Text
Source: Memorial History of
Syracuse, N.Y., Edited by Dwight H. Bruce, D. Mason & Co.,
Publishers, Syracuse, 1891, pp. 682-683
The
Jervis House, the corner of East Fayette and Mulberry streets,
was built in 1854 by Harvey Sheldon and Charles A. Wheaton. The
block was sold to the old Syracuse City Bank, and afterward purchased
by General William J. Hough. It was first known as the Sheldon
Block, and for many years the upper part was rented by Mr. Cobleigh, of
Rochester, for his dancing schools. General Hough afterward
refitted it for a family boarding-house and hotel, and gave it its
present name after Bishop Jervis, of England, from whom he was
descended. General Hough died in 1869, and in the division of his
estate the Jervis House became the property of his daughter, wife of
Charles E. Stevens, an attorney. Mr. Stevens was Superintendent
of Public Schools from 1863 to 1866. The successive landlords of
the Jervis House have been Harvey Bennett, Mrs. Harvey Bennett,
Jeremiah Hinchman, John A. Goodell, Captain C. G. Nye, A. F. Hamilton,
and Mrs. Eunice C. Gardner.
Text Source: Syracuse and
Its
Environs, by
Franklin H. Chase, Lewis Historical Pub. Co., Chicago, IL, 1924, pp.
318-319
How
the Jervis House Started.
When the block at the southwest corner of East Fayette and the present
South State Street was erected in 1852, it succeeded a wagon factory,
built in 1834 for Hoyt & Billings. Harvey Sheldon and Charles
A. Wheaton were the block builders, and it was known as the
Sheldon Block. The evolution of the block into a hotel and
boarding house was more readily possible in the earlier days of
primitive hotel requirements, and the Sheldon Block became the Jervis
House. The old Syracuse City Bank bought it in 1858, and shortly
afterward it was purchased by Gen. William J. Hough. It was Gen.
Hough who gave it the name of the Jervis House, after Bishop Jervis, of
England, an ancestor. Mrs. Charles E. Stevens, General Hough's
daughter, inherited the property in 1869.
But the historic interest of the Jervis House is not in the hotel
recollection. It is before that. The old Jervis
became a sort of a social center. First it was the Park
Institute. Then it was Prof. A. M. Cobleigh, the dancing teacher
from Rochester, who came there later. That era began in the late
'fifties, and continued on to the 'sixties and 'seventies.
Society's most exclusive dancing club in later years took its name from
the loved dancing teacher of the earlier days of Syracuse. To be
in the Cobleigh was to be in society - to be of the local
"400." When the Onondaga Historical Association presented its
tableaux in commemoration of the city's semi-centennial, at the Wieting
Opera House in 1897, the reproduction of the social life of the
'fifties was a picture of the Cobleighs. The newspaper files of
1860 carried in the amusement column the announcements of the dancing
school at the Jervis house, conducted by A. M. Cobleigh. In that
period it was the schottische that was the favorite dance, and the
lanciers were given as the "new and coming" dance. They were the
features of Sheldon Hall.
The Park Institute, which moved into the Sheldon Block upon its
completion in the fall of 1852, was originally the Cottage Seminary,
established in 1850 in the building known as the White Cottage one door
west of the Congregational Church on East Genesee Street, just west of
Montgomery. Mrs. Emma C. Palmer was the principal and Ernst Held
one of the teachers of piano.
The long iron balcony on the second story was one of the features of
the Jervis House for close upon half a century. It was General
Hough who refitted the building for a family boarding house, and that
place became the address of many of the socially prominent of the
city. Among the various landlords have been Mr. and Mrs. Harvey
Bennett, Jeremiah Hinchman, John A. Goodell, Capt. C. G. Nye, A. F.
Hamilton, Mrs. Eunice C. Gardner and Elias T. Talbot.