Business changes among news in 1923
By Erik Pekar
There were many news items and other information in the Feb. 23, 1923 issue of the Granville Sentinel, including several regarding businesses.
The end was near for one business advertising in the Sentinel and was well-stated to their customers: "3 More Days – Thursday, Friday, Saturday – And We Are Through – Folks, we have but three more days left in which to dispose of our entire stock, then we are through. Saturday night we close our doors. Our lease runs out and we are forced to go. Everything MUST go, regardless of cost! Remember: 3 more days and we are through; 3 more days of unheard-of values; 3 more days never to be forgotten. Come early and don’t be disappointed. – Hickey’s – Going Out Of Business – Granville, N.Y."
The Hickey store occupied the first floor of the Hickey building on Main Street, which burned in 1931. By that time it was occupied by Sam Bloom’s five and dime store, rebuilt as a one-story building (from Main Street). The building has gone through many ownership changes and businesses since Bloom sold the building and store more than 60 years ago; it is presently owned by Owen Crawford.
Around that time, another store had vacated a Main Street building, but not due to lease expiration. The same issue had an ad which had evidently run in the Sentinel for several weeks: "Notice! After January 1 our store stock in the Collins block, will be removed to our residence, Church Street, where we will keep a full stock and solicit your continued patronage. – B. Yanklowitz & Son, Granville Jobbing House, Granville, N.Y." The Collins block still stands today on East Main Street; it is presently occupied by the Opal Rose store.
Another item, for some readers when new may have brought recollections of Granville of a much earlier time: "The remains of Mrs. Frances A. Whitcomb were brought to Granville Sunday morning and taken to East Rupert for burial. Deceased was a daughter of Harry Sykes and widow of Aaron Whitcomb, they being residents of Granville prior to 1875, when Mr. Whitcomb was a proprietor of a jewelry store here. A daughter survives, Mrs. R. W. Smith of Brooklyn." Whitcomb was among the first advertisers in the very first issue of the Granville Sentinel, dated Sept. 17, 1875.
The automobile had revolutionized travel and now it was starting to make another change towards modernization. The Middle Granville column noted this item: "Williams Brothers have purchased a new truck with which they will carry their men to and from the quarries." For many of the slate companies in this era, this luxury was not available, and the slate workers made their way from Middle Granville or Granville to the quarries by foot.
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The demolition of the 15 East Main building, corner of East Main and Slocum Avenue, reached the floor level on Jan. 29. Preparations for demolition had started in the fall, but work did not begin until January. The building, which was of brick construction, served several purposes in its life. At one point it was the Noxon residence. For some years, Elliott Barrow ran his insurance agency from the building. Its most recent use was as an apartment building, some 15 to 30 years ago. It had been vacant and run-down for some time; the demolition of the building removes a dilapidated eyesore from this section of Granville.
The lot is being cleared and leveled and is planned to become parking space for the building across Slocum Avenue at 13 East Main Street (the Collins block mentioned above). The demolition also affords the opportunity, with cooperation from utilities, of slightly widening Slocum Avenue where the building formerly stood, which would remove a bottleneck on that part of the street.
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Last year, in the June 9 column of "Granville Then and Now," we wrote of the businesses and owners of Granville’s Main Street in the 1960s, and named those who owned or managed businesses then who were still living: John Belemjian, Phil Berke, John Norton, owners, and Ron Barrett, manager of the Grand Union.
Earlier this month, John Belemjian passed away. For many years, he was the co-owner of the Granville Pharmacy. He and Robert Brown purchased the Haskins Drug Store from H. Gray Haskins in January 1963. Within a year he moved to Granville with his family. During his years in Granville and at the Granville Pharmacy, Belemjian made the business countless customers and made numerous friends and acquaintances.
He sold his share to Brown in 1983 and went to other places. For some time he worked for the Mary McClellan Hospital, but within a few years he moved down south to Georgia. There, he worked for the Treasury Drug pharmacy chain and then as a pharmacy manager for a store in the Winn-Dixie grocery store chain. He retired in 1997 and was living out his retirement years in Florida.
With his knowledge and personality, through the operation of running the Granville Pharmacy, John Belemjian helped better Granville. Many still fondly recall the pharmacy and him being a pharmacist, both as being of such quality and form that is generally not seen today. He will be missed, but not forgotten.
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We were recently shown an article in another paper of this vicinity that will be of interest to Granville people. The article, penned by Anthony F. Hall, was published in the February 2023 issue of the Lake George Mirror.
The Granville connection comes in the first paragraph: "Martha Levy is best known in this area as the painter of ‘Men Working in Slate Quarry,’ the 1939 mural that hung in the Granville High School and then in the Town Hall before being moved to the Slate Valley Museum in 1995."
Hall’s article, however, concerned another of Levy’s works, titled "Winter Scene." Painted in 1934, it shows a bleak landscape of snow and hills, a dark gray sky, barren trees, and a couple houses in the distance with small evergreens adjacent. A man with a rifle has trudged through the snow and is heading towards the structures.
He wrote: "Levy’s painting is hardly a celebration of American life … (it) is, perhaps, … a response to ‘the social situation’. Rather than a celebration, it is, if anything, a commentary on life during the Great Depression, a visual critique of a political and economic system that many artists believed was the source of the decade’s bleak conditions."
Hall compared Levy’s "Winter Scene" to Elder Pieter Bruegel’s "Hunters in the Snow (Winter)", from 1565, noting Bruegel’s "inhabited landscape … with communal work and play". Hall also likened "Men Working in Slate Quarry" as a "modern equivalent of the collective spirit" displayed in Bruegel’s painting.
Hall contrasted the Bruegel painting with Levy’s depiction of a "solitary figure" returning to a darkened farmhouse, speculating "it is not his own home, but rather an abandoned farm, one deserted by the occupants or one from which the tenants have been evicted." Hall went further to surmise that the painting portrayed "not so much a faltering economic system, but its collapse."
At the time of painting "Winter Scene," Martha Levy was employed by the Public Works of Art Project, a federal "New Deal" program that financially supported artists. She later worked for the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project; it was under that program which Levy painted scenes together of Granville’s slate industry in "Men Working in Slate Quarry."
We thank Hall for the commentary on two of Martha Levy’s paintings, and the mention of the "Men Working in Slate Quarry" mural and it being at the Slate Valley Museum. It is a unique compliment to read of the mural being likened to the famed Bruegel painting. There may be publicity generated about Granville by this; Granville won’t be able to take advantage of Lake George area residents, vacationers and tourists who may be curious about the Martha Levy mural in Granville, as the Slate Valley Museum is presently closed to the public for the winter season.
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