McMartin, from Canada Lake, died September 27th 2005.  She was the author of 25 books about the Adirondacks, including her 11-book Discover series.  She and her husband, W. Alec Reid, also wrote a book in 1999 chronicling the glove industry in Johnstown and Gloversville, “The Glove Cities.”

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McMartin had insight into glove industry

Amsterdam architect designed brick homes and schools

By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History

       The celebrated Adirondack author Barbara McMartin wrote at least one book that dealt with industry and not the outdoors.

       McMartin, from Canada Lake, died September 27th 2005.  She was the author of 25 books about the Adirondacks, including her 11-book Discover series.  She and her husband, W. Alec Reid, also wrote a book in 1999 chronicling the glove industry in Johnstown and Gloversville, “The Glove Cities.”

       McMartin’s father had been a physician but her great-grandfather, James I. McMartin, started a Johnstown glove shop in 1843.  Her grandfathers continued in the trade.

“Glovers were independent people,” McMartin said in an interview in 2001.  A strain of that independence can be found in McMartin’s own life as an advocate for the Adirondack Park.

       McMartin said, “A man who was working as a glove cutter who got angry with his boss could start a glove shop with a pair of scissors and a needle.”

       In their book, McMartin and Reid recorded the existence of an astounding 1,900 glove shops in the Johnstown and Gloversville area over the past two centuries.  Some shops employed as many as 500 workers, others were true mom and pop operations, with mom sewing gloves and pop cutting them.

       McMartin and Reid found that the glove industry actually peaked in 1890 and began its long, slow decline around 1905 in the Glove cities.  Cheaper labor offshore led to a precipitous decline in local glove making after World War II.

       McMartin wrote, “Every time the business looked up, something unfortunate happened, usually an outside event over which manufacturers and workers had no control: shortages of skins, lower tariffs, losing home workers, war, more attractive jobs elsewhere, and most important of all, the globalization of manufacturing and cheap overseas labor.”

ARCHITECT FOUND

       A Fort Johnson woman has answered a question raised in a column some months ago.

       Krishna and Sunita Singh wondered who designed their home at 230 Market Street in Amsterdam.  While many of the homes around them are made of wood, theirs is made of brick.  The house was built in 1918 for William H.  Cooper, who became first vice president of production at the Sanford carpet mills after John Sanford inherited the business from his father, Stephen Sanford, in 1913.  Cooper died in 1930 and the home was subsequently owned by Herbert Singer of Amsterdam Printing, Dr. Fred Pipito, then Jeannie Morris, whose father was affiliated with the Schine Theatres.

       The Singhs were told that Amsterdam builder John Turner, who remodeled the Sanford mansion on Church Street, now City Hall, might have designed 230 Market Street.

       Turner likely built the house but it was designed by Amsterdam architect Howard F. Daly.

       According to his daughter, Genevieve Golden of Fort Johnson, Daly was originally from Herkimer.  He moved to Allentown, Pennsylvania, where he met and married his wife, Rose.  They returned to the Mohawk Valley, settling in Amsterdam.  Daly’s office was at 13 East Main Street.

       Golden said her father designed a number of brick residences, a style that had been common in Allentown.  Daly frequently worked with builder John Turner and Turner’s sons, Richard and Thomas.

Daly designed Wilbur H. Lynch High School, now the middle school, which opened in 1931.  Golden was in the first class to enter the school her father designed.  Daly also designed Vrooman Avenue School, now an apartment complex, and the new East Main Street School, now the Assembly of God Church.  He also designed many homes on Market Hill, including his own house on Grant Avenue where he lived until his death.  He died in 1980 at the age of 92.

Tomorrow

...beer making starting in 1859  

Wednesday, September 13, 2023

Phillip Bowler has tales of Bowler’s Brewery in Amsterdam and his own world travels. 

Thursday, September 14, 2023-From the Archives of Focus on History from the Daily Gazette-A baseball oracle

Friday, September 15, 2023- Episode 493-Charles Yaple, Professor Emeritus at SUNY Cortland, has written Jacob’s Land, a history of an immigrant family and of the native tribes who populated the land in New York State in the 1700s. Yaple has also written The Tree of Us following the lives of three men, from Richford, New York, including John D. Rockefeller, once the world’s richest man, and Gurdon Wallace Wattle, a friend to five U.S. presidents.

Mohawk Valley Weather, Tuesday, September 12, 2023

65 degrees in The City of Amsterdam at 6:28AM 

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