The Growth Of Syracuse Will Make Money For You

I’m a sucker for charm, which for the purposes of this article I will define as “anything sounding completely ridiculous that someone else thought was fine”.

This week I caught an infection,  spread to me through my computer by highly contagious individuals all over the country who found my blog and commented on the tribute I wrote about WTVH-TV.   Most of these people worked at the once mighty channel 5, others simply watched it, but everyone was infected with the nostalgia bug and now they’ve infected me.

I’ve sat at my computer for hours this week, delighted to see this blog unfold as a safe and happy place for people with connections to TV5.   And when I say happy, I mean we are all laughing at the memories.   Aloud.  The gossip and back-stabbing?  The infuriating expectations by management?  The morons who called to complain about our news when they didn’t know we were down two photogs and three cameras that day?  We’re not going there.

We’re laughing, even at stuff we weren’t supposed to laugh at, like one of our promotion campaigns that made no sense and yet worked well.   “We put more news….in the news”.  Yes,  we really said that, and for awhile the audience believed that we were putting more news in the news, as opposed to chickens and auto transmissions and floral arrangements.  I chuckle every single time I hear it.  It’s ridiculous.  And it’s charming because someone believed it sounded fine.

All this took me to one of my favorite websites called syracusethenandnow.org.  If there is a better online source for historic photographs, postcards and stories about Syracuse, I would love to know about it.  I can get lost a long time in there.

One of my favorite features is a list of some of the neighborhoods in our city.  The beauty in the old postcards and photographs of the architecture and the municipal landscaping and the elm trees that lined our streets before Dutch Elm Disease killed them all in the 1960s, is breathtaking.  Did James Street truly ever look like that?   Was there really a cast iron fountain with water flowing through the pipes where West Onondaga Street meets Bellevue Avenue?  How on earth did we get from those photographs to where we are today?

From there I click on the real estate developer’s marketing brochures of two of this city’s most wonderful neighborhoods, Strathmore on the west side, and the neighborhood where I live, Berkeley Park near Syracuse University.  Thankfully, these neighborhoods are holding steady, though we’re all increasingly challenged by cinder block drug stores sitting a little too close to the homes.

Strathmore’s development began in 1919, and the sales pitch was enlightening and oh, so charming.  Featuring black and white photographs of the brand new streets and of some of the houses sprouting up, the brochure encouraged potential homeowners to invest in a “high class home” of $5,000.00 that would appreciate along with the population and fortunes of Syracuse.  “The growth of Syracuse will make money for you”.  I love it.

“Beautiful winding drives”.  “A high, dry, healthy location”.  The wording shows you what people feared back then and a new home in Strathmore would fix it.  Penicillin wouldn’t be invented for 9 more years, not widely used for another 15, so disease was difficult to check.  Developers in both neighborhoods promised a lifestyle with “no smoke”, the by-product of manufacturing in inner cities without any pollution control.

And developers knew people were already averse to urban decay, as difficult as that may sound way back in 1919.   “There can be no cheap homes in Strathmore by the Park”.  “A restricted district”.   “No factory, stable, barn, public garage, store, business place, apartment house…..” .   No stables?  No barns?  Even in the city?  That does it for me.  Honey pack up.  We’re moving to Strathmore.  Don’t worry that we can’t get there to check out the $700.00 lots. “A car will call for you anywhere, any time”.  Call for you.  How adorable is that?

“The fondest dream of every normal, patriotic American man and woman is to possess a home”.  Normal.  So utterly charming.   Normal as opposed to what?  Someone who can only afford to rent an apartment?   Charming in capital letters.  Here’s what you dial for an appointment.  Warren 606.

We’ve evolved from those days because we needed to.  When those neighborhoods were built and water flowed from municipal fountains and there was a big budget for flowers for the parks, blacks and women could not vote.  So I wouldn’t go back there if it meant trading human rights for elm trees on all the streets again.  But it would be fun to visit for awhile and walk the neighborhoods as they used to be.

I wonder if 90 years from now, will people find us charming?  Will they look back at the lyrics of 50-Cent and say “Now that was music!”    Pierced tongues?  Aw.     And that television station that put more news in the news.   SO cute, that place.

Tagged as: history, real estate, Syracuse, WTVH