Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Brockport Sorority of Yesteryear

The archives recently received some materials from a local family, and among the items was this photograph. It is a group shot of the members of the Alpha Delta sorority seated on the steps of the old Normal School and is dated 1896. There was an active Greek culture at Brockport from the 1870s up into the 1930s.

Alpha Delta and the other societies each had a room of their own in the building. In those days things were less structured, and they did many things that would be done today by BSG. For example they worked together to bring popular and prominent speakers to Brockport, they held debate contests, staged plays and held dances.

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Boating on McCargo Lake, Fancher Campus

The photo here is not dated, nor the young women in the rowboat identified, perhaps somewhere in the early 1970s would be right. They are out on McCargo Lake, at the Fancher Campus. This was a property that the college owned, located a few miles west in Orleans County. The college had owned a camp in the Adirondacks, Camp Totem, but it was quite a drive up there, and in the early 1960s they sold that property and bought the Fancher site. A lodge was built, a pool and other amenities, and it was a popular recreational spot for the college community. It also hosted conferences, summer theater productions, McCargo Lake was used for water research studies, and an arboretum was developed there as well. In the 1980s the uses of the property had diminished, the cost of maintaining it had grown, and the property was closed and sold.