1891, 132 years ago
Veterans remembered
The Soldiers and Sailors Monument on Oneida Square in Utica is unveiled on Tuesday, Oct.13, a memorable day in the city’s history. Thousands are able to attend the unveiling ceremony because schools, stores, mills and factories are closed. A big parade attracts many spectators along Genesee Street from Bagg’s Square to Oneida Square.
Edward Huntington Bright unveils the monument. He is the son of Major William H. Bright of Utica, a Civil War veteran who was wounded in 1864 in the Battle of Peach Tree in Georgia. After the war ended in 1865, the major returned to Utica and fought for the erection of a monument to honor the city’s men who had joined the Union Army to fight the southern states that had seceded from the Union.
The lady atop the monument points south and it is fitting that she does. Many of the war’s major battles were fought south of Utica, in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and Tennessee.
The idea for a monument was conceived during the war, but it was not until 1887 that enough money was raised to hire architect Karl Gerhardt, of Hartford, Connecticut, to design it. Uticans then voted to tax themselves $15,000 to reach the $32,000 needed to complete the project.
The monument has been the center of controversy for many months. Most veterans wanted it erected on Oneida Square, but some Uticans thought it belonged on Bagg’s Square. Others wanted it in Steuben Park at the head of Charlotte Street while still others chose a plot on Varick Street.
1923, 100 years ago
Burlesque is back
It is standing room only at Utica’s Colonial Theater as burlesque returns to the theater on the north side of Bleecker Street, one block from Genesee Street. A two-act musical revue called “Temptations of 1923,” features Flossie Everette and the American Beauty Chorus. Tickets vary from 28 to 95 cents. Area clergymen were successful last year in closing the Colonial’s burlesque shows for “being indecent,” but the theater…
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