A week or so back we went to the holiday open house at Heritage Village of the Southern Finger Lakes. If that puzzles you, think of Patterson Inn, Benjamin Patterson Inn, Ben Patterson Inn, Patterson Museum, or Corning-Painted Post Historical Society.
*This is not evidence of an identity crisis. Instead, it represents growth and development. It also suggests that if you haven’t been lately, you may owe yourself another visit.
*C-PPHS was founded a good ten years before Corning-Painted Post School District. In fact, I believe it’s the oldest historical society in Steuben, beating out the county society (1949) by a couple of years. I live in Bath, but I’ve been a member for years.
*The Inn by which the C-PP Society is so well known went up in 1796, the same year Steuben County was created. Benjamin Patterson, a founding figure of the region, was innkeeper here for a spell. People knew this place for hundreds of miles around. It provided travelers with a place to rest, and town meetings with a place to meet.
*It’s a large and impressive structure – all the more so for what was the edge of white settlement back in those days. By the mid-20th century it had become an apartment building, and was honored as the oldest home in Corning. In fact, it’s one of the oldest buildings in the region.
*In “the Flood” (1972), the interior was buried deep in mud, but the following year it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as Jenning’s Tavern. Three years later the Society acquired the place (during the U.S. bicentennial) and began restoration.
*There matters rested for many a year. People took tours of the house, and admired the hearth cooking. But over time, the campus grew.
*A signal event was the relocation of Browntown School from Caton. This late-built school has a fine elegance, but more importantly decades of Corning students have spent a day of fourth grade as one-room school students, experiencing a little of what it was like to be a kid, more than a hundred years ago.
*Another key stage in the life of the campus was almost invisible: taking over the house next door for offices and visitors’ center. This made it possible to concentrate the Inn more as museum space, improving the visitor experience.
*Then there’s the blacksmith shop, which moved down from Beaver Dams. Just as with hearth cooking, here you can talk with the artisans and get a feel for the demanding, hardworking life of the “good old days.” You can do the same at the 19th-century log cabin.
*Besides several other working shops on the grounds, C-PPHS also operates the Town of Erwin Museum (the “Depot Museum”) at the old D.L.&W. station farther down on Pulteney Street. Besides getting to visit a classic depot, here at this museum you can find all three of the “Indian” figures, going back almost 200 years, that preceded the current statue in Painted Post.
*It would make sense to check ahead of time to see which features will be available on given days (some of them are labor-intensive), but if you haven’t been for a spell… I think you’d find another visit quite worthwhile.