Category — Miles Link

Green Spaces, the city public parks action group, announced this week that the derelict Cranford Baths on the banks of the East Patterson River, a dozen miles north of the city center, will soon be converted into a public park and memorial space to open next year.

The news comes as a relief to residents of nearby suburban Thorn Grove, who have long considered the Baths a dangerous eyesore: the shell of a colonial-style house, the former main office, borders acres of overgrown fields littered with rubbish. Other facilities on the grounds stand half-demolished, while the riverside baths sit stagnant, a temporary fence erected at the central causeway and nets stretched across the open water. A lack of access consistently discourages developers from buying up the site, which remains in the hands of the Thorn Grove Public Properties and Acquisitions Board for now.

It is perhaps difficult to imagine after eight decades of decay, but the site’s current ill repute stands in stark contrast to its previous life as an illustrious health resort and public space at the turn of the last century. Local historian Brian Ramirez explains: “Bathers would approach the baths by an L-shaped causeway jutting out into the river. The water filled the enclosed baths while the current of the river supplied fresh water. Horses pulled rented individual bathing boxes with wheels into the enclosed space”. First reserved as a playground for the elite, the Baths grew in popularity by the year until the Great Depression, serving as a “traditional focal point not only for the community here but also people from the city”, according to Ramirez.

The Cranford Baths Leisure and Regeneration Center was the brainchild of Buckley Cranford, a successful entrepreneur whom the Journal-American described as “a boisterous fellow whose light spirit and prolonged laughter spreads a jovial air about his person.”  Cranford, the heir of a New Jersey dairy family, had served as a land surveyor in the Civil War, but found the soldier’s life disagreeable: “War is frightful,” he wrote a friend, “as it is utterly boring.”

Cranford was not without his patriotic side, however. He proudly displayed in his office a letter to his mother Constance, from Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, announcing the death of his only brother at Gettysburg (the letter now resides in the Rincher Museum of Municipal History).

After the war, Buckley was given family permission to indulge his entrepreneurial spirit. He invested in one of the first recreational hot air balloon companies and opened an insurance firm during the 1870’s. Both were ringing successes, but Cranford reportedly tired easily of the nuts-and-bolts side of his ventures. “In a profound malaise” by the second half of the decade, he waved away a seat on the City Council and, after marrying in 1876, took to lengthy sojourns in the country.

It was on one of these visits that Cranford laid his eyes on the future site of his Baths. Cranford had recently visited a health resort in Connecticut, and inspiration struck him. He attests, in a pamphlet advertising the Baths from 1892, “I knew straight away of this site’s restorative power. In its waters, all maladies upon me lifted; all jangling anxieties left me, leaving a blissful consort.”

The site was indeed already well-known as an untouched natural enclave when Cranford visited. The citizens of nearby Thorn Grove, population two hundred and sixty-four, carried a reputation for excellent health. At the time, recorded rates of polio and croup infections were effectively zero. Ramirez doesn’t doubt the positive effect such a reputation had on local business, but he is doubtful of the evidence: “This is back when the Church still kept the records, mind you”.

Mr. Cranford spent a year wrangling for control of the land with a local farmer; a settlement of $8,000 (roughly $150,000 today for ten acres, considered scandalously overpriced at the time) finally landed the site in his lap. The entrepreneur’s influence with City Council and state officials ensured Health Board licensing passed without incident, and the Baths opened to great fanfare on July 3, 1880 (Independence Day falling on a Sunday that year, Mrs. Eulalie Cranford forbade her husband to work on the Sabbath).

Cranford Baths Staff Day, May, 1906

While the Baths were exclusively for gentlemen, the grounds were open to all, boasting one of the nation’s first tennis courts and providing a meticulously cultivated retreat amidst what was at the time still dense forest. Later, sitting pools and a bandstand were installed. A special trolley from Jefferson Station to the sleepy riverside community was opened in 1904, with tea and biscuits served en route (earning it the nickname the “Kettle Express”). The first Saturday of every spring and summer month was a free-admission Open Day, a staple of any area child’s weekend activities.

While the Baths became a popular local landmark, Cranford himself became known as a bit of an eccentric. Of German descent on his mother’s side, he vehemently opposed American intervention in World War I, and beginning in 1915 painted his political views on the side of the main office building. The large, crudely written slogans read, for example, “WHILE DOUGH-BOYS ARE AWAY, THE ANARCHISTS PLAY” and “KEEP ‘EM IN DOMINICA” (referring to the recent American occupation of the Dominican Republic). The slogans were highly controversial amongst city residents, while appeals to Thorn Grove’s town council to have them stopped (the town having expanded sufficiently to warrant a town council) were unsuccessful. When America did enter the war the following year, Cranford discontinued the signs without comment.

One of the anti-intervention slogans

Over the years, the Baths faced stiff competition from the city’s many saunas, steam houses, Turkish baths, and the Phoenix Medicinal Facilities on Buchanan Street in town (destroyed by arson in 1903; Mr. Cranford was never implicated despite a lengthy inquest), yet it fended off all challengers thanks to Cranford’s keen business sense. A carnival welcomed visiting families and children from the city until 1908, the first women were admitted to the waters in 1919 to celebrate suffrage, and perennial summertime night concerts attracted acts from across the country.

As the economic heyday of the 1920’s rolled in, however, private pools replaced public bathing as the watery standard of conspicuous consumption. The Baths struggled to compete as they declined in popularity—this, despite more frequent night concerts, which even featured a then-unknown Kate Smith. Horse-drawn carriages, the Baths’ staple, were discontinued in 1922 to cut costs. The senior Cranford died at the age of 81 in 1923, insisting on his daily soaking until his final illness confined him to bed. “Perhaps in another lifetime the Creator had fashioned me a fish,” Cranford opined as he approached death. “Perhaps in yet another, I shall return to that form.” His funeral was attended by thousands of the city’s German-American community.

Bankruptcy closed the Baths permanently in 1927, Buckley Cranford Jr. hanged himself in the face of tremendous debt, and the site failed to catch a bidder at public auction. Two decades later, sections of the “Kettle Express” were converted to a freight route for use by Palmer Fisheries. Thorn Grove has thrice successfully resisted municipal annexation, though its charter is up for renewal again in 2011.

Meanwhile, urban expansion caught up with the Baths themselves with the 1962 opening of a pesticides manufacturer upstream and a steady influx of suburban housing developments. The EPA finally condemned the Baths in 1978 when a survey of the East Patterson declared the river’s waters unsafe for swimming. The river passed a later test in 1991, but the Baths remained off-limits, except for occasional night swimmers who would break in for a dip.

In 2004, the well-publicized deaths of David Goldman and Patrick Race, drowned in one such late-night swim, forced Thorn Grove Council officials to act. After a short public consultation which produced such ideas as a mini-mall, a supermarket, a larger mini-mall, and a velodrome, the Council decided not to simply demolish the site as originally intended, but instead to erect a memorial park to nurses of the 1st and 2nd World Wars, incorporating the Baths’ original design.

And so, in a move counter to the region’s recently-acquired penchant for dismantling historic properties (the Park-N-Peek Drive-In Theater in Upper Carsonhurst and No. 18 Antique Row come to mind), a site marked for demolition has caught a significant break. Council Chairman Aaron Hannay will break ground on renovations next Monday, with an intended finish date in the spring of 2009. Plans include a fitness trail surrounding a large quadrangle, a recreation center for children, baseball fields and, happily enough, a swimming pool. As for the baths, the causeway will be reinforced and widened, leading to a single walled-in reflecting pool, a subdued enclave on the former spot of one of the city’s most ostentatious attractions.
- Miles Link

Firefighters in Furleigh Park staged a daring rescue last Wednesday night of local legend and neighborhood oddity Alfonzo Salazar when his townhouse caught fire in the early morning hours. Mr. Salazar’s home was a monument to the practice of obsessive hoarding, with items of every conceivable size, shape, and type lining each wall, making excellent kindling for the ruinous inferno.

Prior to the blaze, Mr. Salazar, 51, lived alone in his residence on Blackpool Terrace. He has not been employed for several years, though he claimed to be a professional welder in his police report. Other neighborhood residents describe him as seldom seen. “I would rate him somewhere in between harmless and snappish,” commented neighbor Lindsey Klein. “He always asks me for my old batteries.” Others said that he emerges only at night to visit the local convenience store and to rummage through trash put out for collection.

Nearly all of Mr. Salazar’s Victorian-style townhouse was destroyed. Firefighters were alerted to the blaze by a concerned neighbor but were delayed in reaching Mr. Salazar’s townhouse due to City Council President Otis Stevenson’s extensive motorcade, which had stopped for ice cream on Logan Boulevard.

In a telephone interview, Chief Fire Inspector Frank Baumer explained the prevailing theory behind the blaze: “It all started when Mr. Salazar finished his evening glass of Wild Turkey. The push cart he was using as a nightstand rolled away from his bed on the impetus of his empty glass. The cart came to a stop at the bedroom wall, which unbalanced a collection of marionettes on the other side, in turn knocking over a long row of National Geographic magazines running into the kitchen. The last National Geographic depressed the plunger on the kitchen toaster, which minutes later popped its toast, throwing the unsteady shelf of soup cans off balance, which all rolled down the damaged vent pipe onto the upturned garden hoe, which in turn rose up and set the tie rack in motion. That of course upset the stack of 78s, which disturbed the bowling ball collection, one of which rolled down the basement steps, bounced off the bedsprings, and flattened a shampoo bottle, which squirted into the open fuse box and sent a shower of sparks onto a pile of Monopoly money and ATM receipts.”

Mr. Salazar was alerted to the fire by the seventeen different smoke alarms scattered about his home. The blaze took hold quickly, blocking the front exit, but Salazar was able to fashion a gas mask from a snorkel and a bundle of pipe cleaners. He then scaled a tower of discarded Dixie cups to a skylight and waited on the roof until firefighters rescued him. The fire was extinguished after sunrise, just before it claimed a box of rare silver dollars and several bottles of long-discontinued Harrison’s Vascular Tonic.

Meanwhile, Inspector Baumer had a word of caution to other city residents with the same agglomerative spirit: “Mr. Salazar was lucky. We don’t recommend that level of hoarding. It’s just asking for trouble. At least invest in a set of Tupperware containers or a storage locker.”

Mr. Salazar was reticent in an interview held after his dramatic rescue. He appeared unfazed by the loss of his cache, excepting the loss of his Pope Paul VI commemorative plates and an unbroken chain of newspapers dating back to 1972. Referring to Council President Stevenson’s motorcade, which delayed firefighters for nearly forty-five minutes, Mr. Salazar opined, “If it weren’t for him I might still have that antique dentist’s chair.”

Asked whether he would begin hoarding again, he replied, “As long as folks are throwing out their crap, I’ll be dandy.” He was later seen collecting the pull tabs from a bag of aluminum cans set out for recycling.
- Miles Link

While clearing a block of turn-of-the-century townhouses for a drive-through fondue restaurant, workers in 1973 discovered an artifact from the city’s former days as a gangland paradise. Wedged in between a basement wall was a metal strong box containing the last will and testament of Rory Sheehan, the fearsome Roxboro neighborhood mob boss. The box contained the will, a photographic portrait of Sheehan with his characteristic scowl, and an Irish tricolor flag. The discovery of the will not only shed some light on the enigmatic boss but also set off a three year hunt for a store of buried treasure that captured the attention of anyone within reach of a pickaxe.

Rory Sheehan was born in 1879 in Dublin and settled in the city in 1894 with his father. The young Rory first found work as a grocery delivery boy. On his route was Wallace “Towers” Kinsky, the notorious state senator, who was working at the time in the DA’s office. Years later, “Towers” Kinsky would settle a sweetheart deal in the construction of the Wyndham Hydroelectric Dam with a company within Sheehan’s crime syndicate. In celebration of the deal, Sheehan treated Kinsky to a night on Issacs Street, in the heart of the red light district. Kinsky suffered a fatal heart attack sometime before sunrise, allegedly in the company of three prostitutes. Local legend maintains he died with a broad smile across his face, and Grinning Kinsky’s remains a popular tavern on Issacs Street today.

As a youth, Sheehan fought briefly in the Spanish-American War; an exploding shell at the invasion of Guantanamo Bay shattered his right ankle. The grimace he developed while learning to walk again earned him the nickname “Lemon,” only uttered in his absence after his rise to power.

When he returned home, Rory felt stifled by factory jobs and quickly turned to crime. One day he was caught stealing a suitcase from the taxi of Padraig Rafferty, the reigning boss of organized crime in Roxboro, and probably the inspiration for the Irish ballad, “Boy of Bantry.” Rafferty instantly took Sheehan under his wing, grooming him as his eventual successor. The crime boss even introduced Sheehan to his future wife Natalie.

As the new second-in-command, Sheehan convinced Rafferty to back the Columbia Appliance Co., one of the earliest purveyors of refrigerators for domestic use. The 1911 Home Expo proved to be the company’s death knell, however, when not one “Infrigidation Unit” was sold, and Columbia went under. Consequently Sheehan found himself out of favor with Rafferty for the first time. To regain his position, he forced out Bobby O’Brien, the new favorite, by exploiting his fear of insects and infesting O’Brien’s home with earwigs. O’Brien fled his home and left the city humiliated.

Upon the death of Rafferty in 1922, Sheehan became the undisputed “King of Roxboro,” cutting an imposing figure as he surveyed his neighborhood daily. Sheehan was widely known for his incredible fits of anger. Even when secure in his power, he never slept without his revolver “Cara” under his pillow. He was the inspiration for the 1926 radio serial “Wily Seamus,” a comedy program about a conniving Irish mob boss. Sheehan first heard the serial for himself in the penthouse apartment of a friend. Infuriated, he lifted the heavy radio set and tossed it out of the window onto the street below. In another famous incident, Rory took every piece of his wife’s jewelry and flushed them down the toilet in response to Natalie’s request that he “lighten up.”

Sheehan was still unchallenged in Roxboro when he disappeared under mysterious circumstances in 1934. He was last seen leaving his mistress Judy Bellam’s house in the early morning of Memorial Day, uncharacteristically alone. The newly formed FBI had no leads. Rory’s syndicate, deprived of its captain, collapsed soon afterward.

Sheehan’s disappearance was never adequately explained. Several culprits were fingered: he was unpopular with other criminal organizations, especially the Stahlmänner, a rival German construction racket. Syndicate elders disapproved of his brutal tactics, and Bobby O’Brien continually swore revenge from exile. His purported remains, touring with Barnum and Bailey in the early ‘60s, showed no signs of a broken right ankle nor any fracture in the left forearm, a result of beating a subordinate with a paperweight in 1919.

Police declared Sheehan legally dead in 1940. For years after his disappearance, to “Rory the gal” was a popular expression for skipping out on a date. And so the discovered Sheehan will was the last trace of the mob boss, as his lieutenant Timothy Molloy had destroyed all of his personal papers. By default, Sheehan’s son James had inherited the entirety of his father’s fortune, including the luxurious Sheehan Mansion in President Heights, since bought by Henry Kissinger for use as a winter retreat.

James quickly squandered his inheritance, however, and by the time the will was discovered, he was lodging at the Logan Boulevard YMCA.

After the will was confirmed as legitimate a new chapter in the story of the crime boss opened. Unwilling to award too much to “the lazy and the deficient,” Sheehan claimed to have hidden $150,000, worth millions today, in a place “below the water’s edge.” A massive public search followed, with treasure hunters ranging from the local chapter of the Milliner’s League, to Japanese venture capitalist Kazuo Takeda, to legions of ordinary citizens armed with gardener’s spades. The Parks Service made frequent complaints concerning large open holes dug around Theodore’s Pond. The Water Department was endlessly occupied with fixing burst pipes and vandalized water mains. Councilwoman Sheena Waters was beset with nighttime excavations of her front lawn. No dig was successful, though six Columbia Infrigidation Units were unearthed near the old George Waterson School for Boys.

The discovery of Sheehan’s treasure finally came three years after the will was found. A security guard at the Wyndham Hydroelectric Dam, lost in the catacomb-like subbasement, forced open a disused storage room hoping to find a way out. He found instead a crate of silver ingots with the skeleton of Rory Sheehan lying beside it. Sheehan had apparently gone to check on his cache and became trapped when the room’s heavy metal door locked behind him. In a twist of fate, it was Sheehan’s deliberate over-spending on the dam project that meant that once trapped, he was doomed: the thick walls and maze-like layout of the dam ensured no one would hear his cries for help.

The stipulations of the will were eventually carried out using the discovered treasure. A sizeable portion was seized by the state for inheritance tax. A smaller part paid for the following year’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade, at Rory’s request to finance efforts for “a united Ireland.” None of Sheehan’s surviving partners in crime were entitled to the money; said Sheehan in his will, “You lot would have cut me down for my pocket watch would you have had the chance.” James Sheehan received a small stipend and died in 1987; he was buried next to his father, whose tombstone is capped with a bust depicting his stern visage, scowling outwards in the direction of Wyndham Dam.
- M. Link