February 6, 2013

The Sterling Opera House. Derby, CT.

Built in 1889, the Sterling Opera House, located across Elizabeth Street from the Derby Green, has been deeply rooted in the Valley’s cultural and political traditions for more than 110 years. A veritable “Who’s Who” list of performers and celebrities have appeared at the Sterling: from John Philip Sousa to Red Skelton; Harry Houdini to Donald O’Connor; and Amelia Earhart to Lionel, John, and Ethel Barrymore. The Sterling served as an opera house until 1933; from then until the building’s closing in 1965, its two lower levels housed Derby’s City Hall and Police Station.

Designer H.E. Ficken, one of the creators of Carnegie Hall, combined several architectural styles in the Sterling. The exterior and rooftop and the interior walls and doorways are Italianate Victorian and display the final evolution of the Italian Baroque opera house. The interior-seating plan was influence by German composer Richard Wagner's conception of a triangle seating arrangement, with all the seats enjoying an unobstructed view of the stage. No box seats were used, but two "piano boxes" were located on either side of the stage to accommodate two Sterling Pianos. A proscenium arch frames the 60-by-34 foot stage. Below are 10 dressing rooms. The auditorium boasts an orchestra pit, two gracefully sweeping balconies, and fine examples of bottle glass, keystone arches and wrought iron work. Acoustically, the Sterling has no equal. Even a whisper can be heard clearly from all areas of the auditorium.

Almost as storied as the Sterling itself have been the dedicated groups committed to its restoration and eventual revitalization. From the 1970’s through the mid-90’s the Sterling Opera House Foundation, led initially by the late Vivian Kellams, included current Valley Community Foundation Board Member Alan Tyma. The group began to create awareness of the Sterling’s place in Derby’s and the Valley’s history, and successfully had the Sterling listed as the first structure on the National Register of Historic Places. In the 1990's, Paul Lane formed the Old Birmingham Business Association (OBBA) and its subsidiary Save Our Sterling (SOS) took up the charge, drumming up support for the opera house’s restoration. Harvey Bletchman, then artistic director of SOS, along with other members of the group, organized local soirees with a variety of musical themes to raise funds for, and create cultural awareness of, the Sterling.

Those fundraising efforts generated enough to enable the current members to create the Sterling Opera House Endowment Fund at the Valley Community Foundation. “We want people to be able to use and visit the Sterling 100 years from now,” said Association President Beth Colette. “By creating this Endowment, we are setting aside money that has come in from so many caring Valley residents to help the Sterling carry on its rich traditions.” Board member Judy Augusta agreed. “This beautiful building has the opportunity to become a vital component of the revitalization of downtown Derby,” she said. “This Fund will allow other groups who follow in our footsteps to address its needs well into the future and keep its wonderful spirit alive.”

Through the years, the efforts of Congressional and State representatives, along with the Connecticut Dept. of Economic and Community Development, have produced funds to help with this project. Current Derby Mayor Anthony Staffieri, a former member of OBBA, has continued ongoing efforts to restore the Sterling. At present, the exterior has been completely renovated, and the City is moving forward with plans for restoration of the interior. “The City is pursuing additional funding for the Opera House through historic preservation funds and federal and state tax credits,” said Sheila O’Malley, Derby’s Director of Economic and Community Development. Perhaps one of the greatest gifts the Sterling has received, however, is the forward thinking of the dedicated groups whose Endowment will help to ensure the Sterling is here for generations to come. As Board Member Markanthony Izzo so aptly said, “There is no time like the present to plan for the future.”

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January 6, 2013

Cedar Cliff Nursing Home


Cedar Cliff was opened in 1929 as a tuberculosis sanitarium.

In Two Thousand & Nine Construction of the new wing at the county nursing home is now finished and awaiting final safety inspection by the state. Should the building pass the inspection, residents are expected to begin moving into the wing within four to six weeks.

The new facility, which has been under construction for three years, is meant to replace two Depression-era buildings that are overcrowded, dank, and cheerless. The goal has been to bring all of 342 current residents under one roof and to create enough space so that the Nursing Home can expand the number of beds to 406.

 Cedar Cliff provides both long-term and short-term care for both the indigent elderly and people with a variety of disabilities, including Multiple Sclerosis.

In the old buildings, some residents are currently living four to a room and sharing community bathrooms that are not accessible to the handicapped; such residents must be assisted onto toilets. The dining room is a cramped, drab place, with room for about a half-dozen card tables with metal folding chairs.
By contrast, the residence rooms in the new wing are bright and pastel-colored and will be occupied by no more than two people per room. Each room has its own wheelchair-accessible bathroom and the beds are separated by a wall, which allows a resident to control the temperature on their side of the room. The dining room is now a big, wide-open space that invites residents to congregate.

As for the Old Building, The Fate is Unknown. 

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December 5, 2012

The White Pines



In Eighteen Ninety two an immigration agent for the Canadian Pacific Railroad, bought 12,000 acres in the Pennsylvania Mountains and there built a lavish summer resort hotel for German-speaking Jews. White Pines flourished until World War I, when anti-German hysteria and pressure from the federal government forced Owners to sell the resort.

The new owners, however, were far from what the hotel’s opponents had hoped for, or expected.  In 1919 the new owners of the White Pines buildings sold 750 acres and a lake for $85,000 to Two Local Unions.

The Local Union bought White Pines as a permanent home for its new program of worker education and leisure activities that it first ran in a rented house in the Catskills in the summer of 1919. 

The Locals bold experiment in running a worker resort near the summer homes of millionaires, however, soon floundered.  So in 1924, they sold the property to the General Executive Board of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU), the largest women’s union in the United States, which undertook a series of major improvements that would transform the White Pines into a "workers' play land."

Less concerned about profits than with showing "labor in its proper light," the ILGWU renovated the main building, expanded the kitchen, built an amphitheater, added new bungalows, and increased wages for its expanded staff, which included on-site doctor, chef, and dietician.  To make attendance affordable to rank and file members, it charged minimal fees and, when necessary, financially subsidized the operation.

Representing "a promise of a better day and our ability to bring that day," The White Pines thrived during the 1920s.  Here, union members and their families enjoyed a broad range of summer sports, dramatic performances, concerts, and lectures on current events, economics, art and literature, and social psychology presented by college professors, union leaders, and public figures.

 The mostly-New Yorker staff grew to several dozen people over time, including dining room servers, musicians, and a lifeguard. The ILGWU also rented the facility out to other unions, which made The White Pines a getaway spot for the larger labor movement.

The 1930s and 1940s brought many changes to The White Pines.  During the Great Depression, thousands of women joined the ILGWU, and the American labor movement enjoyed a new vitality and unprecedented legitimacy.

The ILGWU also began to organize women garment workers in northeastern Pennsylvania’s coal country, a region that since the early 1900s had become a haven for non-union garment factories, called "runaways," where employers hired coal miners' wives and daughters for meager wages.


The federal government's closure of New Jersey's Atlantic City resorts during World War II helped The White Pines turn a profit between 1942 and 1949.  Buoyed by the high blue-collar wages and strong union culture of the post-war economic boom, The White Pines improved its facilities and added a rustic recreation center called the Philadelphia Building.

After World War II, The White Pines became the union showcase that its founders had dreamed of.  Noting the impressive facilities and programs for children writing, Eleanor Roosevelt wrote after a visit in 1945, "You could not put children in a more favorable environment." In the summers that followed, some 10,000 visitors came each summer for vacations, retreats, forums, and conferences, all of which featured activities designed to booster union solidarity, including musical productions that featured union songs.

Urging members to become well informed and politically active, Unity House also offered numerous lectures, as well as books in its library, on social, economic, and labor issues. To uphold union ideals, ILGWU allowed the Hotel and Restaurant Workers to organize its staff in 1950 and also banned foreign-made products from the gift shop.

In the post-war era, The White Pines also expanded its mission beyond the entertainment and education of its membership. In 1948, ILGWU president David Dubinsky hosted an unprecedented weekend meeting for some 200 manufacturers, which helped avert a strike. Other "employer weekends" soon followed. Other unions also took advantage of the resort's impressive facilities for their meetings, including the National Association of Letter Carriers and the AFL-CIO.

In 1956, The White Pines opened a new 1,200-seat lakeside theater modeled on Radio City Music Hall, complete with a ninety-foot stage and up-to-date lighting and sound. Performers on the new stage included comedians, opera companies, the Harlem Dance Theater Group, and Radio City Music Hall entertainers
In the 1950s, the ILGWU could afford the subsided the operation. In 1953, for example, 78 percent of the guests were ILGWU members who paid a discounted rate.  By the 1960s, The White Pines, like neighboring resorts in Pike and Monroe Counties, were struggling, as air travel, cruises, and suburban country clubs offered vacationers many alternatives to the Poconos.

When the White Pines administration building burnt down in 1969, the ILGWU replaced the building and hoped that the proposed creation of the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area would increase its appeal. In 1972, The White Pines opened a new main building that began to host newcomers to the union, including Hispanics, Asian Americans, and African Americans, who joined the aging Italian and Jewish membership.

The American garment industry, however, was experiencing serious decline as sewing jobs moved overseas and ILGWU membership fell from its 1968 peak of 451,000 to 360,000 in the mid-1970s. By the late 1980s only 160,000 members remained. Attempts to attract a younger crowd of members to The White Pines, with the addition of "El Coco Loco" Lounge, did not help.  In January 1990, faced with declining membership and annual subsidies of some $1,000,000, the union reluctantly closed the resort.

In the middle decades of the twentieth century The White Pines provided recreation, instruction, and entertainment to thousands of ethnic, blue-collar, and middle-class Americans. The White Pines had also effectively cultivated a "union culture" that ensured loyalty and strengthened the ILGWU during strikes and hard times. 
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