Genesee Flats/Olbiston Lecture

[fiona]

Before I begin to post and talk about the fire, it would be worthy to note that all the principals involved resided in Utica, except the architect. The owners, who will also be referred to from time to time as the builders, were Seymour Dewitt Latcher and his wife, Lulu Glenn (Northrup) Latcher, as well as Milton M. Northrup and his wife Marie (Lanning) Northrup. The architect was JC Byrne, a Scotsman, from New York City who worked with (builder) DC Worden of Amsterdam NY. Mr. and Mrs. Latcher resided, at the time of the fire, on the 6th floor north of the Genesee Flats and the Northrup's lived on another of their buildings, the Lorraine Apartments on Oswego Street. This group of persons formed the CornHill Realty Company and owned properties in both east and west Utica as well as the campus of buildings on Genesee and Oswego streets. They also built, around 1885, the Chelsea or James apartments on the corner of South and Steuben Streets in Utica, NY. Of these buildings, the Flats burned on 3/3/1896, the Kan-a-tenah in March 1994, the Milton, the last of their apartment buildings on Oswego Street, at some point in time after 1980. The Lorraine is still standing, only greatly modified. The Chelsea was demolished around 1983. The only building still standing, that I know of, other than the Lorraine, is the Olbiston. As far as photos or portraits, I have only one, that of Seymour Latcher as a young man. This was taken from the 3/7/1896 edition of the Saturday Globe. I do not know if either of these families still have living relatives in the Utica, NY area.

[fiona]

This somewhat fuzzy image shows Seymour Dewitt Latcher as a young man. B: Oct 18, 1866, Fulton NY. D: Dec 24th, 1916.

[fiona]

Taken from the Saturday Globe, front page; 3/7/1896

[fiona]

from the same edition:



JOHN SAW THE BUILDING DIMLY NOW, AS IF HE HAD ONLY DREAMT OF IT'S EXISTENCE, AS IF IT NEVER REALLY WAS...THROUGH EYES BLINDED BY SMOKE AND PAIN, HE TURNED AWAY AND WEPT SILENTLY INTO THE BRIM OF HIS HAT. (from the novel "On Genesee Hill"

[fiona]

From the saturday Globe: Special Edition. I made this collage.


A bitter cold night segued into a smokey dawn... it was of no use...the flames licked the sky like a giant torch... by seven o'clock the building was a total loss

[fiona]

I have posted above all the pictures of the actual building that I am aware of. The next section will deal with the deaths in what I would like to title "Aftermath." I will be posting information about Sarah Miller -Wood and her daughter, Mary B' Wood as well as the deaths of Nobel Hopkins and Mrs Hughes. These will consist of graphics, newspaper articals and photographs I have taken.

[fiona]

The essay/poem below is a tribute to the dead by Utican James Keegan O'Connor. O'Connor was a well known lecturer,author, poet and politician around the turn of the century. The piece, in full, is taken from :" James. K. O'Connor: His Voice and Pen" published in 1913. The original piece appeared in the Utica Sunday Tribune on 3/8/1896.

[fiona]

The Genesee Flats Fire: Utica Sunday Tribune, 3/8/1896

" Tears for the dead, whose bodies but fuel for Death's
grim sacrament. Here is the spot where the ruins black
smolder and smoke in a steaming stack. Scorched and
singed and baked and charred. Here was the * * * house
evil starred."

Dawn is breaking over the city. Bitter cold is the March
day about to be ushered in. Proud and disdainful
looking, the lofty apartment house lifts it's head almost to
the grey clouds of the morning twilight. More than 200
human beings are within it's walls, silently sleeping. No
cares or troubles, other than the ordinary ones of life are
disturbing their slumbers.

Footsteps hurry from hall to hall and figures flit from door
to door. One ominous word is whispered - and then
shrieked in reply. "Fire!"

"Great God! The vast tenement is on fire!"

The stifling smoke is curling it's way upward and filling every hall and room. The very air is laden with poison. Men, half dressed and half crazed, rush from front to rear of the top stories, vainly looking for a mode of egress. Frantic women, clad only in their robes of night, seek for a means of escape. Here and there, some man,cooler than his fellows, or some woman,more sensible than her sex, has managed to keep a good head. They immediately become the leaders of their group. The others are only too glad to follow. Doors leading to fire escapes are not only locked, but extra precautions have been taken to wire them.
They must be battered down or broken in. In many cases hands and feet were the only available weapons. Cut and bleeding hands are of no moment now, for human lives are at stake. There is not one door alone between the fleeing ones and liberty, another and yet another has to be forced. The way to safety lies through a torturous labyrinth and all the while the smoke becomes more blinding and more stifling. the flames are almost upon them. Their fierce breath can be felt.

Words fail. No tongue can describe the horrors of that scene
and do the subject justice.

One trained athelete swings from a balcony high up in the air
and drops to the next balcony below. The suspense of the
crowd gives way to applause. The fire ladders cannot reach
more than half way to the top of the structure. A rope is thrown
to the man last mentioned. He passes it up to those left behind.
It is sent one story higher still and there secured. The
perilous descent is made by one woman in safety. An elderly
lady tries it. A few feet down and she becomes faint. Weak
hands try to seize and hold her, but they too give out. A
shudder and a moan. The woman has lost her hold and drops
fourty feet to the pavement below. She rises, staggers,
struggles- then falls back, never again to rise in this world. The
breath of life remains but a few moments and then her Maker
has called her home.

Brave firemen are in the building dragging to places of safety
those who are too feeble - or to frantic- to care for themselves.
Quickly the flames leap up. The sky is ablaze for miles around.
Everybody who can be found is out of the building. It is
believed that they all are safe, save the woman dashed to death upon the pavements.

The streams from the fire hose now are as puny rivulets. They
make no impression upon what has now become a seething
furnace. Every effort now must be made to save residences
hundreds of feet away.

The vast crowd, which has collected from every direction, gazes
breathless and awe stricken upon the appalling sight. A
universal cry ascend from their very souls that but one life has
been lost. A few minutes pass and the heart rending tale that
several are missing passes from lip to lip.

Floors give way, walls topple, and the spell bound multitude
forgets for a moment the awful grandeur of the site before their
eyes, to breathe a sigh for the unfortunates buried beneath the
pile of ruins. Certain it is that three precious lives are thus
lost. There may possibly be more who will have to be placed
in the category of the dead upon the earth's great
battle fields and buried beneath the ruins of it's catastrophes -
UNKNOWN.

The many who escaped literally brought nothing with them. Some
were bare headed and bare legged - but they were living, and
for that they were truly thankful. The home relics which had
taken years to gather were swept away in a moment , but
sorrow over the losses was drowned by the joy of again clasping
loved ones.

The three who did not escape were a man and two women. The
man had finished a successful business career and was rounding
out his life in a way pleasurable to retired merchants. The women
were a mother and a daughter who came of distinguished stock.
The mother was in middle life, the daughter still a girl at
school, just budding into beautiful womanhood - the
incarnation of all that was true and holy and bearing the name of
one of the noblest women created. But the deadly smoke and
the furious flame cared naught for youth or beauty or purity.
The fire-fiend greedily devoured every thing animate and
inanimate which came within it's reach.

A ghastly skeleton like brick wall swaying in the breeze. Piles of
debris, some ice coated, some giving forth steam and smoke
where the water from the hose still plays upon them. Fire lines
stretching far on either side. Policemen and Firemen to keep
straggling latecomers beyond the lines. This is the picture the
fading sunset light of a second day shines upon. The day before
it's last rays had beheld seventy happy families ensconced
safely in their little home nests, where now rises the ruin,
black and forbidding.

It was upon the occasion of a somewhat similar, but more
horrible occurance, a native of Utica, of hallowed memory,
penned "Over the Ruins", the opening lines of which appear at
the head of this column. And with him may we say of the
departed ones:

" Theirs was the agony, bitter and brief;
Ours the heartache and lingering grief
Tears for the homes that are stricken today,
Mourning the loved ones snatched away
Mourning the lost who shall come no more,
Tears for the hearts that are bleeding and sore
Tears for the living not less for the dead -
The living who will not be comforted;
Who weep over bodies blackened and charred
Burned in the house * * * , evil starred"




James Keegan O'Connor, Utica NY, March 1896.

[fiona]

A TRIBUTE TO MARY BRANDEGEE WOOD:

A GIRL OF OLD UTICA

as

WRITTEN and ENVISIONED BY

MISS FIONA M. O'DOWNEY with the assistance of

MISS BLANDINA DUDLEY MILLER

and

MRS ROSCOE CONKLING

[fiona]

Miss Mary Brandegee Wood *









* as seen and envisioned by Fiona O'downey

[fiona]

Mary Brandegee Wood was born April 8th, 1881 in Morristown Jersey. She was an only child. Her mothers maiden name was Sarah Miller, her father's name was John Brandegee Wood. Her maternal grandfather was noted Utican Rutger Bleecker Miller. Mary lived in Morristown until 1891 when her family relocated to Riverside California, where her father was a pioneer in the horticulture of oranges. In 1895 Mary and her parents made a journey East to Utica by train. Her mother, Sarah, was anxious to see her own mother, Mary B's maternal grandmother, Mrs. Rutger B. Miller, who was almost 90 years old. The Wood's spent the summer of 1895 at the Miller family homestead, the old Fortune C. White house, on Main Street in the town of Whitesborough. Perhaps they only intended to stay the summer, history does not tell us why they decided to stay on. However, in the fall of 1895 the Wood's retained a suite of rooms at the then new and very delux Genesee Flats Apartment House on Genesee Street, in Utica NY and Mary became a day student at the Utica Female Academy or "Miss Piatts School". Mary was just 15 years old. She would not live to see her 16th birthday. On the morning of 3/3/1896 a terrible fire consumed the Genesee Flats and Mary was presumably burned to death, along with her mother, Sarah. Their bodies were never found. At some point in time her father returned to California and he died in Los Angeles, on February 8th, 1936, at the age of 92. This then is her story as I envision it: The tale of the beautiful life of a Girl of Old Utica...

[fiona]

Mary would like to introduce you to some of her relatives on her mother's side. You may already know some of them. She regrets that she has no pictures of her father's relatives, but has assured me that some may be found at a later date.

[fiona]

She offers you her calling card in hopes that you will recieve her.

[fiona]

This is my cat, Mr. Conkling. He was originally a canal boat cat. I found him in the back yard of Grandmother Miller's house last summer. Some mean canaler had just thrown him on the ash heap. I begged mother in the profoundest fashion: " Maman, can I keep him please? Pleeeeeeze?"" She was on the front porch working on a bit of embroidery. She looked up from the French knot she was setting in place and said with a sigh: "Ask Papa." I found Papa in the library. He was reading a poem aloud to my Uncle Charles. Papa is an attorney as you may know. He has taught me how to plead a case. When I was done stating the facts as I knew them, he raised his objections. I considered them each by their own merit, biding my time in a reflective fashion. Papa was silent. Then he cleared his throat. "What does your mother say?" My heart stood still. I cleared my throat. " Maman wishes you to know that it would be most excellent should you consent...". Well, this was not exactly as she had said, but I was an appellant of one. Papa looked at me and stroked his goatee. Uncle Charles cleared his throat: "Oh, let her have the cat, John... what could it hurt..." Papa raised his hand in a gesture of futility. Then he smiled. "We are dressing for dinner at six. Have the girl fix a plate in the kitchen for...for..."

"Oh, Papa. Oh Uncle Charles!" I cried out in heartfelt joy. "I shall call him Mr. Conkling because of his bristley orange whiskers!"

Uncle Charles and Papa looked at each other and Uncle Charles laughed out loud. "Ah, John! She is going to call him Mr Conkling! A bright girl, that. perhaps now you should let her have a dog and call him Mr. Sprauge. We could let them have at each other... what do you say... sell tickets for the event?"

Papa laughed. " A girl after my own heart, but a politician? Never!

I whirled from the room and lifting my skirts, ran to the porch, where I almost tripped over the door step! Maman was still still working on the French knots, and leaning over, I kissed the part in her gleaming brown hair.. That day I was the happiest girl in the world!

[fiona]

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