This familiar building at the intersection of Parkview Drive and College Street was the home for the jewelry store of Thomas Irwin Place. From this building, Place sold clocks, jewelry, watches, musical instruments and fine china for more than 55 years beginning in 1884. The building was most recently the home for Rockie’s Pizza.

This familiar building at the intersection of Parkview Drive and College Street was the home for the jewelry store of Thomas Irwin Place. From this building, Place sold clocks, jewelry, watches, musical instruments and fine china for more than 55 years beginning in 1884. The building was most recently the home for Rockie’s Pizza.

The familiar building at the intersection of Parkview Drive and College Street has served as a pizza restaurant for the entirety of the current generation, but for the first four decades of the 1900s it was home for T.I. Place Jewelry.

Thomas Irwin Place operated a business along Parkview Drive for more years than any other merchant in the community’s history.

T. I. Place came to Milton in 1884 and operated T.I. Place Jewelry at the corner of College Street and Main Street (now Parkview Drive) until his death in 1940 at age 90. From the building that was most recently home for Rockies Pizza, Place sold and serviced jewelry, watches, clocks and musical instruments.

Place served on the village board beginning in 1918 and in 1928 was elected village president, a position he held for many years. Six members of the village board served as pall bearers at his funeral.

Place was born in 1861 near Alfred, New York. While attending school there he also entered the Alfred jewelry store of James Shaw to learn the art and business of a jeweler. In 1884 he graduated from Alfred University and Mr. Shaw’s shop. He purchased the necessary tools and small business outfit and came to Milton.

He established a business in the Main Street building that was moved to that location in 1870. He continued the business for 55 years and became the dean of businessmen in the village.

In addition to selling and maintaining a fine line of watches, clocks and China, he promoted music and entertainment throughout his time in Milton, selling a varied line of merchandise that included musical instruments and sporting goods. He was an advocate for the incorporation of Milton as a village in 1904 and was a strong supporter of Milton College and its music department.

Around 1903, Place spearheaded a move to create the Crescents Athletic Association – the first organization to promote sustainable amateur baseball in the community. The Association sold stock and purchased land at the site of the existing Milton Middle School.

To the north of the school site, the Association constructed a wooden grandstand and diamond where the Crescents played their games. The tornado of 1911 destroyed the grandstand and the Crescents played their games at Charley Bluff for a few seasons.

When the Association dissolved in the late 1910s, the land was sold for the site of the new Milton Union High School, which opened in 1920.

Place was married twice but had no children. He married Lena Burdick in 1889 but she passed a short time later with tuberculosis. In 1891, he married Katherine Maxson. She died in 1929. After that, Place lived by himself in the apartment over the store.

A story that appeared on the front page of the Milton and Milton Junction Telephone the month of his death in January 1940 offers a glimpse of the life of T.I. Place in the village of Milton.

Under a headline that proclaimed “T. I. is gone; Milton Grieves” the story read as follows:

“Probably the little jewelry store on Main Street will be opened again one of these days. But it will never be the same.

“It couldn’t be. Not with old T.I. Place – the man who was a friend to everyone and whom everyone called ‘T.I’ – gone. When he died a few weeks ago, townspeople found it hard to believe that the frail old man, white haired and stoop shouldered, was really gone for he had been in the old store for more than a half century.

“And the children found it hard to believe as well, and to realize that never again would they be able to stop at his shop after school and listen to his stories about items in his unique collections.

“There was a collection of more than 50 long guns, including muzzle loaders, flintlocks and rifles of many types, all of them old. There were more than 40 revolvers, dueling pistols, derringers and homemade revolvers. There were powder horns and collections of arrowheads, stamps and old coins.

“Everyone knew that his little shop was crammed with old things, but no one realized to what extent until an inventory was taken recently. There were mason jars filled with scrap silver. There were a dozen or so stem winding watches, as big and bulky as T.I. always wore on his wrist as a wrist watch.

“There were old clocks, old tools and spectacles, some so old that they had hinged lenses for close work. In the basement there were 10 of the first phonographs made by Edison. And lamp chimneys – there were hundreds of them. When the change to electricity came T.I. just put them in the basement, although he continued to use gas in the store upstairs. And down there too, was T.I.’s old bicycle, with the big five-foot-high wheel in the front and the little foot high wheel in the back.

“All over the store, H.M. Place, Monroe, the jeweler’s nephew, kept finding guns. When T.I. was young he had always wanted a gun and when he was able he began collecting them in earnest. Many of them were brought in by people who needed money, and old T.I. would always buy them for a few dollars even though, in some cases, they were worthless.

“That was because T.I., in his quiet way, folks say, believed in helping people.”

An 1882 Milton Junction village directory hailed the outlook for Milton Junction as being “decidedly promising” after offering a brief account…

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