The Vedder Research Library

Greenville Free Academy, pre-1906

A classic winter scene shows South Street, Greenville about 1905 as seen by Madison Stevens. Left is the Randall house; center is the Greenville Arms. Right, telephone pole brings new service to Greenville.

The Blizzard of 1993 (Mar 13-14) once again produced the look of the legendary winters of our memories. The windswept Carelas’ Hill (Fish Hill, Budd’s Hill), one-half mile south of Greenville on Rt. 32, fosters the growth of this fifteen foot drift.

Built in 1889 by William Vanderbilt, this South Street building remained a private residence until 1952 when Pierce and Ruth Stevens opened the Greenville Arms to the public. Eliot and Tish Dalton, owners since 1989, have renovated the Victorian style inn to become a nationally recognized retreat, especially for summer-long series of art workshops. The diagonal line across the photo is a result of a cracked glass plate negative.

This scene from South Street, Greenville, epitomizes a sophisticated country atmosphere with the reading of the newspaper in the side-yard swinging chair set. About 1905, photographer M.P. Stevens used large glass plate negatives to record a few dozen scene of Greenville of his time. Tentatively identified across the street are the current homes in the area of the Ellis family and the Randall family. The man and woman remain unidentified.

Middle class Greenville of about 1905 shows in this room, tentatively identified as the Stevens’ residence on South Street, today the location of Rossie Smith. This picture was developed from the glass plate negatives from the M. P. Stevens collection, several pictures of which have graced GLHG calendars over the past ten years.

Upon the centennial of the Pioneer Cooperative Fire Insurance Company, a photo album highlighting the company’s history was created. This photo, dated tentatively in the mid-1920s shows: back: Frederick Merigold, Frank Tucker, William Stevens, Everett Palmer, James C. Stevens, Dr. Charles McCabe, Ira Tolley, Robert Atwater, John H. Sanford, George Van Valkenberg, R. C. Lacy, Walter E. Stevens, Ernest E. Ford, Charles Bagley, W. P. Elsbree; front: Marion Garretson, Mildred Adriance, Elsie Roe, Anna Wickham, Elizabeth Burnett, Marietta Hedges, Ethel Mead, Lula Cooley, Clara Hartt. The building in the background was once the Hartt Store, located approximately on today’s Pioneer parking lot exit on Rt. 32. The building we know today as the Pioneer building was built in 1928, and is now the Town a Greenville office building (as of 2003) (see also April and July).

Welcoming travelers to Greenville, the Hallenbeck’s Drugstore sign stood atop the hill we locally know as Carelas’s Hill (or Budd, or Fish), about one-half mile south on Rt. 32. The structures seen under the sign still stand. The lot on the right was bulldozed in the 1960s to become what many people know as Carelas Lake (or more recently named Lake Barbara by the current owners).