10 Autocar quarry working dump trucks were auctioned in Nov 2006, after being removed from the Platt Street quarry, where four had been carefully stored indoors and had remained in decent condition. After being used for more than a decade, the quarry's owner, Joseph "J.J." Fredella, parked four of them in on-site buildings. The rest were left to rust in a nearby field.
Some of the trucks were in restorable condition, thanks to care taken when they were put away. When they were put up on blocks, one truck's four-cylinder engine was filled with motor oil, preserving the parts for future ignition.
The Great Depression had slowed road construction, for which much of the quarried material had been used. So after Fredella died, they mothballed the small fleet in 1932 and shut down the quarry. He was 54 when he died of pneumonia in April 1930
His son Joseph hoped to resurrect the operation when the economy improved , and the masonry company continued operation through the depression years.
But the quarry never reopened, and the trucks continued to wait in a quarry building that was also used to store masonry equipment and supplies.
Men risked their marriages for a chance to bring home one of the antique Autocar dump trucks. A couple of hundred men in workboots, and a handful of women, came out to kick the deteriorating tires of the rusty 1920s vehicles.
One of the trucks even started, after a few slight adjustments, No new parts, or even a fresh bottle of oil, was needed to fire the engine, and Tim Hoover of Saltsburg, Penn., bought that 1931 H-Model Autocar for $10,500, along with 2 other trucks in worse condition for parts.
"All we did was pull the head and clean up the values," he said. "Had an idea when we bought them that we could get one running."
He completely restored in in 7 months of after hours labor, using two others for parts, one of the parts trucks he then sold.
Bud Lacy of Saratoga Springs protested that he was liable to end up divorced if the price kept rising.
The auctioneer was sympathetic, but didn't lay off.
Later, Lacy couldn't remember if he'd gotten the truck for $5,000 or $5,500, and wasn't even sure which of the rusting masses of metal was his. He said his wife was shocked when she learned he'd bought the truck.
Mark Audet and his three children, ages 11 to 17, drove from Rhode Island and bought two decrepit trucks for $200 and $1,600, hoping to combine them into one truck that looks halfway decent, Audet said.
Audet, who said he loves Autocars, was kicking himself for not going higher to get one of the trucks in better condition, but he couldn't cross certain boundaries.
"If you're married and you come in here and buy one of these, you're going to get in big trouble," he said. "That's why I had a limit, because of the wife."
Hoover said before buying the truck, he had been searching for a similar make and model, but couldn't find one complete enough to be restored until traveling to Wilton. He really didn't expect to find it, even as he made the eight-hour trip to Wilton, either.
Built as speculative housing for Italian immigrant families between 1914 and 1918, the Fredella Avenue Historic District was selected for its proximity to nearby stone quarries offering employment.
The boundaries of the historic district are drawn to include all buildings on Fredella Avenue, formerly Lime Street, named for one of the city’s major industries. The name was later changed to honor Joseph Fredella, a contractor who developed the street. The buildings retain integrity and substantially reflect their type, period, and method of construction.
Joseph J. Fredella was an Italian mason who immigrated to the United States in 1901. By 1912 Fredella had established a successful construction firm in Glens Falls, where he built several commercial and civic structures. Fredella made his reputation as a highway contractor, constructing and paving stone of the first state highways into the Adirondack region during the period between 1920 and 1930.
Fredella's vision in 1912 was to build affordable housing that mirrored the look and feel of his native Italy, according to "Facing the Past," by Nora Nellis.
He built the houses with wide-open porches so people could look around and see their neighbors, and each house had a grape arbor in the back yard.
Fredella made the blocks using more than 30 different cast-iron templates and an early block-making machine, according to a document prepared when the city nominated the neighborhood to be included in a historic district.
"Fredella, building on speculation and employing newly arrived immigrants and family from the home country, was able to sell the houses before their completion, such was the popularity of their construction and style," the document states.
Located in the south-central, Route 32 section of Glens Falls near the river, a group of eight modest Colonial Revival residences constructed of molded concrete block, built between 1914-18 by Fredella Co. Builders as speculative housing.
Built of concrete block resembling ashlar with highly detailed porches cast in iron molds, the houses built by Fredella advertised the architectural adaptability of a novel construction material and the stylishness obtainable in relatively inexpensive construction. Because Fredella's ornate concrete building technology never achieved widespread popularity in Glens Falls after the contractor's death in 1930, the buildings of the Fredella Avenue Historic District are significant as rare examples of sophisticated, vernacular residential design and construction in Glens Falls during the early twentieth century.
The subdivision was one aspect of a diversified business empire that included buildings, highway and bridge construction, a brick and block-making operation and a quarry.
He experimented with making cinder blocks from ash from the coal burner at Finch, Pruyn and Co. before another inventor patented the cinder block-making process, said his great-grandson, Guy Fredella of Naples, Fla.
His company built Big Cross Street School, the Synagogue Center of Shaaray Tefila and a block of commercial buildings at the corner of Park and Elm streets, among other projects.
The company also built a bridge over the Feeder Canal that still exists, another bridge that has since been replaced over the Boreas River in Essex County and the stretch of highway between Port Henry and Westport, Guy Fredella said.
The son-in-law, also named Guy, operated the quarry early on and Joseph Fredella paid him in shares of stock rather than cash, said the younger Guy Fredella, who is the son-in-law's grandson.
Joseph Fredella's daughter, who married Guy, started keeping the company's financial records when she was 10.
"Can you imagine putting that much responsibility on a 10-year-old's shoulders?" asked Fredella's great-granddaughter Barbara.
https://poststar.com/news/local/trashed-truck-turns-to-treasure/article_2d269923-762f-52b1-a30e-2d4cf0ba5bd3.html
https://poststar.com/news/video_report/video-report-an-autocar-reunion/article_c0eae304-632d-5dd4-bed7-d1a45edc11d9.html
https://poststar.com/news/local/bidding-their-limits-and-then-some/article_13586a94-dcd2-5729-ac05-d208f2ad66e7.html
https://poststar.com/news/local/antique-trucks-set-for-auction-sunday/article_0f11f72e-f187-5c6a-85c5-b93581404750.html
https://poststar.com/news/columns/behind-scenes/constructing-a-glens-falls-legacy/article_3bd69f18-50b7-5511-ab59-14db7ea93f98.html
https://poststar.com/news/local/quarry-sees-conversion/article_4a743dcb-922d-5c1b-90cb-a545f43bc36c.html
http://www.livingplaces.com/NY/Warren_County/Glens_Falls_City/Fredella_Avenue_Historic_District.html
http://www.adirondackscenicbyways.org/resource/fredella-avenue-historic-district.html
Big thanks to Bill and Joan from the Warren County Historical Society!
Glad Joan was able to send this. I owe her big time for this.
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