The Movies, the Drugstore and the Pool Hall –
More Downtown Amsterdam Memories
Bob Cudmore, Focus on History, 3-27-04
Last month’s story about East Main Street in Amsterdam prompted calls and emails with more details on the bustling downtown scene that existed prior to urban renewal in the 1970s.
Bob Belive of Glenville said his band, The Dynamics, played at Columbian Hall in the 1960s when he attended Amsterdam High School. The hall was on East Main near Schuyler Street, over Amsterdam Rug. Belive recalled businesses around the bus terminal then—Rapello’s Pharmacy and Frank’s Pool Hall, above the Sears store.
Belive was a Friday night regular at Rapello’s: “You could get a soda for a dime and hang out in one of the three booths for quite awhile until Mrs. Rapello asked you to leave for being in the booth for so long.” At the pool hall, you could play one game for an hour before Frank “yelled at you to get on with it.”
Jerry Schrader, now a resident of Marlborough, Massachusetts, also enjoyed pool: “Frank issued membership cards under the name Young Men’s Social Club (or something like it). All the young lions hung out there. Frank was quite a character.” In the 1950s, Schrader was raised by the Sisters of the Resurrection in a children’s home (later torn down) at 118 Market Street.
Everyone dressed up to go downtown, according to Marilee Watermann Litwa of Hadley, who recalled homemade lemonade at Salvione’s Pharmacy, grocery shopping at Lou’s Market, Friday dinners from Johnny’s Seafood and buying soda at Fitzgerald Bottling Company, where her father, Harold “Watty” Watermann, worked.
“I always volunteered a case of soda every time we had a party in school,” Litwa said. “I didn’t know until I was grown that my dad had to pay for it each time!” Litwa watched downtown parades from the upstairs window of Post 39 of the American Legion where her father was commander.
“Pumpy” Sargalis ran the gas station, now a used car dealership, at East Main and Vrooman. “He was my hero,” Litwa said. When the brakes failed on her mother’s car at the top of Swart Hill east of Amsterdam, Sargalis came to the rescue.
“Pumpy drove the car down and we followed in his jeep,” Litwa said. “What a thrill!”
Michael Rossi of Rotterdam, who grew up in Amsterdam’s West End, enjoyed lunch downtown at Tullio’s on Chuctanunda Street, pizza at the Appian Way, shopping at Gabay’s and Mortan’s and movies at the Tryon Theater. Rossi’s mother worked at Grand Rapids Furniture and remembered the Mohican Market, destroyed in a fire.
Amsterdam native Maryann Frazier Haskell of Glenville said movies cost a quarter at three downtown theaters—the Tryon, Rialto and Mohawk. Haskell added that today when she drives west on Route 5 in Amsterdam as the road bears right from East Main past Schuyler, she realizes she is driving over what once were “the hallowed halls of my alma mater, St. Mary’s Institute.”
Audrey Browski of Amsterdam said movie stars Greer Garson and Albert Decker came to the Elks Club on Division Street in the 1940s to sell war bonds. Audrey’s husband Dick Browski decorated the windows at W.T. Grant in the 1970s.
Local resident Barbara Snyder’s mother and aunt worked at Holzheimer and Shaul’s women’s store, which moved from the south side to the north side of East Main. Others recalled when Rudnick’s was in downtown Amsterdam, along with Larrabee’s hardware, Sochin’s men’s store and the parking lot operated by Harrison Wilson and his family.
Regarding last month’s reference to Whelan’s Drugstore at East Main and Chuctanunda, several said that Charlie Green was the popular pharmacist there. When Whelan’s closed, Green worked at Community Pharmacy.
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