“I can’t put it into words,” Rena Sperling Goldberg told me, when I asked how she felt when she received a print of a Ford Street scene prominently featuring her father’s furniture store – Sperling’s – adding, “It’s wonderful.”
The image, created by Ogdensburg artist Valerie Patterson, is based on a vintage postcard of the city's busy downtown. Rena Goldberg explained that she showed the card to her nephew Mark Sperling once, who told her the woman pushing the baby carriage is his mother, Peggy. Upon the retirement of her father, Rena’s brother, Bernard “Bun” Sperling, later ran Sperling’s.
When asked what memories the artist’s representation evoked, the former Ogdensburg native said, “All kinds of memories flow back to me. I think of all the activity on the street. I think of going uptown on Friday night and seeing so many people.” Rena said. According to Rena’s daughter, Tobi Goldberg, the print was promptly framed for her mother’s Boston-area home, where “it occupies a place of honor.”
Signed prints of Valerie Patterson’s original watercolor “Connecting with the Past,” are available for sale at the Ogdensburg History Museum. Proceeds help support the museum.
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