As part of the Town of Bovina’s Bicentennial Celebration, Brooke Alderson enlisted a group of ten local artists to create paintings of Bovina Landmarks. The artists were invited to paint their own interpretations of photographs of different Bovina buildings that are no longer in existence or have been altered. The resulting ten paintings were mounted on easels by Brooke and Scott Hill and were displayed throughout the hamlet during the Celebration at the site where the original structure stood (or still stands).
Over the next few months, I will be doing a series of entries highlighting the buildings and the paintings. The paintings are on display at the Bovina Public Library, where you can order prints of any that catch your fancy for $80, all proceeds going to the library. And stay tuned for an auction of the original works being planned for this fall.
Bovina Center Cooperative Creamery, painted by Scott Hill and Lori Glavin
In the latter part of the 19th century, Bovina became famous for the quality of its dairy products, specifically for its butter. Butter making was a lot of work. Farmers began advocating in the 1890s for the option of taking their milk to a creamery. One of the earliest reported interest meetings for a creamery took place in January 1896. The Andes Recorder in January 1897 made a plaintive plea in its Bovina column: “Why cannot Bovina have a creamery?”
The dawn of the 20th century in Bovina saw not one, but two creameries were constructed. In late June 1901, the Bovina Cooperative Creamery was organized located on Bovina Road not far from the Schuman property. Two weeks later, another group of farmers formed the Bovina Center Cooperative Creamery, located in the Bovina Center hamlet.
The Bovina Center Cooperative Creamery opened for business on New Year’s Day 1902. The Bovina Center Creamery in its first year had over fifty farmers bringing their milk, receiving 17,500 pounds of milk a day. The creamery established a dry milk plant behind the creamery building. The creamery was powered by steam in its early days. In 1924, they converted to electricity.
The Bovina Center Cooperative Creamery operated for over 70 years. In 1939, it became the Bovina Center Cooperative Dairy. During World War II, sweet condensed milk was produced and dry milk production was replaced by the production of dried eggs to fulfill a government contract. This contract likely led to the replacing of the old wooden creamery with the current brick structure in 1944.
By the 1950s, the focus of the creamery was on liquid milk. In the 1960s, several area creameries closed, leading to a brief increase in the milk coming to Bovina Center, with farmers coming from as far away as Durham, NY. It wasn’t enough to save the creamery. In March 1973, the 43 farmers still hauling their milk to Bovina met and with one dissension, voted to close the creamery and dissolve the Cooperative.
For over 30 years, the Bovina Coop Dairy’s creamery building saw a new life as the home of McIntosh Auction Service. The weekly auctions were a popular draw in the 70s, 80s and 90s. In 2001, McIntosh Auction Service relocated to Margaretville, using the creamery building for storage. In 2016, after several ‘farewell’ auctions, the building was sold to Bovina Valley LLC to become once again a functioning creamery.
Scott Hill: I came to Delaware County in the late 90’s. Like so many others, I fell under the spell of this natural world, the light, the easy pace, the friendliness of the community. I embraced the area and absorbed its history. I like stories and the local lore, and how they relate to the quest for a better life.
I came from California many years ago, and for me, New York was freedom. It still is freedom. Before us, the struggles of the early post revolution farmers and homesteaders in this area were struggles for freedom. It was not easy for them and the struggle continues.
In Irving's story of Rip Van Winkle we read not only of a man who sleeps for many years, but also of slumbering early America, a new land changing, awakening.
We are all now living through another shift and awakening. The way forward will not be easy. There will be darkness, but the light will come. Scott Hill - artist, designer.
Lori Glavin is an abstract painter, collagist and printmaker who lives and works in Bovina Center, NY and Connecticut. She is the recipient of a 2019 Connecticut Individual Artist Fellowship Grant and has exhibited in galleries nationally and internationally, including solo and group shows at The Brattleboro Museum and Art Center in VT, The Mattatuck Museum, Waterbury, CT, World Collage Day in Ghent, Belgium, Dimmitt Contemporary Art in Houston, The George Gallery in Charleston, SC, The Flinn Art Gallery Greenwich and Anne Irwin Fine Art in Atlanta, among others. In 2007 she co-founded Wilson Avenue Loft Artists, a community of artist studios in Norwalk, CT. Ms. Glavin has an undergraduate degree from Syracuse University’s School of Visual and Performing Arts, Syracuse, NY.
