Downtown 1888 — Library wanted

The only thing preventing Glens Falls from having a public library is the reluctance of philanthropists to contribute, a columnist for The Morning Star suggested in 1888, four years before Henry Crandall stepped forward to establish one.

“It is a crying shame that there is no public library in the village, where poor people could obtain books, or where useful and necessary works of reference not carried by the ordinary library could be found,” the columnist who used the penname Spectator Redivivus, wrote.

“There are men in this place abundantly able to give it a library that would be for them ‘a monument more abiding than brass, more lasting than marble,’ but they won’t do it.”

The columnist envisioned the library having a room similar to the current Folk Life Center.

“A free library could be built with a room dedicated to collections of curiosities, which would be of inestimable value to the public. Were such a building erected, there are several I know of who would gladly lend valuable collections to help set up such a room.”

A library would be “a grand good thing,” but private funding was essential, the columnist wrote.

“For everyone knows, who has ever enjoyed the privileges of a large reference library, what an inestimable boon it is,” he wrote. “It probably would be of no use for the village to try and build one, for those who have always persistently stood in the way of the village’s progress would oppose it, and the small taxpayers who have to perhaps pay from a dollar to five dollars a year in taxes would vote against it to man, even if they bit off their own noses.”

In other February 1888 downtown Glens Falls news:

• This downtown retailer did not need to join the exclusive Glens Falls Athletic Club to stay in shape.

“A good-natured Warren Street merchant has fallen a victim of the prevailing epidemic — pedestrianism — and has marked out in his store a track, which measures forty laps to a mile,” The Morning Star reported on Feb. 17, 1888. “Thursday, he covered the distance in thirteen minutes, and yesterday was on the track several times limbering up his legs. He finds walking a good appetizer, and is trying to enlist some of his friends in the exercise.”

• On Feb. 21, 1888, The Morning Star waded in, pun intended, in the debate about whether Glens Falls should construct sewers.

“What a nice thing a good sewer would have been yesterday, when every one was wading around in from three to four inches of water on the sidewalks and crosswalks,” the newspaper editorialized. “It was a more potent argument than pages of statistics.”

• Flowers were blooming early.

“M.B. Little displays several varieties of chrysanthemums in his show window of his office (on Glen Street),” The Morning Star reported on Feb. 28. “This display is a rare and unusual one, as it is out of season for this genus of plant,” which usually does not bloom until July.

Yet, Glens Falls had “a spell of frosty weather” the day before.

“Our thaw was going around yesterday done up in red flannel and camphor.”

Butterflies were appearing early, too.

“Frank Collman, the Ridge Street cigar manufacturer, captured a lively golden-hued butterfly at his home on Coffin Street yesterday morning. The little specimen of the family papilio was brought to The Star office,” The Morning Star reported on Feb. 29. “On the way it was chilled by the bruising ante-March wind, but, upon being placed in a window and subjected for a few moments to this genial influence of the sun, it soon recovered and flitted about for a brief time as lively as if it had been transported to a flower garden in mid-summer.”

Click here to read my most recent previous downtown Glens Falls history post.