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damontSo back on June 30th, after celebrating a HS graduation in Syracuse NY, I resolved that since I was only about 100 miles away (instead of at least 300), I would make a pilgrimage to a place I hadn't been to in over a decade.
There's probably only half a dozen people on Dreamwidth who've ever been to Thousand Island Park, NY, and I know most if not all of that half dozen. But for a half century T.I. Park was my maternal family's vacation spot of choice, and it remains one of my Big Two spots even though I rarely get there anymore. So up I-81 I went, over the American Span of the Thousand Islands International Bridge System, which celebrated its 80th birthday last year.
The actual hamlet of T. I. Park isn't an incorporated village by New York law, but it's probably the largest organized place (by summer population or by number of buildings) on any of the U.S. islands in the region. It got its start in 1875 as a Methodist camp meeting. It is therefore no surprise that one of the social centers today still is the Tabernacle, which has solid walls on only the front and back. Religious services are held there on Sundays in the summer, and movies are shown there up to 4 times a week in the evenings. I didn't go up close enough to get a decent photo of it, but it hasn't really changed in 50 years, so a stock photo from the TIP Landmark Society will do...
One of the other major social centers is the "center of town", such as it is. The corner of St. Lawrence Avenue (which runs from the river up to the Tabernacle) and Rainbow Street is where all the businesses cluster. On the northeast corner of that intersection (the streets don't follow the compass directions exactly but they're actually closer than I recalled) was what I always called the "Town Building", which housed the post office, the hamlet's security office, a small grocery store, the local branch of the Wellesley Island Fire Department, and a casual restaurant/ice cream parlor/gaming room known as The Guzzle. Here's a rendition of what it looked like during the 1990s and 2000s:
Alas, that building was ironically destroyed by fire in 2014. There were no manual overrides on the fire department doors so they couldn't deploy the equipment that was right there. At least nobody was injured. For a story by Gordon Block with more photos click on the next photo, which depicts the aftermath.
Thanks to a combination of insurance and semi-crowdfunded donations, a new building was built on the corner. However, as the next pic may show, the new building is noticeably smaller.
As you may be able to see, there's open space on the right hand side of that pic. That's where the fire department had been. I suspect the fire department either won't rebuild there at all, or will not rebuild until they can raise funds for the new building AND the equipment to be housed therein, since all the vehicles and gear that were in the firehouse were destroyed in the blaze. They did float a bond to build a larger firehouse in the central section of the island near the bridge, possibly where the other firehouse had been, and that building was dedicated last year. The closest thing to the fire department's actual website is here, which hasn't been updated in at least six years -- there's no mention at all of the T.I. Park fire and it still says they have two stations, one in T.I. Park. Likewise, the wing on St. Lawrence Avenue that contained a realty office, the security office, and the post office was not rebuilt. The security office and post office have moved across the street into what had been a shop (which, if it remained active, moved to another location, possibly in the hotel next door, about which more in the next post).
Basically for the new building, they only rebuilt on the footprint of the old Guzzle plus the old grocery store. The new Guzzle incorporates the old grocery store's footprint, and that section has some grocery store items. (But not nearly as many as the old grocery had.)
The front door is the center part of an angled cutout porch on that front corner, very much like the front door of the old Guzzle. It's partially obscured by a tree in the photo. Inside the new Guzzle are old pictures of T.I. Park, including one of the very first ice cream parlor to open there, which was just a gazebo and probably predated electrification... and there's also a model of the "old" Guzzle!
Yes, those are Fisher-Price Little People standing at the front door. Including the dog, who isn't allowed inside (the sign on the door clearly says "NO DOGS").
Stay tuned for parts 2 and 3 of this photo essay.
There's probably only half a dozen people on Dreamwidth who've ever been to Thousand Island Park, NY, and I know most if not all of that half dozen. But for a half century T.I. Park was my maternal family's vacation spot of choice, and it remains one of my Big Two spots even though I rarely get there anymore. So up I-81 I went, over the American Span of the Thousand Islands International Bridge System, which celebrated its 80th birthday last year.
The actual hamlet of T. I. Park isn't an incorporated village by New York law, but it's probably the largest organized place (by summer population or by number of buildings) on any of the U.S. islands in the region. It got its start in 1875 as a Methodist camp meeting. It is therefore no surprise that one of the social centers today still is the Tabernacle, which has solid walls on only the front and back. Religious services are held there on Sundays in the summer, and movies are shown there up to 4 times a week in the evenings. I didn't go up close enough to get a decent photo of it, but it hasn't really changed in 50 years, so a stock photo from the TIP Landmark Society will do...
One of the other major social centers is the "center of town", such as it is. The corner of St. Lawrence Avenue (which runs from the river up to the Tabernacle) and Rainbow Street is where all the businesses cluster. On the northeast corner of that intersection (the streets don't follow the compass directions exactly but they're actually closer than I recalled) was what I always called the "Town Building", which housed the post office, the hamlet's security office, a small grocery store, the local branch of the Wellesley Island Fire Department, and a casual restaurant/ice cream parlor/gaming room known as The Guzzle. Here's a rendition of what it looked like during the 1990s and 2000s:
Alas, that building was ironically destroyed by fire in 2014. There were no manual overrides on the fire department doors so they couldn't deploy the equipment that was right there. At least nobody was injured. For a story by Gordon Block with more photos click on the next photo, which depicts the aftermath.
Thanks to a combination of insurance and semi-crowdfunded donations, a new building was built on the corner. However, as the next pic may show, the new building is noticeably smaller.
As you may be able to see, there's open space on the right hand side of that pic. That's where the fire department had been. I suspect the fire department either won't rebuild there at all, or will not rebuild until they can raise funds for the new building AND the equipment to be housed therein, since all the vehicles and gear that were in the firehouse were destroyed in the blaze. They did float a bond to build a larger firehouse in the central section of the island near the bridge, possibly where the other firehouse had been, and that building was dedicated last year. The closest thing to the fire department's actual website is here, which hasn't been updated in at least six years -- there's no mention at all of the T.I. Park fire and it still says they have two stations, one in T.I. Park. Likewise, the wing on St. Lawrence Avenue that contained a realty office, the security office, and the post office was not rebuilt. The security office and post office have moved across the street into what had been a shop (which, if it remained active, moved to another location, possibly in the hotel next door, about which more in the next post).
Basically for the new building, they only rebuilt on the footprint of the old Guzzle plus the old grocery store. The new Guzzle incorporates the old grocery store's footprint, and that section has some grocery store items. (But not nearly as many as the old grocery had.)
The front door is the center part of an angled cutout porch on that front corner, very much like the front door of the old Guzzle. It's partially obscured by a tree in the photo. Inside the new Guzzle are old pictures of T.I. Park, including one of the very first ice cream parlor to open there, which was just a gazebo and probably predated electrification... and there's also a model of the "old" Guzzle!
Yes, those are Fisher-Price Little People standing at the front door. Including the dog, who isn't allowed inside (the sign on the door clearly says "NO DOGS").
Stay tuned for parts 2 and 3 of this photo essay.
no subject
Date: 2019-07-15 02:10 am (UTC)My maternal-line great grandparents owned a cottage there. I'd need to check the records, but since my grandmother was born around the turn of the century, I'm fairly certain they were among the first generation of inhabitants. The property was co-inherited by my grandmother and her brother, and was the family's summer get-away from NYC. My mother spent pretty much all her summers there growing up, had her first job working in a restaurant there, and she and my dad were married there.
My childish recollection is "we always went there for a summer visit" until my grandparents retired to Arizona and sold out their share of the property, but in reality my memory could only possibly cover three or four visits at the most, though I recall another visit in 1969 when we coming back across the country after coming back from Europe. (My mother's parents had just celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in Syracuse and I believe a whole group of us then went to spend a week at the cottage.)
My mother's cousin (who was the only member of her generation on the side of the family that took over ownership) eventually fitted up the cottage to be inhabitable year-round, but her children & grandchildren weren't interested enough in keeping it in the family to buy her out when she got too frail to continue living there on her own. The buyers used it as a tear-down and built something new on the property. But before that happened, back in 1999 (if I'm remembering correctly) my mom decided she wanted one last family vacation there at the Park and rented the cottage from her cousin so we could all gather for a week of boating, fishing, and lazing around in hammocks.
If Google maps and my memory aren't betraying me, our cottage was on Prospect Ave just a couple houses up from where it splits off of Park Ave.
no subject
Date: 2019-07-15 08:05 pm (UTC)Your family's cottage was at the other end of town from where most of my childhood stays happened. My mom's parents had first heard of T.I. Park some time during WWII, I think -- they were clued in to it by the Fosters, who had the white Craftsman cottage on the little bluff between Centennial and Coast Avenues, near the swimming cove. So their first vacation up there would have been when my mom was either just done with, or just about to start, kindergarten. They continued going up there every year through the rest of the 40s through the mid-1960s. My first trip up would have been in 1967, after my dad's mother's grandparents died and their summer house on the Jersey Shore was sold. My parents spent at least a week up there nearly every year after that until about the turn of the century. About half of those we were in the Fowler cottage on the east end of town; their grandson Bob Arnebeck inherited it later and had a kid the same age as mine, and we have pictures of the two of them with a few others who spent quite a bit of time playing a homebrew Star Wars LARP they'd first cooked up at the tender age of eight or nine. (Before the "special editions" much less the prequels.)
Since you were on the west end, did you ever trek over to the cove to swim, or was there a decent way into the water closer to your cottage? (You can tell I didn't spend too much time over near Prospect and Park...)
no subject
Date: 2019-07-15 09:03 pm (UTC)