Part 6 of 10: Early uses of the System

Since the early 1900s, Utica's parks have been a gathering place and venue for important events in the community.

Godet flying over the Parkway and Conkling Park in 1911.

In August 1917, the Utica Saturday Globe described the ways in which Utica's Olmsted parks were being used in their first decade of existence. Roscoe Conkling Park, a "gem of nature," had become "a picnic place for families, a playground for children, a walk for lovers, an observation-point for the serious-minded…A walk through this commanding and picturesque pleasure ground is a veritable delight." Sports were also an important part of park life from the earliest days of the Olmsted system (sports will be discussed in Parts 9 and 10 of this series).

Conkling Park was organized around several nodes named for certain types of trees, and at each there was a small cluster of mostly wooden buildings, which have all disappeared. A pavilion with a dance floor that could accommodate 200 people opened in 1914 at "The Elms," which was located between the Utica Zoo and the small parking lot that today overlooks the golf course and the Pleasant Street reservoirs. Organizations had other sorts of gatherings, including picnics with competitions, at this site.

Around 1910, the Utica Parks Commission hired a local architect to create a bandstand that stood for a number of years on the Parkway, approximately 150 yards to the east of Elm Street program; it no longer exists but can be seen in a number of photographs from around 1910-20. During the 1930s, the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a federal program to employ workers idled by the Great Depression, built a second bandstand, as well as a baseball diamond, behind the Parkway tennis courts. For several decades, the Utica Civic Band, among other groups, gave well-attended concerts from this bandstand. Although it disappeared some time in the 1960s, the City later acquired mobile stages for performances in the parks, and Conkling and, later, F.T. Proctor Park, provided the staging area for July 4 fireworks witnessed by tens of thousands over the course of many decades.

Indeed, from early on, the parks were considered the natural venue for important community events. In September 1911, thousands of Uticans gathered around the Parkway and the western end (near Oneida Street) of Roscoe Conkling Park to witness Eugene Godet, a French pilot, fly an airplane over Utica for the first time. Even US Vice President and Utica resident James Schoolcraft Sherman was among those amazed by the sight of a machine flying in the sky. "Long after Godet has passed away," the Utica Observer wrote, "…there will be old men and old women who will say that the first exhibition of an aeroplane that they ever saw was given in Utica by a young Frenchman named Godet."

Perhaps the most elaborate of the early public events in Utica's Olmsted system was Old Home Week, held at Roscoe Conkling Park over several days in August 1914. Four performances of the "Pageant of Utica," a theatrical history of the settlement and evolution of the Upper Mohawk Valley, and the unveiling of the von Steuben statue, were the highlights of Old Home Week.

The Pageant dramatized an array of events from the region's history: the earliest settlement of the area by Palatine Germans in the early eighteenth century; the nearby Battle of Oriskany in 1777; the arrival of settlers from New England immediately after the Revolution; the abolitionist movement; the Civil War (the end of which was dramatized by a woman, identified as "Peace," riding slowly on horseback up Conkling hill, followed by a group of aged Civil War veterans). Although the Pageant of Utica told the community's story largely from the perspective of the descendants of the area's New England settlers, it culminated in a finale featuring a parade of members of new immigrant and migrant groups—including African Americans—who were presented as representatives of Utica's bright future.

Nearly 20 years later, in 1932, an estimated 30,000 people attended a dramatization in Conkling Park to celebrate the centennial of Utica's incorporation as a city. The climax of this theatrical performance was a battle around an elaborate reconstruction of Old Fort Schuyler (from which the city of Utica had eventually originated); there had historically been no such battle, but the performance apparently made for entertaining outdoor theater.

Blueprint of Parkway Bandstand (circa 1909)

Blueprint, in the City Engineer’s office, of the bandstand that used to be located just east of Elm Street (which can also be seen in the photo of the Swan Memorial Fountain in Part 5 of this series).

Invitation to unveiling of the statue of General Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben.

Invitation to the unveiling of the statue of General Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben at the intersection of the Parkway and Genesee Street in August 1914. A replica of Utica’s von Steuben statue, which was created by J. Otto Schweizer, was erected at the Valley Forge National Park in 1915. This invitation was written in German because local German American organizations paid for the statue and commissioned Schweizer to create it as a symbol of their pride as Germans and Americans. President Woodrow Wilson was supposed to attend the ceremony but had to remain in Washington due to the sickness of his wife and the unfolding crisis in Europe--what would become known as the First World War--that would eventually cause local Germans great grief.

Pin from the von Steuben statue unveiling

Pageant of Utica Program

As the cover illustration suggests, the Pageant told the story of Utica from the perspective of the first settlers of the area, who came mostly from western Connecticut, as well as Rhode Island, the Berkshire region of Massachusetts, and other parts of New England shortly after the American Revolution.

Ad in the Albany Knickerbocker Press (1914)

Organizers of Utica's August 1914 Pageant of Utica, held in Conkling park, advertised the event across eastern New York State.

Pageant of Utica performer

Local Italians, in traditional garb, who participated in the finale of the Pageant of Utica in August 1914

Spectators watching the Pageant of Utica, August 1914

Passage from Pageant of Utica Program

A passage from Pageant of Utica program, describing the Pageant’s Finale, which incorporated immigrants and African Americans—groups that “bring to Utica that which they consider the best their Nation has given to the world”—into an inclusive vision of Utica’s bright future.