Question: Take a good look at this picture. Can you recognize the location? Some of it you should know and other parts will be puzzling. See if you can solve the mystery of the two steeples.
Last week’s answer: For the past several weeks, the village has been experiencing construction leading to the elimination of the many potholes that our heavy traffic and winter weather produces.
Needless to say, this is not the first time that this has taken place since the village’s inception. The early roads were dirt and filled with muddy ruts during the rainy season. Then came an improvement — the corduroy or plank road. Genesee Street, originally called Canal Street, is shown on a map made in June 1810. It ran from the Methodist church corner to the Salina Street intersection. At some later time, the street was laid in corduroy as far as the railroad region. Canal Street was very narrow, and the Baldwin Canal passed along the south side of the street. It is said the reason for making Canal Street of corduroy construction was to enable loads of logs to reach the Baldwin sawmill then situated at the mouth of Tannery Creek (corner of East Genesee and Albert Palmer Lane). The street passed over a small bridge, because on the north side of the thoroughfare the creek collected into a huge pond to store water for the operation of the mill. Another corduroy street improvement extended from the Four Corners northward over Oswego Street hill.
In 1837, a private enterprise, the Baldwinsville Plank Road Company, built a stretch of road using sawed planks. This improved Canal Street and ran from a point west of the village where the river is closest to the road, through the Four Corners and almost to Holland’s Hill (hill just east of the intersection of East Oneida and East Genesee Streets. There was a tollgate at both ends. After maintaining the plank street for about 20 years, the owners found it unprofitable due to frequent maintenance because of the extensive traffic.
In later years, several of the same roads were paved with bricks. This proved to be a benefit to Albert Palmer when he and his wife moved back to Baldwinsville. After a stint as a serviceman repairing machines for the American Can Company during the war, they returned to Baldwinsville to run The Hut (Palmer’s Diner). In January 1947, they bought the house at 11 Salina St. The backyard needed fill and fortunately East Genesee Street was in the process of road repair. The brick pavement was being replaced with a more modern pavement. The Palmers received several loads of those bricks to help fill in the backyard.
Once again during recent weeks the roads in the village are being repaired. This year’s construction season has been extensive, but thanks to the efficient workers for the paving contractors, it has been relatively painless. Imagine living in an age when individual planks, logs or bricks had to be laid to accomplish the task!
We send our thanks for a job well done!
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.
