Broad straight boulevards. Green grassy squares. Historic churches, imposing government buildings. Washington. Paris. Bath.
The comparison may provoke either a smirk or a raised eyebrow. But fascinatingly, Bath had that layout when Paris was still a jam-packed walled city left over from the Middle Ages, and Washington didn’t even exist. And therein hangs a tale.
Charles Williamson and his companions plied their axes to clear what’s now Pulteney Square back in 1793, not long after we’d finished “legally” stealing the place from the Iroquois – who lived by the thousands, along with other nations and even some whites, in Williamson’s million-acre empire.
Williamson was the land agent for all those acres, and he laid out Bath as the great metropolis-to-be of western New York. Through the Conhocton-Chemung-Susquehanna system Bath had excellent water connections with the Tidewater, and those rivers formed the great axis of travel and transportation.
Then that busybody DeWitt Clinton went and put through the Erie Canal. Little no-account shanty towns like Buffalo, Syracuse, and Rochester started to thrive, while growth in Bath stopped short. It revived with the Erie Railroad 25 years later, and grew slowly, still following the stately pattern laid down two generations before.
On Friday, May 16, I’m going to be leading a historic walk through the Bath downtown area, where we’ll see Williamson’s layout and what local folks have done with it in the past two centuries.
We’re starting at the Magee House (Steuben County Historical Society), which was a dramatic foursquare giant when erected in 1831. Bath pretty much petered out at what we call Washington Street back then, though there was a little satellite settlement (Cooktown) around the mills a today’s West End. Then we’ll stroll, at whatever pace suits us, down to Pulteney Square.
There we can take a 360-degree look at the 1819 Balcom House, with its dramatic columns… the towering 1833 Bank of Steuben… the 1860 courthouse, third of its line on that spot… plus the post-Civil War county clerk’s building, surrogate’s building, and Presbyterian Church. We’ll capture almost the whole 19th century all at once. We’ll even see how many mistakes we can find in the Williamson monument.
In the Liberty Street business district we’ll peek at the pre-fab cast-iron building… the old movie theater… the space that once had a two-lane bowling alley… and the limits of the 1935 flood.
We’ll also look at the four green corners where Liberty meets Washington. This was originally St. Patrick’s Square, and the street St. Patrick’s Street. They took on more “American” names in the 1850s. A wave of Irish immigration was terrifying many Americans, who considered the Irish a non-white race that could never be fit for citizenship. A Catholic congregation had even started in Bath, and many folks were just as hysterical about Catholic churches as some folks are about mosques today.
We’ll also learn which of the Bath churches was noted as the abolitionist church, and look for fieldstone construction. The pace and the distance will be flexible for the group’s wishes, but I’m figuring about a mile and a half. We’ll cancel if it rains. Your own stories and reminiscences are welcome! The historic walk is sponsored by Steuben County Historical Society; there’s no charge, and no registration. Just a nice walk and a peek at the history that we (maybe) overlook every day.