A little while back, I thought it might be fun to take a look at locations around Keuka Lake that are on the National Register of Historic Places.
*Think again. There are 42 of them in the six Keuka towns. So I had to pull my horns in a little!
*So I decided to concentrate, for right now, on one historical DISTRICT from the National Register… a place where the public can visit, wander around, and focus on whatever they like.
*PULTENEY SQUARE HISTORIC DISTRICT IN HAMMONDSPORT: THE HISTORY. Pulteney Square has been a center of action for more than a hundred years. Alexander Graham Bell visited here, and so, some say, did the future Duchess of Windsor. Glenn Curtiss’s bike shop once stood on this Square.
*The Square appears on the very earliest plans for this community, even before there was much of a village here. The founders stayed true to the vision, and resisted the profits that could have come from selling off. At first, though, no one paid much attention. Hammondsport was a true port, and Water Street was the business district. Economic changes, and a series of fires, migrated the business up to the Square.
*Excursion tourism began after the Civil War, though locals weren’t sure they approved of having all those strangers around spending money. During World War I Curtiss’s airplane factory overwhelmed the town, as engines roared in test stands all along the slopes. After the war, Hammondpsort finally started welcoming the auto-borne family visitors that we enjoy today.
*THE VISIT. The village green defines Hammondsport as much as the lakefront does. It’s shady and grassy, with park benches for the footsore traveler. Highlighting the green is the bandstand. Well over a hundred years old, it’s been the site of thousands of concerts, events, and presentations. Santa Claus greets the children here, and future film critic Charles Champlin, then in high school, played here with the town band. We don’t have any “official” figures, but we imagine that a poll would turn up hundreds and hundreds of grownups who treated themselves to imaginative playtime on the bandstand when they were little.
*By the way, take a look at the music staff and notes that run around the bandstand. They actually make a tune.
*If Alexander Graham Bell were here he’d recognize the place in an instant, except that the streets are paved. When lightning struck the Presbyterian church in 1950, destroying the front half, new construction restored the look of the old. The white church with its town clock and tall spire still smiles down on the Square and the people – local and visitor alike.
*Stroll the sidewalks and study the buildings that line the downtown streets. Most of them went in between 1820 and 1920… from the age of oxcarts to the age of airplanes. The iron fence at the J. S. Hubbs place has stood since 1901, and so has the Opera House (which hosted many entertainments but never, so far as I can tell, an opera).
*Strolling downhill will take you past the marvelous new library and the delightful old depot, right onto the lakefront with its loons, mergansers, and grebes… not to mention swimmers, fishers, and boaters. You can settle on a bench in the waterfront park and watch the winds and the shadows play with the lake. Or, you can take a bench in Pulteney Square… let your eyes droop… see in your mind’s eye the eminent Doctor Bell making stately progress across the Square alongside young Glenn Curtiss, tense with quick nervous energy. Ladies in long skirts… small boys in knickers… soldiers in blue, and later in khaki… history feels at home in Pulteney Square.