LeRoy Pennysaver & News

LE ROY PENNYSAVER & NEWS - MARCH 22, 2020 by Lynne Belluscio L a s t Saturday I met Mike Lauterborn out on West Main Street to take a look at what a few m o n t h s ago, was a very tall bush, but what is really a large cast iron lamp pole. It was on the Lent family land near the old pump house, but we really don’t know why it was there or how long it was there. The fixture on the top looked like a gas lamp, but was actually a plastic reproduction with a light bulb. At one time there was a gas line to it because we found the pipe inside the pole, but it had been cut off at ground level so we don’t know if it worked as a gas lamp there or was moved from somewhere else. Mike dug out the base, and we cut off the vines, and when he got it on the ground we discovered that the pole was marked: “Bartlett Lamp Co. New York.” A quick Google search came up with some interesting information. The Bartlett Lamp Company started producing street lights in 1872. Before that, they manufactured sewing machines. Bartlett supplied lights for New York City. So far, I haven’t found an image of another Bartlett cast iron pole, but I’m still working on it. Mike said that in all the years he has installed or moved light poles, he has never seen one of this. He will clean it up and we will install it in the front yard of LeRoy House as a project funded by the memorial money donated by the friends of Frank Elliott and Loren Wetzel. So now the question is what kind of fixture should we put on the top. The village of LeRoy couldn’t decide whether to have gas or electric street lighting and changed back and forth several times. There was a gas plant down on Mill Street operated by Mr. Prentice. He alsowas producing electricity at the old LeRoy Mill and then dug out the raceway north to the old Jones paper mill site at Red Mill (site of the water treatment plant now) and turned that into a water powered electric plant, that was supplemented by a coal-fired steam engine in the winter, when the water was frozen. There are descriptions of both coal gas and water gas production, but natural gas, brought up from Pavilion did not become available until 1906-1907. (By the way, the Village of Wyoming, which is known for its gas lights, received a state grant to refurbish their gas lights, and they look great. But the poles aren’t a n y t h i n g special – not like the one we found.) N e x t , I started looking at old photographs of LeRoy. It seems to me that the early gas lamps were the square- ish glass-sided fixtures. They show up in the 1880s stereo cards and photos of the 1884 Main Street parade. These lamps are the earlier design. I discovered that in New York City, there are a few remaining square gas lamps, although now electrified, and two are on Patchin Place in Greenwich Village. There are many square gas lamps in New Orleans, which still spew gas flames. These early street lights had a small cross bar right under the lamp. This was a ladder rest so the “lamplighter” could turn the lamps on and off each night and could clean the glass and adjust the gas jets. The job of the lamplighter wasn’t easy. Andrew Weinman wrote about his experience as a lamplighter in LeRoy when in 1886, the Village voted to replace the gas lights with electric: “I for one wasn’t sorry about the change because lighting and extinguishing the gas lights was a strenuous job. We had to start lighting just before dark and extinguished them between 12 and 1 am. We had the Village divided into four routes. My route started at the Village Hall on Bank Street, up Myrtle Street to Bissel’s Grove and down Gilbert and West Main and Main Street to Mill Street. I often wonder how many lads in these days would want to make two such trips every night, winter and summer for $5 a week. Many times we had to wade through the snow more than knee deep.” There are two photographs from 1884, taken on Bank Street, that show the round glass globe gas lamp - -such as you see in Wyoming. Was this the only “modern” gas lamp in LeRoy at that time? Most interesting, is that I cannot see a ladder rest and this brings the story back to the Bartett Lamp Company and the iron post. It seems that in 1878, Bartlett introduced several devices that made it possible to light and extinguish gas lamps “remotely.” This was an electrical device, Bartlett demonstrated it by having all of the gas lamps around Madison Square turned off and on from their office on Broadway. So perhaps, the gas lamp outside the Village Hall on Bank Street is indeed a Bartlett lamp? By chance, I went up on Ebay and typed in Bartlett Lamp and up popped an invoice on the letterhead for the Bartlett Lamp Comp a n y and right in the middle is an illustration of a Bartlett gas lamp. I haven’t received it yet, but it is another clue in the puzzle. Working At Home