Question: The open-air boat livery pictured here offers an inviting fleet of row boats available for hire. Do you recognize the location or know anything about this particular operation?
Last week’s answer: Last week’s photo showed the modern innovative coal storage facility on the grounds of Peck Coal Company’s new operation on East Genesee Street. Forced to abandon his Water Street location to make room for the new Barge Canal, George Peck reestablished his coal and wood business on East Genesee Street, formerly the site of a coal trestle owned by George Wilson.
A frame office building was erected just west of the D. L. & W. main line tracks and Peck’s state of the art coal storage facility went up about 75 feet further back from the street just west of the office. A square building with curved sides, the new building was actually four silos topped with a square roof. Each silo was dedicated to one specific size of anthracite: egg, stove, chestnut and pea. Each tank had a capacity of 175 tons.
A steel-lined concrete hopper was built between the train rails. Coal was dumped from the rail car into the hopper. A conveyor moved the coal from the hopper to a large hopper at the top and center of the storage building. Each silo had its own hopper. Contents of the large hopper were directed to the proper tank and transported down at a steady pace by conveyor to preserve the size of the pieces.
The bottoms of the silos were of a height that allowed a wagon to be placed underneath each where coal was loaded by opening a chute directly over the wagon. Here it was screened before it was loaded. Hand shoveling had been eliminated.
The office building was equipped with a new pair of Fairbanks scales of six ton capacity for weighing coal and farm produce. Peck estimated the cost of his new plant, including the site, at $10,000. The Oct. 27, 1910, issue of The Gazette & Farmers’ Journal announced that “Peck will be glad to have the public inspect it.”
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 before the deadline, 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.
