A Glimpse At Williamsport, "The State Of Herdic" - 1879

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A GLIMPSE AT WILLIAMSPORT

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 The City Peter Herdic Made and Ruined - 

Big Buildings and Bankruptcy - 

Gossip  By The Way 

Special Correspondence of the Telegraph. Williamsport, Aug. 4. 

At 7:15 on Saturday evening I arrived in the State of Herdic. It is more familiarly known as Williamsport, but the cynical are apt to denominate it by the first name. It is named for Peter Herdic. Did you ever hear Pete Herdic? Well, if you never did (an impossibility) here is the place to learn all about him. You get oft the oars (when they stop) and the first prominent object that attracts your attention is a magnificent hotel. Take the Lochiel for a centre and flank it with the Bolton and Jones House, stand the whole in a park about quarter the size of Capitol park, and there you have the hotel. What's the name? The Park House. It used to be called the Herdic House, but somehow or other Peter got into financial difficulties, "down on the balls," to use an expressive but slangyterm, and then, as usual, everybody kicked at him. The latest kick was to change the name of the hotel from Herdic Park house. But it is an elegant and well - managed hotel all the same, and sheltered beneath its roof, as I write, area number of Harrisburgers notably the venerable Mrs. Eliza Haldeman, Mrs. Haley, Mrs. R. Haldeman (nee Cameron) and Mrs. James I. Chamberlin. Herdic built this hotel in 1864 - 5 at a cost of $375,000. furnished it at a cost of $50,090 more. The other day it was sold for $53, - and the furniture for only $3,300, nominal prices. You walk up Fourth street note the Nicholson pavement, something more pretentious cities cannot boast of. Herdic put it down, but it is all going to rack and ruin, and big ruts and holes in wooden floor are terribly suggestive of decayed fortune of its projector.

[Note - "Nicholson Pavement" was a pavement made of wood.  When horses and carriages traveled over it, it was much quieter than brick or stone.  It had its own problems, and did not last long in most areas.  The Nicholas Paving ordinance of 1868 was one of Williamsports worst early financial problems, bringing the city to the brink of financial disaster.   The streets, costing $600,000 and financed by 20 year bonds, wore out in 8 years, long before the bonds were paid off.  The photo above is of the wood paved street that can still be seen today in Pittsburgh.  It's the last  remaining street in the United States entirely paved in accordance with the Nicolson paving techniques]

 Yonder is a magnificent block of buildings in fact, in almost any direction you look are handsome buildings. Who put them up? Pete Herdic But he doesn't own one of them now. he built this town a solid style, and everybody thought they were going to swim right straight along to a healthy old fortune with Petes's guidance. But he went under water and dragged pretty much everybody else under with him. Williamsport as a city is practically bankrupt. You remember the fight councils made in the courts to avoid paying their city bonds and the interest there and how they defied the Supremo Court by refusing to pay after it decided they should, and how the Supreme Court Harrisburg last June threatened them with all sorts of things if they didn't sock Well, they were making the fight of desperate men to save their money. A tax lately been levied to pay the interest on bonds of 1875 - 76. With one Pete Herdic Williamsport is in this condition. What the name of goodness would it have been with two Pete Hcrdics? And where would have been ?

 Do you see that beautiful stone church ? Let us look at the interior. It would do credit to a metropolitan congregation of millionaires. Luxurious scats, a gorgeous pulpit, stained glass windows, and stained glass sun - lights in the ceiling, graceful chandeliers, everything in the most superb style. the steeple a clock, and attached to the clock work a chime of bells that ring a solemn peal every quarter hour the whole year around. Every time that chime rings I think of Pete Herdic. He built the church. Built it and paid for and the story published in the New York Sun the other day, that he gave the men who worked on the church notes and then left the notes go to protest, is a falsehood cut out of the whole cloth. But the Sun has a habit of kicking at people. It hammered at Alex. (Boss). Shepherd, of Washington, all the tune he was making that city a thing of beauty and a joy forever, and it has kept up a persistent lying about Herdic all along.

Here is a street car line with one horse bobtail cars. It seems to be prosperous. Who built it? Why, Pete Herdic, of course. I felt like asking, "Will you please show me something in this beautiful city that Pete Herdic didn't have a hand in erecting?" doubt if the question could have been affirmatively answered. In fact he beautified the city he made it all over hence, the State of Herdic. It was here he lived and reigned. It was here he was king bee. He was monarch of the sec wherever he looked. To say aught against the man or his methods ten years ago was rank treason, and the man was spotted as traitor to the State (of Herdic) who prognosticated trouble for the city in the future. Peter ruled the roost.  But where is Peter Herdic now? you ask. Down at While Sulphur Springs, in West Virginia, a fugitive from justice an outlaw fleeing from a requisition made by the Governor of New York on Governor Hoyt for a warrant for Peter's arrest on a charge of swindling an Elmira bank with bogus street railway bonds in the days of his prosperity. And it was only this morning that I  saw Peter's picture in the New York Police  Gazette sandwiched between a negro murderer and a fraudulent temperance orator and bigamist.  [Note - The Police Gazette was a  forerunner of the men's lifestyle magazine,  modern tabloid/sensational journalism ]

Alas, how have the mighty taken a tumble! Pete wasn't a bad sort of fellow, all things considered, but his methods were slightly off color, and when when the panic came, although he struggled along gamely for a couple of years, he was bound to go to the wall from the fearful depreciation in the value of property, and he went. But he dragged everybody  and everything in Williamsport down with him, and old citizens blast his eyes and kick like canal mules when the tax collector comes around to take his modicum of their property, but if there had not been a Pete Herdic there wouldn't have been any property, and this would have been a one-horse village sawing out hemlock lumber while Lock Haven reaped the benefits of a big boom it contemplated before Pete cot the bulge on the Havenites and erected what he has time and again called his chief glory  - the Williamsport boom. So much for Pete Herdic.

Read more about the Susquehanna Log Boom Structure  - remains of which can still be seen in the river at Williamsport today - here: https://susquehannavalley.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-lumber-boom-in-williamsport.html

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 Gossip by the Way 

Coming along on the train near Muncy a tired bee tried a race with train, and saw it had no show with the iron horse, and stood a fair chance of being distanced, so it sunk its stinger into the hind brakeman's blossom check, sung out, "I tagged you last!" and sailed away to rest itself in a hollyhock. The brakeman caressed his swelled jaw, while the passengers smiled as they saw the coal dust settle on the shelving formed by the lump.

 They have a Boulevard 1' Amour at the Park House. It's a part of the piazza, where gas has been tabooed, here do the lovers congregate. Talk of pitch dark ! Its so dark that the young fellows have to keep their arms around the girls to make sure they are there. This state of affairs was revealed to me last night by a flash of lightning (Ah, you naughty men !)

 There was a young fellow stood at the door of the hotel last night talking. He was a lum turn propah sawt of fellah, you know, and he was telling his friend what he had seen in Williamsport, thus: "Haw, you ought to sec the stweet caws! Pon honah, every time I saw the horses, they looked home - sick Pon honah !" He was a big fellow, with gander legs and a little hat that was propped up on the hairs ot his head in a most deliciousiy awfully nice way.  About seven of him would make a fair - sized man. T. M. J.

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