Mechanicville District Public Library to Officially Unveil its Newly Reframed Collection of Photos of 600-plus Local WWII & Korean War Veterans

The Mechanicville District Public Library announced today that its unique collection of more than 600 photographs of local WWII and Korean War veterans in uniform has been entirely rehoused in new museum-quality frames.

The eight frames holding the entire assortment of photos taken by restaurant owner Charles Siciliano Sr. during the 1940s and early ‘50s are now mounted on the walls in the library’s Col. Elmer E. Ellsworth Local History Room. The completion of the reframing segment of the ongoing project to preserve the Charles Siciliano Sr. World War II & Korean War Veterans Photo Collection will be marked by an official unveiling ceremony being held at 6 p.m. Monday, Nov. 9 in the library’s Angelo and Jake DeCrescente Room.

The event is open to the public. Since space is limited, people planning to attend are asked to register at this link: https://forms.gle/xTLCm54nGQNgqTue8

The library launched a fundraising campaign backed by the Mechanicville Friends of the Library, drawing generous donations from the community and surrounding areas. This community-wide support enabled the professional reframing by Bill Swift of Soave Faire and a life-size traveling exhibit replicated by Tom Stock of Stock Photography Studios, achieving a total fundraising cost of $12,500.

“Preserving these images honors our local veterans,” said Library Director Michelle Duell.  “We are deeply grateful for this wonderful community support.”

“It’s wonderful seeing our community keep these stories alive,” added Board of Trustees President Marilyn Erano. “Securing these photos ensures Mechanicville’s Greatest Generation is long remembered.”

Through dedicated photography, Charles Siciliano Sr. displayed his deep appreciation for the young people of the community going off to war, using his Warsaw Street restaurant as a welcoming gathering place. Virtually all the approximately 600 WWII veteran photos and dozens of Korean War veteran snapshots were taken in the same corner of the restaurant’s bar.

More than two dozen frames each holding 25 3-inch-by-3-inch black-and-white photos decorated the walls and booths inside Siciliano’s tavern for decades until his retirement in the mid-1970s, when he sold the business, including the collection, to Frank Costanzo. Costanzo, appreciating the magnitude of the historical materials, had a friend reframe the entire portfolio, in alphabetical order, in eight large wooden frames. He eventually gave the assembly to his sister and brother-in-law, Carmella and Lee Hein, who hung the frames inside Costanzo’s Riverside Restaurant, their business in the town of Waterford.

When that restaurant closed, the Heins donated the compilation to The Mechanicville District Public Library. Years earlier, Charles Siciliano Jr., Siciliano’s younger of two sons, donated to the library his father’s negatives of the veterans’ photos. Starting in 2001, in a project led by the late Michael Sullivan of Mechanicville, the negatives were used to digitize the entire archive onto the library’s website: https://meclib.sals.edu/

As part of the ongoing preservation and community outreach effort, retired Associated Press reporter Chris Carola of Saratoga Springs has been giving a series of public presentations on the history of the collection titled “Charlie’s Heroes.” A Mechanicville native who knew many of the veterans in the collection and interviewed several while working as a journalist, Carola provides details of their military service while explaining how a local tavern owner’s homefront morale-boosting vision created an 80-plus-year-old historic photo archive of our community’s Greatest Generation.