Question:
Do you recognize this house? It has had a unique past. Do you know what it is?
Last week’s answer:
The building pictured in the History Mystery last week was located on East Genesee Street and was part of the Van Wie Chevrolet business mentioned a History Mystery a couple of weeks ago. You may remember that it was the site of the current Key Bank. As pictured here, it was one of the first garages to service automobiles.
Howard Baldwin and Mike Mawhinney are credited with the erection of the cement block building in 1915. They both worked at the Morris Machine Works plant across the street during the day but on evenings and weekends they made repairs on the early cars. Soon after, George Mathewson, who was running an auto repair shop elsewhere, moved into the building and operated the Seneca Garage there for about 30 years. Some of the early cars brought to his shop are now extinct: Ajax, Thomas Flyer, Star, Ellmore and Cormin, along with two-cylinder Buicks and one-cylinder Cadillacs.
Methods of servicing autos are quite different now. Gasoline then came in barrels, often delivered on the steamboat Tucker (the Baldwin Canal ran behind the building). The gas was emptied into a sheet metal tank and pumped out with a boat pump. It was carried to the car in a measured can, and through the use of a funnel and chamois, was poured into the auto tank. Some gas tanks were located at the rear, some under the seat, while others were fastened between the dash and engine. All of them were above the carburetor level for gravity feed. Later, the Standard Oil Co. brought gasoline in a tank wagon drawn by a husky team of mules.
A sign over Matthewson’s first garage read: “Gas 9 cents cash, 10 cents credit.”
One time a man and woman stopped at the station to fill up a Model-T Ford. The gas tank was under the seat. To fill it up, the cushion had to be removed and the measured amount of gas had to be poured in. After witnessing this, the wife was told to get back, in to which she replied, “If that tank blows up I’m not going with it.” She walked home.
The other question last week was the identity of the building whose roof shows on the right side of the photo. It’s the old trolley station where the first public library was located.
If you want to know more borrow Anthony Christopher’s “Sketches of Yesterday” from the Baldwinsville Public Library. Lots of interesting information about Baldwinsville history there. They are located on the stacks at 974.765 CHR.
Contact Editor Sarah Hall at [email protected] or leave a message at 434-8889 ext. 310 with your guess by 5 p.m. Friday (please leave the information in the message; we are not generally able to return calls regarding History Mystery responses). If you are the first person to correctly identify an element in the photo, your name and guess will appear in next week’s Messenger, along with another History Mystery feature. History Mystery is a joint project of the Museum at the Shacksboro Schoolhouse and the Baldwinsville Public Library.
