I agree with Daniel Weiskotten about the records being thrown
out and still are. A few years ago, I spoke to a woman in a town nearby
who was to catalog some old records and then throw them out. I got in
touch with Bill Evans at the Archives and obtained the phone number
for someone who would instruct that town about their records. They
wanted to throw away their old records just because they did not want
those 'old things' in their new town hall which was already  built and
had provided no place to put them.

When present administrations have no desire to preserve the past
history of the town they represent, this shows me that they are not
concerned about all aspects of their town but only what is on their
own agenda. Each adminstration has its own values and that is
quite scary.  Unfortunately the same thing happens with museums
and historical societies and new directors often unload items that
are not of their interest. Once gone they cannot be replaced.

God Bless
Ruth Ann
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On Sun, 29 Dec 2002 00:09:13 -0500 "Daniel H. Weiskotten"
<[log in to unmask]> writes:
> I have not seen mention of Little Falls, NY, yet in this discussion
> of
> Urban Renewal programs of the 1960s and 1970s.
>
> Little Falls had seen better days and most of the mills were empty
> when the
> trend to level the world started, and the south half of the main
> street
> fell to the wrecking ball.  Three shoe boxes were put in their place
> housing a grocery, Mickie D's and a motel.  Facing these blights is
> the old
> business district which still has scores of ornate, character-filled
> facades, which really drives home what was lost.  The remaining
> storefronts
> have (or I hope that is now past-tense "had") the most god-awful
> ugly
> aluminum columns and an awning running the entire length of the
> street to
> modernize them and keep the sidewalks dry.  With vision like that
> who needs
> old dirty buildings.
>
> To say that the residents had hindsight or after-the-fact lament of
> their
> losses is not at all true in this case (and I am sure many other
> cases) as
> residents brought lawsuits against the city to stop demolition of
> the old
> bank building which is now the Historical society and they managed
> to delay
> destruction of a number of the great stone mills on the river long
> enough
> for the right people with vision to come along and save them.
>
> Another loss that was the result of Urban Renewal was a lot of
> historical
> documentation.  I know of several instances where cities and towns
> scrapped
> anything old, including municipal, cemetery and church records
> because it
> was of the past and they were starting a new chapter (There are also
> lots
> of hero stories of people grabbing these records from the trash bins
> and
> preserving them for future generations and a time of changed
> attitudes).  In Little Falls they tossed thousands of city engineers
> maps
> and files as they had every intention of just whiping the slate
> clean and
> starting over.  When I did my research on the Western Inland Lock
> Navigation Canal in Little Falls for Phil Lord (early 1990s) the
> then-current adminsistration was trying to rebuild their maps as
> they had
> no idea where sewers and water lines ran.  The few maps the city did
> still
> have had been found in the attic of one of the city buildings slated
> for
> demolition.  I saw lists of maps and records that no longer existed
> that
> would have provided great insight into the canal, river, industries,
> properties, etc.  It was as if I was looking at the list of stuff
> burned in
> the 1911 Capitol fire, except this destruction was on purpose.
>
> In Cazenovia the plan was to knock down some of the lesser wooden
> buildings
> on a side street and put up modern precast congrete bunkers that
> were set
> at an angle and clashed horribly with every bit of their
> surroundings.  Fortunately nothing ever came from it.  Unfortunately
> we did
> lose one of the old proud houses across the street at about the same
> time
> to a post office which was made to look oldy-timey but only looks
> like
> cra_.  In that case the community had a prolonged hissy fit and huge
> campaign to save it.  One of the main reasons it was knocked down
> was that
> the lady who was then the Town Historian (NOT Mrs. Hendrix, who
> fought hard
> to save every scrap of our history) made the statement that we had
> enough
> old buildings already, so what does the loss of this one matter?  It
> is now
> a singular blight in the middle of a huge National Register
> District.
>
> The Horrors.  The Humanity.  The Insanity.
>
>         Dan W.
>