Way back in March, the Pittsford Community Library asked if I would like to put together a presentation about the history of the Pittsford Community Library, and its various sites throughout time. This was to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the present-day library building, built and opened twenty years ago in 2005. Of course, I was interested; I have a bit of a relationship with the town from my school days, and have many fond memories of visiting the library and strolling along the canal with an ice cream and a lady friend.

My progress was sticky, at first; I rarely create an in-person presentation from scratch, instead usually compiling a number of pieces of information from this blog, the one you’re reading now. This inspired me: instead of just going at it as a presentation, what if I were to make a Gonechester post about it, as well? That way, anyone unable to take in the original presentation could get a taste of what it was about.

So that’s what you are reading, here, today; at the same time I am presenting Landmarks, Libraries, and a Legacy at Pittsford Community Library, this post will publish with largely the same amount of information–albeit, this written post with slightly more focus as I’m not trying to fill an hour here.

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George Thomas’s Shop

The earliest location of the Pittsford Community was in the building known as The Thomas Block, after George Thomas, a merchant who had his dry goods store in the lower levels of the building. The books were kept in the rear of his store. The Thomas Block still stands on the corner of Monroe Avenue and South Main Street in the village of Pittsford. It is also known as the Parker Block, after Fred Parker who maintained a tin shop in the building for many years.

Held in Thomas’ grocery was the full extent of the new Pittsford Community Library, inaugurated in 1922 by the act of Margaret Elta Becker Malone and Mary Una Hutchinson borrowing 150 books from the Library Extension Division of New York.

In the below picture from the Pittsford Scrapbook, we see the Thomas Block, also known as the Parker Block. George Thomas had a general store in the northern half of the ground floor, fronting on South Main Street.

The Thomas Block as it appears today, below.  The tinsmith of Henry A. Parker also operated out of this building, giving it the alternate name “the Parker Block.”

George Thomas and his Wife, Inez Ellena Ketcham Thomas, were both deeply involved in the progress of the library.

The collection of the Pittsford Community Library was held at the Thomas store for some weeks, until being moved to the Wiltsie & Crump building at the corner of North Main Street and Monroe, where it was kept in the rooms of the American Legion Post.

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Wiltsie & Crump Building

When the amount of interest in the library’s book collection outstripped its capacity, the nascent library was forced to change quarters to American Legion Post rooms in the upper stories of the Wiltsie & Crump building, the former Pittsford village pharmacy.

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The Little House

In 1924, the Library would move to the famous landmark known as the Little House. An extremely in-depth photo gallery and timeline of the Little House’s life so far is available at historicpittsford.org, so I won’t be going as deep down this rabbit-hole in this article as I am wont to do, if only because I’d pretty much be mirroring someone else’s work.

The tiny brick building was originally constructed on the lawn of the house of attorney Ira Buck, as a place he could pursue his trade in quiet, away from the main house.

The Pittsford Community Library would move its collection from Thomas’s store to the Little House in 1924.

In 1928, one of the founding members of the Pittsford Community Library, Margaret Elta Becker Malone, passed away. From borrowing 150 books in 1922, Malone observed from the sidelines as the library grew and flourished during her final eight years, sadly unable to take an active role due to the health problems which eventually claimed her life.

The Pittsford Community Library would remain in the Little House until 1936, when it would remove to the Charles Hastings Wiltsie house at No. 21 North Main Street.

Come 1963, grocer James George Burdett wanted to expand the driveway to his grocery’s parking area, which would require tearing down the Little House. At the same time, the Atlantic Refining Co. was looking to expand parking for their filling and service station, next door to the Little House. Pressure was increasing to remove the Little House from the lot, either through demolition–which was not preferred by Historic Pittsford–or by moving the building.

A preservation committee was formed by Andrew Wolfe, then-president of Historic Pittsford, to raise interest and money in order to save the Little House.

Fletcher Steele [see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fletcher_Steele], a very wealthy landscaper who had returned from Boston to his boyhood home of Pittsford, offered a plot of land for the relocation of the Little House.

Steele’s affection for the Little House may be explained by the claim that his father, John Mason Steele, II, used to practice law in the law offices in the small brick structure.

As recognition of Steele’s actions to save the Little House, and due to his estate’s extensive book and document donations to the library, the Pittsford Community Library has a room named for him, the Fletcher Steele Room.

On Monday, October 7th, 1963, the trussed-up Little House was tugged by a truck across Monroe Avenue, turned around, and backed into a new foundation on Steele’s property.

Steele would rent the Little House to Pittsford’s historical society on a nominal $1 a year basis. Steele himself would die July 16th, 1971; photographs of his house’s exterior and interior can be found in the Brighton-Pittsford Post of August 19th, 1971, page 11.

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No. 21 North Main Street

In 1936, Mary Emily Wiltsie Field donated the house of her late father, Charles Hastings Wiltsie, for use as a library. Her father had been extremely active in the Rochester Public Library in many capacities, and was a great lover of books. He had died the previous year, on May 9th of 1935.

The house had been in the Wiltsie family many generations; though between Charles Hastings and Mary Emily another person had owned it, Dr. John Van Doorn, before that it had been owned by her grandfather, Charles Hastings’ father, James Martin Wiltsie, produce dealer and multi-term Pittsford supervisor.

As the above states, the Wiltsie house was extensively remodeled in order to serve as a library. It would have appeared a bit more like the below prior to its renovations:

Mrs. Field went so far as to present Pittsford’s then-mayor, William H. Guetersloh, with a ceremonial key, signifying the property’s handing over to the Pittsford town library.

The refitted house was appropriately named the Charles Hastings Wiltsie Memorial Library:

The Pittsford Community Library would remain at No. 21 North Main Street until 1974, when the former Star Market on State Street was refurbished and became the library’s new home. At that point, the Charles Hastings Wiltsie home became the Village Hall.

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Absorption

In 1959, Pittsford’s previously independent public library was absorbed into the Monroe County Library system.

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State Street

In the 1970s, the Pittsford Community Library undertook a big move to a new facility, a refit Star Markets grocery store on State Street; that market, in its turn, had displaced other, older buildings upon its parcel. One of the most historically intriguing of the erstwhile structures was the old White Tavern, an old stagecoach inn whose provenance stretched back to the earliest 19th century.

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White Tavern

An old and venerable structure, the White Tavern–as it was generally called–was constructed around 1818 as a stagecoach inn. It was one of several structures in Pittsford claimed to be built by the extremely wealthy John Hartwell, along with the Wiltsie warehouses along the canal.

When Pittsford was a stop along the stagecoach line between Albany and Buffalo, the old White Tavern served as the “headquarters” of one stage driver, James Rogers Tinker.

James Rogers Tinker died April 29th, 1895 at his home in Henrietta and was buried in Tinker Cemetery, a small pioneer cemetery on Castle Road in Henrietta.

By the time of Tinker’s 1895 death, the old White Tavern had become the National Hotel, under the proprietorship of Patrick Lannan and Michael King. Prior to this, it had served as a boarding house for workers and laborers.

At one point, the White Tavern boarding house sheltered some fifty Italian laborers, brought to Pittsford to work the West Shore Railroad.

Their presence initially caused some curiosity, including the Italians’ crafting of pasta, which was apparently little-known to the Pittsford of the day:

However, consternation soon began to grow about the laborer’s presence in the town.

The anti-Italian furor grew until the Pittsford “board of health” capitulated to the demands for their eviction. By whatever means, the “exodus” was “effected” and fifty working Italian men were ousted from their home and sent elsewhere. As if that weren’t enough, they thoroughly fumigated the apartments; I can’t speak to what conditions in the White Tavern were actually like in the wake of fifty workmen’s residence there, but it just seems like adding insult to injury from my vantage point.

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The National Hotel

In 1889, Patrick Lannan and his brother-in-law Michael King–who was married to Lannan’s sister Margaret–purchased the old White Tavern and renovated it. To make it weirder, Lannan was married to King’s sister, also named Margaret. That’s right, Margaret Lannan King and Margaret King Lannan. Life is a cartoon.

During those renovations, Lannan discovered an old coin beneath clapboards he had removed; on close inspection, the tarnished coin was revealed to be a $20 gold piece, most likely what is referred to as a “double eagle“.

Michael King, whose myriad business interests included grain and a cidery, lived on Boughton Avenue:

King’s cider and vinegar manufactory was in the frame building directly east of the old White Tavern, at the head of South Street–what used to be called Cartersville Avenue. The cider mill was a replacement for one destroyed in an 1890 fire.

Kept in King’s cidery basement were two large steam engines used by King for threshing grain, and also often rented out to others for their needs. This mill was struck by fire in 1894; the National Hotel next door was saved from being consumed by the fire through the efforts of the village’s firemen.

Though thought to be destroyed in the fire, one steam engine survived:

Another disaster befell the cidery in 1902 when a boiler exploded, injuring engineer George Snyder and causing a large amount of property damage:

The mill would go on to become Sterling Barnard’s grist mill, which was used until the 1930s; after that it would become Ward Buell Hendee‘s “Wayside Furniture Shop”, which would witness the Star Market replacing its hostel neighbor to the west. It was torn down in favor of offices in 1965,

In addition to the cider manufactory, Michael King and his son Albert ran a saloon at No. 31 North Main Street:

The two men, King and Lannan, became co-landlords of a hotel in the renovated White Tavern, which they dubbed The National Hotel.

In 1890, King and Lannan built a large addition to the rear of the National Hotel building:

Patrick Lannan would die in the National Hotel, where he lived, on June 3rd, 1928. His first wife, Margaret King, sister of his business partner, had died 1911; he remarried to Anna Joyce, who would become his widow.

The National Hotel “boast[ed] the villages only spring dance floor, on the third story”. The springy floor was ideal for dancing or, to borrow a phrase from Milton as the article does, “trip[ping] the light fantastic“.

The account goes on to describe the condemnation of the third floor, the building’s use as apartments, and the destruction and removal of many architectural elements of the old hotel, both original and additions.

I don’t know why they name Lannan’s widow as Elizabeth Barrett Lannan. I don’t know who that is. Lannan’s widow was Anna Joyce Lannan.

It has also been claimed that the basements of the National Hotel had connections to an underground cavern beneath Pittsford, which were used as part of the system of safe spaces commonly known as the Underground Railroad.

One woman, Charlotte Acer Drake, even claimed to have entered the underground cavern. There was a picture of her but it’s pretty much a black square due to scan quality, so I left it out.

Eerily, she died just over a month after giving this account. What are they trying to hide from us?

Anyhow, there is little to no evidence of the caverns nor their use as a component of the Underground Railroad beyond anecdotal accounts, but it’s a romantic thought.

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Star Market

In 1971, plans were floated to purchase the Star Market at No. 24 State Street for use as a new library, which had been looking to increase square footage for some time. The Star Market was earmarked for closure by the company, due to the building being considered too small for the business of a supermarket. It was expected to close in 1972, when its lease ran out.

The Star Market on State Street was noteworthy for being designed by Rochester’s first prominent Black architect, Thomas Wilson Boyd Jr. [See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Wilson_Boyde_Jr.] He was the first African-American graduate of the School of Architecture of Syracuse University and the first African-American architect in Rochester, New York.

He designed the Star Market around 1955, which was to go in the place left by the demolished White Tavern/National hotel. The Star Market was constructed in 1957.

Below, the results of the extensive remodeling of the old Star Market:

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The Cupola

In 1974, a cupola was installed onto the Pittsford Community Library. This cupola had previously been atop the Automobile Club of Rochester’s building on South Clinton Avenue, which was in the process of demolition. As the article below states, the cupola had an octagonal base and was fabricated from wood and copper.

One minor correction to the above: while it states the demolished Automobile Club of Rochester building was at 777 S. Clinton, it was actually at 190 Chestnut Street; 777 S. Clinton was the new address to which the Automobile Club was moving.

Below are examples of the cupola in its original context, atop the Automobile Club, in an architect’s drawing and photos.

Embarrassingly, I cannot recall where I found the below photograph, but it is definitely of the Automobile Club on Chestnut Street, shortly after its construction in 1948. If I’m able to rediscover its source, I’ll edit to amend.

Not five years after the above publication, the Automobile Club of Rochester would be razed. Monroe Avenue West would be extended through its former location and, in 1978, renamed to Woodbury Boulevard.

One figure who was directly involved in the library’s move–which apparently included aligning the new cupola on its roof–was Marian Shafer Wadhams, who died April 10, 1987 at the age of 88.

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No. 24 State Street

From 1973 until today, No. 24 State Street would be the home site of the Pittsford Community Library.

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Into the 80s

Just a few years after its rebirth in the State Street location, the Pittsford Community Library entered its first new decade: the 1980s, a time of great technological innovation in libraries as well as a time of budget struggle and changing expectations for libraries across the board.

These next images I discovered among the archives of the Pittsford Community Library, labelled various years of the 1980s. Though lacking in captions or written detail, I find it enchanting to look back at these snapshots of a library in the 1980s, as this would be roughly how things looked when I was a child. Although, my local library is the Winton Road Branch, which still looks like this.

Here we see the old-school microfiche reader, and the boxy beige computers that dwell in our nostalgic memory.

The below shot is towards the front, with the checkout and returns counter in front of the big front window.

In the below photo, newspapers are folded up on a periodical stand. Shelves of books are to the left and right. There were tables for reading and study in this area.

Some couches and study tables next to the bookshelves. There’s lots of plants.

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Making Way for the New Library

In the new millennium, discussions began about the library facilities being too small, old, and generally unfit for the amount of use they saw. In 2003, Pittsford began to buy out properties around the library site with an eye towards expansion.

One casualty was the Ryan Homes office, a two-story frame office building that held the realty company and other tenants, such as dentist Dr. Morton Cohen:

Below, the Ryan Homes office building shortly before its demolition in 2004:

Also razed was Simply Hair, a salon located in an old house at No. 22 State Street.

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Demolishing the Old Library

In the summer of 2004, the old Star Market-turned-library building was razed to make way for the construction of the new Pittsford Community Library building.

In the archives of the Pittsford Community Library, I perused a box full of photographs of the demolition of the previous Pittsford Community Library. I have selected the eight most “interesting” shots for the below gallery:

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The New Library

In 2003, the DeWolff Partnership Architects unveiled a rendering for the proposed new library. The new look reportedly “wow”ed residents.

Groundbreaking for the new library building took place shortly after demolition of the old library, on June 23rd, 2004:

Construction of the library was sped along by the use of precast concrete units rather than structural steel.  Though generally more expensive, the process allowed the construction to continue at pace throughout the winter months.  In a happy turn, rising steel costs meant the concrete construction actually represented a significant savings.

Bruegger’s Bagel Bakery was selected to be the eatery attached to the Pittsford Community Library at its opening.

The Bruegger’s would close in July of 2016, leaving a temporary void in the eatery attached to the library’s State Street entrance.

Starbucks, previously at No. 5 State Street across the road, would step in to take the place of the erstwhile Bruegger’s, opening in summer of 2017. Ever since then, one of the noteworthy characteristics of Pittsford Community Library has been smelling intensely like caramel macchiato.

That brings us to today, the Pittsford Community Library the way we know it.  Though it’s been through many locations and many changes, the soul of the library is the same as it was when kindled by those community-minded women of 1922.  The spirit of literacy, of access to information, and the cultivation of a cultural third space beyond work and home.  The Library is a place where learning is encouraged; where those of a curious mind can come and, say, take in a presentation on history.  Or music, or art, or dance, poetry, literature… this is a space of endless possibility.  So thank you, Pittsford Community Library, for being there, for providing your services, and for inviting me to write about your fine institution.

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