Question: Porches are much like accessories. They come and go based on fashion, desired use and economic conditions. The Victorian porch on the house seen here was replaced with a much simpler version many years ago. At the time of the photo, circa 1913, the home also had a high profile professional office on its first floor. Today the house is entirely without a porch. Can you determine the location of the house? The photo holds a couple of clues.
Last week’s answer: Tri-County Mall was the location of this display titled “Hey B’ville — Recycle Your Aluminum.” The photo was published in the Jan. 14, 1976 issue of The Messenger. Organized by the New York Telephone Pioneers of America Club, the Baldwinsville recycling project was a pilot program that the club hoped to extend to other areas. Looking over the exhibit are (from left to right) TPA members Warren (Pete) Auyer, Felix Kwasigroch, Karen Alletzhauser, Baldwinsville Mayor Don Colon and TPA member and B’ville resident Don Snyder.
The project was a pioneer effort to encourage recycling by combining education, public awareness and an easy method to facilitate recycling. Tousely Trash Service customers were asked to collect their aluminum discards in a plastic bag tied with a six-pack holder as an identification tag. The bag would be picked up with their regular trash.
Recycling was not a new concept. As early as 500 B.C., the city of Athens instituted the first known municipal dump program in the western world. Local law mandated that all waste must be disposed of at a distance at least one mile out from the city walls. During the next 2,000 years, recycling was implemented to secure scarce materials for war efforts, to provide economic opportunities for the homeless and income for the unemployed.
As the United States approached its bicentennial, protecting the environment was a “new age” motivation for recycling. The first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970. In 1976 the Baldwinsville initiative was on the cusp of a revolutionary movement. New York state’s Department of Environmental Conservation had been established only six years earlier. It would be another 14 years before the Onondaga County Resource Recovery Agency would be formed. “Blue bins” had yet to come on the scene.
Today blue bins, the Mobius Loop and the mantra “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” are all integral elements of our culture — and Baldwinsville was a pioneer.
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.
