as French Village. It should be pointed out to more recent residents that French Village was not a separate village as the name would imply, but was a descriptive term. It described a section of the community that roughly encompassed Arden Street south to Stetson Road and was bounded by Church Street and Chaney Avenue. I’m not sure why it was labeled French. People living in that section were no more or less French than those living in other sections of the community, whose population consisted of many residents of French descent. The French language was commonly heard throughout the village. Sermons at the Catholic Church, for example, were given in French as well as English, and most storeowners found it convenient to be bilingual in the early days of this village.
Other sections of the community, also with descriptive names, now mostly fallen into disuse, are easier to explain. Sears Hill, for example, meant the section of town roughly from above the present Day Wholesale building on Park Street to the water tank above Shaheen’s Market. It was called Sears Hill after an early settler, Richard Cyr (later anglicized to Sear). Mr. Sear owned a large boarding house at the brow of the hill leading up Park Street, and the name Sear’s Hill was applied to that district. As years passed, the possessive case was dropped and it became simply Sears Hill. That boarding house was destroyed in the great 1899 fire, and A.F. Carbary built a large home on the site. Many descendants of the Sear family still reside as prominent citizens here.
Another section that described a certain area in earlier days was known as Sissonville, site of the A. Sherman Lumber Company, located midway between uptown and the Junction, and it is presently an open field bordered by tag alders and Racquette Pond shoreline. It was named after the Sisson family, who owned the A. Sherman Lumber Company and the Racquette River Paper Company. Charles Sisson, who managed the Tupper operations, was elected Tupper’s first mayor in 1902. The local A. Sherman Lumber Company site was acquired by the Oval Wood Dish Company (O.W.D.) that took over some of the former A. Sherman Lumber Company buildings in 1916 for much-needed employee housing. Many were remodeled. Additional houses were built and two residential streets, Ohio and Michigan, were laid out.
Note: The O.W.D firm was organized in Delta, Ohio, and started manufacturing in Mancenola, Mich., in 1883, accounting for the otherwise puzzling reason for these street names. Most of those houses, except the girls’ dormitory, had been removed by 1964, when Adirondack Plywood purchased the mill site and plant of the O.W.D. Corp.
The United Community Church, previously mentioned, still today borders that stairway, but in the 1940s it was known as Grace Methodist Church. Later, in 1971, the congregation of the Tupper Lake Methodist Church and the Tupper Lake Presbyterian Church united to form one congregation and the name was changed. The original church located there, which had been built in 1891, was destroyed by that August 1891 fire that consumed the village. It must be remembered that following the disaster most of the church members had themselves become homeless. The original church lay in ashes, and it must have been a discouraging, trying time. Yet, by February of the next year (six months time), a new church of brick veneer and slate roof stood on its present site. Insurance coverage of $2,600 and monetary subscriptions helped cover the $5,000 cost with only a $200 indebtedness on the church property. This was soon retired, allowing the church to be totally free of debt for the first time in its history.
Adjacent to the church, where the fire hall is located today, was the town hall. This had been the headquarters for the fire department since 1901. That great building, so rich in the memories and history of this village for over 40 years, was totally destroyed by fire on March 14, 1942. As you might imagine, Tupper Lake firemen took a lot of good-natured kidding from neighboring fire fighters on that one – a little humor mixed in with dismay and sadness of that loss.
I grew up practically next door to that town hall and knew it well. It was the center of all sorts of activity in the village. Built shortly after the 1899 fire by a contractor named Howard Wert, who was a prominent local builder, it was a stately, beautifully designed building. In later years, when Dr. E.M. Austin was the town supervisor (1904-1910), 30 feet of extra space was added by cleverly extending the rear of the building over the rock wall of Tallman Hill. That 4-ft. high foundation of large stone construction was so well built that it remains today, almost 100 years later, as sound as the day it was built. Located to the rear of today’s fire hall, it is worth viewing for its historical value and its masterful workmanship.
That extension (not utilized as part of today’s fire hall footprint) doubled the size of the stage and dressing room space and increased the seating capacity of the main floor for viewing the many theater productions and other events held there. It also provided a first-class basketball court when the many folding seats were placed along the wall – a chore, incidentally, that neighboring kids never objected to undertake so they could use the court. Many of those kids, thanks to those Saturday morning basketball games, became outstanding players in their later high school days. Former Mayor Bill Delair, for example, developed a deadly reverse shot from the keyhole in those days that always bewildered the opposition in later years when he was a standout varsity player.
The lower floor housed the fire department trucks and hoses. Above was the town clerk’s office with its 15-ton safe, filled with valuable papers and records of vital importance (still in use today – it was rescued from the 1942 fire, all papers intact). There also was the town welfare office, fireman’s room, meeting place and voting space for three districts of the uptown sector of the community. If that wasn’t enough, the building also contained a jail, under Chief Timmons, and the library, under the guidance of that wonderful lady, Mrs. Jennie Bruce. It was Mrs. Bruce who first succeeded in having the library registered under the New York State Education Department, after which all books were accessioned and cataloged under the Dewey Decimal System. We can only imagine the horror Mrs. Bruce must have felt that March day, exactly 62 years ago, when all 6,000 of those painfully acquired books, owned by the library, lay in a sodden mess among the ruins of a burned-out town hall building.
Next Transitions: The jail, the library and Captain Brown and his 1928 American LaFrance pumper.