Last week in this space we took a look at the Pulteney Square Historic District in Hammondsport. (A moment of bragging… the folks pulling the nomination together asked me to take photos of the Square to support their nomination. Mission accomplished!)
*So this week I thought it would make sense to take a trip to Penn Yan and look at Keuka’s OTHER large district on the National Register of Historic Places, at the OTHER end of the lake.
*PENN YAN HISTORIC DISTRICT: THE HISTORY Penn Yan’s district is huge, with 210 historic buildings covering 65 acres. Ever since Yates County was created, Penn Yan has been its seat. And while industry, transportation, and tourism have all been tremendously significant here, Penn Yan still wears its 19-century mantle as a courthouse town… medium in size, conscientious in demeanor, well aware of its past without being marooned in it.
*Grand homes, once-proud hotels, busy commercial blocks, elegant churches, and dignified public buildings all welcome the visitor to Penn Yan. White encroachment started with followers of frontier prophetess Jemima Wilkinson, back when this ground was still in Ontario County (and Ontario itself was still very sketchy).
*The magnet for settlement was Keuka Outlet, the stream that drains Keuka Lake into Seneca. Water power was the name of the game, and mill wheels were soon turning all along the flow.
*THE VISIT. Right in Penn Yan itself you can walk the Keuka Outlet Trail, seeing the old industrial buildings from the river side. This includes the huge Birkett’s Mills, making buckwheat for 220 years. In fact, it runs 16 hours a day when it’s NOT busy, and it’s one of the world’s biggest buckwheat suppliers.
*You can pick up the Outlet Trail on either side of the stream and cross to the other via footbridge. Looking UPstream (toward the lake) you can see the area where the steamboats docked through much of the 19th century, bringing in grapes and wine to be shipped out via rail or canal, and taking out summer visitors who spent the season at hotels or resorts along the lake.
*Where the Trail passes under the Main Street bridge, you can find flight of steps up to street level. Wander across the bridge, look both ways along the Outlet and both ways up and down the street, and you can get some sense of how the town developed.
*Being a hub of lake, canal, rail, and highway travel… plus a courthouse town… demanded LOTS of hotel space… like the gigantic Knapp Hotel, with facade sprawling across two streets. Walk farther up Main to find the 1913 Colonial Revival post office. Another block or two and you’ll find Penn Yan Methodist church, “the castle on the corner” with its breathtaking 1899 stonework and rocket-ship steeple.
*The hotel, the post office, and the church are all signs of growing prosperity roughly between the Civil War and Prohibition. Oliver House (1852) is home to the Yates History Center. Keep walking and you’ll pass the contemporary-style 1959 Presbyterian church and the public library. The oldest section (1905) is one of two Carnegie libraries in the five-county region.
*Past the library is the white-columned Yates County Courthouse, anchoring what’s technically ANOTHER historic district. Many folks won’t consider old courthouses to be worth much more than a glance, but step into the green space in front, and spend some time by memorial after memorial to Yates County folks who went to our country’s wars. During one of those wars, in the 1940s, Arch Merrill wrote that Penn Yan was a good place to ride out the storm. I’d say he had it right.