The holidays are approaching once again, and it would be appropriate to highlight some of the activities and ways of celebrating that are unique to Tyrone. Being a cross-roads community, with a business district that was shared with other towns, Tyrone was known to put forth an extra effort to make the community festive.
Christmas Day holds a significant role in the history of the borough of Tyrone. It has been recorded that on Christmas Day in the year 1850, our town founder Jacob Burley took occupation of a crude home built by his brother on the site of today’s Tyrone Snyder Public Library. Burley and his associate, John Stewart, an iron investor from Cincinnati, opened Tyrone’s first business in this same building shortly thereafter. Burley and Stewart’s general store was an incentive for settling in this muddy village in the spring of 1851 when the original proprietors first arrived.
Queen Victoria and the Christmas Tree
It is also ironic that Christmas 1850 was the beginning of Christmas as our society has come to know it. America held a fascination for Britain’s young Queen Victoria. When pictorial magazines near the end of 1850 appeared showing Victoria with a Christmas tree, those in the “colonies” took note. The values and customs that evolved into our way of celebrating the holidays were doled out to us in color lithographs and sketch periodicals inspired by Victoria’s festivities in the 1850s.
Until this long-reigning monarch introduced us to a new way of celebrating, Christmas had been a day of reflection at home with close family. This would be the one day a year, except the Sabbath, when most would not work. Queen Victoria advocated decorated parlors, holiday visiting, greeting cards, caroling and brightly wrapped packages. Being a person of means, her gifts to friends and relatives inspired people of all levels of wealth to try to give something of themselves to others.
In Tyrone, gradually, the idea of placing a tree in the house at Christmas caught on. By the 1870s, a tree was seen in the windows of most homes in town. The larger homes on Washington, Logan, and later on Lincoln Avenues were known for their tall fir trees displayed in the front parlor. Decorations included dried, pressed flowers and fruit, ribbons, colorful objects made by hand and wooden toys.
The Bavarian Newcomers
In the 1870s and 1880s Tyrone was experiencing a growth in population of people from Central Europe. Political realignment in the German States resulted in the emigration of a number of families from their homelands to Tyrone. These new arrivals were far from destitute. With jobs awaiting them and enough money in their breast pockets to purchase housing, they contributed greatly to the community. Yet, it was during the Christmas Season that they drew true envy from the neighbors.
Those steamer trunks that were hauled from the depot by dray wagons upon the immigrants’ arrival contained more than clothing and books. These enterprising Dutchmen had brought along Christmas Decorations. Long before manufactured ornaments were available for purchase in the states, merchants on the Avenue were begging to borrow spare heirloom hand-blown kugles and dresdens for holiday window displays from their Bavarian neighbors in Tyrone.
Households in Tyrone actually did use real candle light on trees in their front rooms. If a freshly cut conifer was well tended, the danger of a fire was minimal. Many homes only lit the tree for a short period of family gathering and appreciated the boughs naturally, without lights, for the remainder of the holiday season. Families in Tyrone enjoyed electric lighting on their trees at the start of the Twentieth Century.
The 1913 Community Trees
It took thirty years from the introduction of the first string of electric lights in 1882 until this innovation had been improved enough to be successfully used out of doors. In 1912, for the first time, outdoor lights illuminated a community at Boston, Massachusetts. The following year, Tyrone had two outdoor community trees lit with strings of electric lamps.
The Pennsylvania Railroad placed a tree in excess of twenty feet at the head of Pennsylvania Avenue. A large assembly of hundreds of citizens was thrilled to see such an enormous tree lit with electricity. This gala included choral groups and band music. The ceremony was repeated two blocks away on the square of Logan Avenue and Tenth Street where Tyrone’s second largest industry, The West Virginia Pulp and Paper Company, presented a tree of similar proportion.
The location of the two spectacular Christmas trees did not go without regional notice. The Altoona Mirror had published an article noting that some shoppers preferred making day trips to Tyrone from Altoona, Hollidaysburg, and Bellwood. Those coming by streetcar would be able to see both Christmas trees on their way through town as it went down Tenth Street and made the loop at the depot.
Carol Sings and Choirs
The abundance of churches in Tyrone guaranteed that those of all faiths could find a program of interest during the holiday season. Nonetheless, T. Harry Smith organized the YMCA male chorus in the 1930s with the intent of participating in the great Railroad Music festivals in Altoona. In 1932, Tyrone’s “Mr. Music,” Eugene Dayton, the organist at the Wilson Theatre in the silent film days, organized a choral society that presented Mendelssohn’s Elijah in 1932 and performed Handel’s Messiah to a packed house at the Tyrone YMCA in 1934 during the Christmas season.
Mr. Smith and Mr. Dayton laid the groundwork for a tradition that lasted for generations in Tyrone. The splendid auditorium of the YMCA became the home of Tyrone’s annual community Christmas program. Choral groups representing schools, businesses and fraternal organizations participated in this highly anticipated event. In later years, George Eschbach directed this assembly accompanied by Pearl Cowher on the piano at the YMCA. Throughout her career, Miss Cowher was prized as “The Accompanist” to many local choral groups, including the Paper Mill Chorus, the Tyrone Choral Society, and local minstrel shows. She taught music from her home for 75 years. Mr. Eschbach, a local clothing merchant, was involved in music all of his life as a choir director at the E.U.B. Church and of the popular Otterbein Glee Club in Tyrone.
The Stars on Pennsylvania Avenue
For some thirty years, Tyrone’s business district had one feature that was unique to the community and gained nationwide attention. In the late 1920s, the boulevard lamps in town were modernized to a single pendant globe. In the mid 1930s a few local businesspersons approached J. Alex Steele and asked him to fashion an ornament that could be mounted to a lamp standard. Mr. Steele was the owner of Alexicraft Company on Logan Avenue near Herald Street. He was also an accomplished artist and designer.
Mr. Steele drew up plans for large portable wooden stars. Once manufactured, these were mounted to each lamp standard with an iron collar. The stars encircled the globe of the boulevard lamps and additional illumination came from a series of white bulbs fastened to the perimeter. These became Tyrone’s signature holiday decorations. The dozens of stars on the streets created a festive mood; however, from above, the length of Pennsylvania Avenue intersected by Tenth Street formed a perfect and bright cross. Legendary news reporter Lowell Thomas pointed this out to the world many years ago when his aircraft flew over town and he witnessed this stunning lightshow while he was broadcasting live on the air.
Over the years, there have been memorable local customs and annual events that are unique to our community. As we grow older, we find that the memories of November and Decembers past seem to have a profound sharpness that often overshadow other months of the year. The smell of cookies baking or the sound of a fire truck can strike the mystic chords of our memory and take us back to Bing Johnson riding the ladder truck dressed as Santa or the sight of little Rick Searer gleefully pressing the button that lit our beautiful community tree in 1957.
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