By Jason Emerson
editor
Cazenovia fourth graders recently learned a little bit of what it was like to ride the rails over a century ago when they visited the historic Lehigh Valley Railroad station, now the Gissin Photography studio, on William Street.
Each of the four classes of the Burton Street fourth grade read an 1882 train schedule and bought tickets to their destination of choice from Ticket Master Bob Ridler. They also managed freight, used lanterns for signaling the trains and toured the railroad memorabilia in the caboose.
They also were enthralled by the crank telephone in the waiting room, and some students got to “ring a call.”
“They had a ball,” said Gissin, who explained the historic depot and its history to the students. “One of the questions was, while they were in the lobby area a girl pointed and said, ‘What’s that?’ — It was the old crank style telephone. They never saw one!”
The fourth grade local history enrichment program was developed by the Cazenovia Preservation Foundation through a Common Grounds Challenge Grant to help students connect to stories and places in their community’s history through three field trips into the Village of Cazenovia.
CPF’s mission includes protecting the historic resources of the Cazenovia area. Seeing a mill dam, using a railroad signal lantern and identifying architectural similarities in historic houses all help students understand what those historic resources are and how they define our community character.
“Everyone enjoyed their tour of the original Lehigh Valley Railroad caboose, trying to imagine what it was like to ride the rails for an extended journey,” said CPF Conservation Manager Judy Gianforte.
This week, fourth graders will take class walks into the village to look at the historic architecture in the community.
Lehigh Valley Railroad Depot, located on William Street, was built in 1894 as a depot for the Elmira, Cortland and Northern Railroad, later the Lehigh Valley Railroad. It is a one-and-a-half-story, rectangular, gable-roofed, largely clapboarded structure. It is a distinctive example of the Stick-Eastlake–style architecture. It was abandoned by the railroad in 1965, and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1991.
