Route

This well-documented photo album assembled by the young Assistant City Engineer for Hornell New York records the road building and improvement influenced by the Good Roads Movement as well as sewer dam and reservoir construction and bridge building following the Great New York flood in March 1913. In addition the end of the album documents his career as Chief Engineer of the Low Moor Iron Company in Low Moor Virginia on the eve of World War I.

1913 · 53568 — Hornell NY & Low Moor VA: Homer A. Sitterley Asst. City Engineer for Hornell NY; Chief Mining Engineer Low Moor Iron Co. 1913-1917. Oblong 8vo. 10 x 7 in. 142 pp unpaginated. thick black paper stock w/ 298 original photographs sized from 2 x 3 in. up to 3.25 x 5.5 inches 280 this size 2 of them cyanotype and the majority with neat white ink manuscript descriptions linen-backed frontisp. map of Hornell NY dated 1915. Contemporary limp black-cloth post-binder sewn at gutter margin w/ black silk braid minor soiling tidemark to outer fore-edges of front cover first couple leaves minor fraying & wear to corners still a VG- exemplar w/ most images with strong contrast. This remarkable album documents the tremendous range of road building projects sewer improvements bridge building and dam construction in and around Hornell NY in Steuben County in the years before World War I. Steuben County was the next to the last County in New York State to join the Good Roads Board sponsored by the American Automobile Association in 1907 primarily because during the opening decades of the 20th century that area of New York had some of the worst roads. These images show the construction and building of sewer lines on Crosby Street Canister Street paving projects on East Ave. Jane Street West Street -- with fantastic images of early Foote Concrete Machinery Co. road paver in operation pouring concrete West Genesee Street Church Street and others. Sitterley b. 1889 makes a study of the filtering systems and sewer plant for New York City at the time includes photo of the newly opened Hornell trolley “Subway†as well as numerous photos of poor condition sidewalks which were slated for modernization as an adjunct of the Good Roads agenda hand-in-hand with laying of new sewer lines. In addition he has included photo of himself with surveyor’s transom and the Hornell City Engineer together with the City Park Superintendent. A significant portion of the album is devoted to the building of the Seneca Street Bridge including the building of the coffer dams to hold back the water to pour the piers the construction of the abutments and finally the finished bridge. That bridge would later be rebuilt by a WPA project in 1936 and now is up for replacement again. Sitterley’s last major projects were overseeing the building of the new Hornell city dams and city reservoirs together with road improvements gate houses and spillways. In March 1916 he leaves Hornell NY to become Chief Mining Engineer for the Low Moor Iron Co. which was a producer of pig iron in Alleghany County of Western Virginia which operated from 1872-1930. The company was often plagued with labor unrest as they maintained very poor “Company†towns and were constantly struggling with the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad to ship their ore. In 1916 they were on the upswing as a company as the growing steel demands of World War I began to lift all ore producers at the time. See: Corning Convention of Good Roads Associations Good Roads Magazine April 1907 pp. 134-135; Homer Aldrich Sitterley Bi-Monthly Bulletin of the American Institute of Mining Engineers No. 126 June 1917 p. xxxv; Russell Story of the Great Flood and Cyclone Disasters in New York State 1913 New York Roots 1999; Papers of the Low Moor Iron Company 1873-1927 Special Collections Univ. of Virginia Library 2010. Homer A. Sitterley, Asst. City Engineer for Hornell, NY; Chief Mining Engineer, Low Moor Iron Co., hardcover