Smalltown, U.S.A.

Never underestimate small towns. With the slightest nudge, they reveal fascinating history, quirky characters and nearly always the good heartedness we all hope to claim as our heritage. Mt. Morris, New York, is one of those small towns.

Mt. Morris hunkers down in the Finger Lakes Region of Upstate New York, near Letchworth State Park (site of the “Grand Canyon of the East"), in Livingston County.

The Mt. Morris Dam (nearly 1000 ft. across and 250 feet high) was built here in the 1950s preventing the Genesee River from flooding downstream and leading to the town’s motto: “The Best Town by a dam site!” (That right there is good enough reason to love this small town.) Mt. Morris also brags that Francis Bellamy, author of the Pledge of Allegiance, was a homegrown boy and that the largest epileptic colony in the country was once here. Now it’s a prison - a sad poetry in this coincidence.

Drive through the town center and up Murray Hill and you come into a campus of towering trees and quietly imposing two and three story red brick buildings each with a multi-paned glass sunroom on its top floor. Originally the estate of James Murray who owned local glass works and mills in the 1800s, the estate was given to New York and turned into a tuberculosis sanitarium in 1930.

Tuberculosis was proclaimed “vanquished” by the spectrum of antibiotics available by the 1970s. Tuberculosis centers everywhere were shut down and within a few years, the campus on Murray Hill was turned over to Livingston County. Now it houses county social services of all kinds and headquarters for the Genesee Valley Council on the Arts.

The arts council is in what once was physician housing which may explain the three kitchens in the relatively small building. Along with office space and gift shop, the Council runs the New Deal Gallery named for the 230 easel paintings discovered throughout the sanitarium facility. These paintings are works by Upstate New York artists, all purchased under the auspices of the WPA New Deal during the Great Depression of the 1930s and installed throughout the hospital at the request of the insightful director who convinced the WPA Board that original art would make patients feel better.

The artistic merit of these works is uneven; most pieces would never be included in any museum collection although I love Petra Mearns' painting. It reminds me of works by Frieda Kahlo who was painting similar images at the same time a half-continent removed from Upstate. (Petra Mearns invented the Scotch Cooler, proof that creative expression is seldom channeled in only one direction.)

But there is more to learn from this collection. Even mediocre art often adds huge dimension to our mythology, artistic expression is worthwhile even when the maker sees no or little reward and sometimes someone comes along with the power/money/authority who understands the human requirement for visual healing. The rest of us can only be thankful.

(These paintings all need restoration work. Even a small donation can help. Send to “Adopt Art”, c/o the Genesee Valley Council on the Arts, Bldg. 4, Murray Hill Drive, Mt. Morris, NY 14510. And a big thanks to Kathryn Hollinger, Arts Director, who lights up the walls with her enthusiasm.)