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HISTORIAN’S CORNER
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Changing Times -- Changing Scenes
By Don Tiffany, Phelps Historian
The greatest fall of Flint Creek occurs between Eagle Street and Mill Street with the steepest fall at Main Street. It is no surprise that Seth Dean, with his experienced millwright's eye chose the latter, with its best head of water pressure, as the location for his mill. And, with the help of his future son-in-law, Philetus Swift, built a dam about where the stone dam is today. Mr. Dean enjoyed a monopoly of the mill business for 7 years when, much to Dean's consternation, Augustus Dickinson built a mill at the end of Mill Street on the Canandaigua Outlet.
It took a successful and prosperous farming community to support all the developing enterprises and buildings growing along Flint Creek. Orrin Redfield opened his store in a log cabin where the Phelps Hotel now stands. Leman Hotchkiss I opened his store in Luther Root's bar room and then moved to a location where the Odell Block is located. Other stores opened in the same area. The American Hotel was built on the northeast corner of Main and Exchange streets. A.D. Cooley built a store across Exchange Street from the hotel. Father down the street Hotchkiss built a peppermint oil warehouse and beyond was Edmonston's tavern at the corner of North Wayne Street. Most of them were of wood construction.
Luther Root's bar room became the Globe Tavern, then the Globe Hotel. S.K. Bowker later bought the hotel and it was then called the Bowker Block but many people still called it the Globe Hotel. It burned in 1930. Valere Minet built a single-story block building on the site and opened a gas station and auto dealership. Later Ruthven Brothers ran a garage and service station there for 30 years. It is now Howie's Garage. Farther down the hill to the west was the Garlock Opera House (later the Phelps Theater). Next door was the Bussey Brothers printing establishment and further along, next to the Creek was the Bowker Carriage Factory. After Bowkers closed it was used for a time for manufacturing thermometers. Leonard Sabin ran a garage there in the 30s. The building was eventually torn down and, after many loads of fill, a car wash was constructed and is still in use. Across the Creek on the northwest corner of Flint and Main Streets, Andy Doyle ran a blacksmith shop. Looking at the spot today it is hard to visualize how a building could have been built there. Garlock's blacksmith shop was across Flint Street from Doyle's. This is now an apartment house. Down Flint Street at the corner of Mill Street stood the huge stone building of the Great Eastern Malt house. The old stonework remained for many years after it closed. Father down Mill Street near the present Town Barns was the large apple dryhouse of Hicks & Schaik.
Probably most of the goods produced were shipped out on the Erie Canal but business really took off when the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad came to town in 1841. Mills, malthouses, and factories of all kinds sprang up. All of the mills, however, still relied on water power to turn their machines. Isaac Dean (Seth's son) built another mill north of the original Dean mill still along the Creek. Hotchkiss built his Eagle Mill on Flint Creek to the west, giving the name to the street. The Vandemarks built a large stone mill along the Creek between the Pioneer Cemetery and Dean's mill. (William Street didn't exist at that time.) A soap factory operated next to the bank of the creek near Vandemark's (now owned by Dr. Howe) and the Titus Plow Works was in the same area. A stone malt house was built near Main Street just west of the stone (Dean's) Mill. This was later used as a GLF fertilizer plant. It was torn down in the 1940s and is now a parking lot for the Old mill Liquor Store and Old Mill Hot Dog Stand. The hot dog stand occupies the spot where Charlie Lane had his garage, which later became the Village Barn. The stone mill building was occupied by the Phelps Gasoline Engine Mfg. Co., later used by Henry Whitney as a basket factory and, still later, by Frank DePauw as an auto repair shop. DePauw built a gas station across the street, tore the station down later and built a bigger one and turned his garage into a Milk Bar!
By the middle of the 19th century all of the churches were of brick or stone construction with the exception of the Catholic Church, which occupied the White Church built in the 1820s. The Vienna Union School house was built in 1846 next to the Yellow Meeting House. An addition was built on the school in 1896 then the school was razed in 1924 to build a still more modern edifice. More construction was done 14 years later to accommodate the new Central School. Charles Converse built a building behind his implement business on Main Street to house the new school bus fleet. The Central School built a new garage on the opposite side of Banta Street in 1942. The Phelps Elementary School was built north of the garage in 1950 with more rooms added over the years.
The disastrous fire on June 1864 completely destroyed the north side of the business section on Main Street. All the buildings east of the Globe Hotel (it was not involved) to Edmonston's tavern on North Wayne Street were consumed - the American Hotel, Cooley's store and one of Hotchkiss's peppermint oil warehouses. The peppermint oil burned with a strange blue flame! The only building to survive the fire was the stone shop on Exchange Street. It is the oldest building in the business district today. It is now the home of Priority One computer store. The basic shape, size and material of the present buildings is the same as it was when they were rebuilt 125 years ago.
There was a livery stable to the north of the hotel. This was partially destroyed by fire and eventually torn down. Carl Grube built the building on Exchange Street in the late 1940s to house a case farm implement dealership. It was used later by Ned Forbes to recap tires, then by Linus Hoffron as an auto repair garage. It is used now as the Village firehouse; the Village offices having just moved to the old elementary school building on Banta Street with plans to move the firehouse to its new site on Ontario Street in the near future. The earlier Village Hall and Fire House, built in 1903, is still standing on the east side of Church Street behind the business district. The Phelps Machine Company who occupies the building has refurbished the façade.
There was an open "village green" at the southwest corner of Main and Church streets, which ran all the way to the White Church. Oliver Crothers built his business block on the corner in 1883. The Post Office built in 1959 covered the last of the open ground.
Water power was still necessary to run the factories and mills even into the twentieth century. Dr. William Howe of J.Q. Howe's Sons had to explain to the Village Board in January 1904 that, because of the cold weather, there was a shortage of water to generate electricity for the Village street lights. Shortly thereafter the J.Q. Howe's Sons generator was powered by a steam engine to guarantee a consistent flow of electricity. However, things were changing. The Phelps Gasoline Engine Company installed a 10 horsepower gasoline engine in the Lawrence-Bostwick Company to power their tin shop.
With the availability of alternate sources of power, electricity and steam, businesses and manufactories sprang up along the railroad that passed though the length of the Village just as had been done along Flint Creek in an earlier time. From the 1860s to the 1930s businesses prospered, changed owners, failed and started anew. Here are some of the enterprises that prospered at different times along the siding: Starting from the east on the north side of the RR was Joel Cave's sawmill and lumberyard, across the tracks was Empire State Pickling Co., started by Henry Whitney and A.S. Vincent, to the west of that was the large factory of the Crown Manufacturing Co. This factory was built in 1869, burned in 1909, rebuilt, changed ownership in the 1930s, became a foundry later, then burned in the 1970s and was razed. Railroad Apartments were built on the site.
Still traveling west would bring you to the NYCRR freight house, then, crossing Church Street, the NYCRR depot. Across the tracks and many sidings to the north was Collins Iron Works. Their building came from the Buffalo Exposition and was rebuilt on this site. This factory eventually became the Wright-Hibbard electric lift truck plant. Behind this building and to the west was J.P. Clark's coal yard. Farther along the tracks was the Nester Malt House at the corner of Ontario and William Streets. This large building was used in later years as a warehouse, cider mill and, at its demise as a bean processing plant for GLF/Agway. The malt house was built in 1867, acquired by GLF in 1935 and was destroyed by a spectacular fire in 1969.
The GLF/Agway store and grain storage building is just to the west of Ontario Street and on the south side of the RR. It is now the Phelps Mercantile business. Still traveling west the railroad crosses Flint Creek on the picturesque stone arch bridge. Just beyond the bridge is a stonework culvert under the railroad that was built to carry water diverted from Flint Creek into a large holding pond. This pond has been called Howe's Pond for over 150 years. Past generations skated on it during the winter and ice was cut and stored in Howe's icehouse on William Street. The icehouse still exists but the pond is 2/3 filled with debris from construction projects in and near the village. Ironically, a lot of the fill consists of bricks and dirt from Main Street when it was rebuilt a decade ago. Back on the north side of the tracks and spanning Eagle Street is the Empire State Pickling Company factory and warehouse. Burton Babcock acquired the Whitney/Vincent kraut plant and also the plant on this location. In the process Babcock took the names, Empire State Pickling Company and Silver Floss, as his own. The Eagle Street plant burned to the ground in 1928. Babcock hired Joel Caves to build him a new, fireproof factory, which survives as a testament to his vision. It is now owned and occupied by Garden Galleries, a nursery firm.
The disasters, demolitions and deletions that have occurred in just the last half-century have altered the skyline of our Village. The steeples of the White Church on Church Street and the Methodist Church on Main Street no longer pop up on pictures of the area. The Silver Floss water tower and boiler room smokestack have been removed and the obtrusive tower of the Nester Malt House that appeared in the background of so many early postcards is gone.
Just a short list of small businesses in 1876 will show the impossibility of covering every enterprise, successful or not, that came and went in the Village's 200+ year history. 1876 - four coal yards, blacksmith shop, carriage shop, dentist, six doctors, five shoe stores, three lumberyards, two harness makers and three milliners. No mention of hardware, grocery or dry-goods stores. It staggers the imagination to try and recall all the artisans, shopkeepers and other entrepreneurs who opened, and closed, their doors before and since this year.
But as long as individuals or groups try to succeed in this area, Phelps should stay a vibrant, active community accepting change and "progress".
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