This week’s question: This lovely house does not look the same today as it does in the photo. Do you know where it is located? It has had two different addresses — do you know why? Hint: It is not because it was moved.
Last week’s answer: Last week’s photo was taken in July 1959. Being demolished are the buildings that housed the foundry and cleaning rooms of Morris Machine Works. They were the first buildings erected when William F. Morris moved the company to the north side of the river. They eventually had buildings all along East Genesee Street from Albert Palmer Lane and almost to the Four Corners with some even on the south side of the street.
The foundry building operations had been discontinued in September 1958 because through product redesign, competitive pressure and customer demand for better alloys, the use of gray iron castings had been greatly curtailed, resulting in short hours for labor in that division of the plant.
At the annual meeting of the board of directors, it was announced that there were plans to construct a modern industrial plant worth half a million dollars on its present building site on East Genesee Street. The new two-story building was scheduled for completion in the spring of 1960, and would provide nearly 60,000 square feet of space for production and administrative offices with the two-story façade facing the street.
They said that this modern building would assure the company considerable savings in operating costs through reduced maintenance and more efficient material flow. A unique feature would be a high-voltage lighting system providing maximum illumination throughout the manufacturing area, eliminating the old style individual machinery lights.
MMW was a leading producer of heavy-duty slurry pumps in widespread use in the cement, chemical, coal and rock industries. Centrifugal pumps manufactured in Baldwinsville are still in use all over the world.
This week’s answer photos show the demolition, the buildings that were demolished and the modern office building that was erected. That building has since been replaced by Kinney Drugs.
Email your guess to [email protected] or leave a message at 315-434-8889 ext. 310 with your guess by noon Friday. 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 newspaper, along with another History Mystery feature. History Mystery is a joint project of the Museum at the Shacksboro Schoolhouse and the Baldwinsville Public Library.
