GOHS’ HQ Marks 150th…or 149th?

Tom Heitz, the Otsego town historian and staffer at the Oneonta History Center, reports this afternoon that the Bissell Block, 189 Main St., was built 150 years ago, but actually wasn’t occupied until Feb. 28, 1867, 149 years ago as of tomorrow. Heitz also said that, although the building housing the History Center was probably the first three-story brick business block in Oneonta, a house of brick had previously been built by the Walling family. Heitz’s lecture, which put the building in the context of the then-village’s boom after the arrival of the Albany & Susquehanna Railroad in 1865, was in conjunction with a History Center exhibit on its headquarters.  Heitz recounted the observations of Leman P. Carpenter, then-editor of the Oneonta Herald, which the historian has used, in part, as a source of his weekly column, Hometown History, in the Hometown Oneonta newspaper.  Inset is a postcard of the building from its early days.  (Jim Kevlin/AllOTSEGO.com)