Tag Archives: Corning Northside

Sidewalk History Spotting — Free Packet With Six Walks!

Steuben County Historical Society conducts two historic walking tours every summer (weather and illness permitting!). We’ve put together a “Sidewalk History Spotting” packet with notes from four of them – in Wayland, Canisteo, Addison, and Corning’s Northside – plus information on established historic walking tours in Bath and Hammondsport. If you e-mail us via steuben349@yahoo.com, we’ll send you the free 20-page packet as a pdf attachment.

We hope that this will give you a way to get some fresh air and exercise (while socially distanced!), besides spotlighting some of our communities and pointing out a little history. Once you’ve had a guided look at history “from the sidewalk,” you’ll probably spot more on your own as you walk or drive through “old Stew-Ben.” Here’s a little sampling of what each walk has to offer.

At the heart of ADDISON is the Canisteo River. In fact, sometimes the river is IN the heart of Addison, but modern flood control makes that a rare occurrence nowadays. Eagles and osprey hunt for fish and build their nests along the river, so keep your eyes peeled.

Two small parks on the south side collect several memorials, and one of them honors Mr. Valerio. When the new central school went up in 1929, he paid to pave the street and put in the sidewalk, because it broke his heart to think of children walking to school through mud.

Cross the Main Street bridge and the railroad tracks (once the Erie main line) and you can climb the little hill to Wombaugh Park, surrounded by beautiful homes and historic churches. It’s a little showplace for the carpenter gothic style.

CANISTEO also flooded frequently in days gone by. In the late 1800s a trolley ran through the village and connected it with Hornell.

Canisteo’s green along Main Street has been a gathering place just about ever since the village was born. Greenwood Street has the Wesleyan church, which was a-building from 1934 to 1942; the 1856 Methodist church, whose pastor was the only local white Protestant minister we’ve found who opposed the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s; and the 1880 Baptist church, whose two very different towers give evidence of a long-ago lightning strike.

Further up Greenwood you get the cemeteries, including two stones inscribed K.K.K. by proud Klan members a century back, the schools, and the famed Canisteo Living Sign.

CORNING NORTHSIDE: While Addison and Canisteo both lie on the Canisteo River, Corning is divided by the Chemung. The Northside area around Bridge Street includes Benjamin Patterson Inn, built around 1796 and now the heart of Heritage Village of the Southern Finger Lakes.

The first block or two north of the bridge includes a commercial area largely built from 1900 to 1920 or so. Grace Methodist, North Baptist, and the old St. Vincent’s each have historic edifices, while Ontario Street has large old homes, a former church, and a 19th century fire station. All of this was under water in the Hurricane Agnes disaster of 1972.

WAYLAND is not on a river, but it was on two major railroads. It has Bennett’s Motors, an auto sales and service business opened by two brothers when they got back from World War I, and still in business until the end of 2019. It also has a Legion hall built by veterans – when they put it up in 1920, they included a good-sized movie theater – just what every town needed back then!

Wayland also has historic churches, of course, the old Main Street business district, and Gunlocke Library. When it opened in 1974 it was the first modern library built in Steuben since Hornell’s, in 1911.

For BATH our packet has just a short section introducing the existing random-access audio tour. Bath of course includes historic churches, the fairgrounds, the county buildings, the Liberty Street business district, and a number of fine old homes, including our own 1831 Magee House.

Our HAMMONDSPORT section likewise is short, introducing a historic tour created for a Girl Scout Gold project. Any tour of Hammondsport of course includes Keuka Lake, plus Glenn Curtiss history, the village square, more old homes, and the Elmwood Cemetery.

So that’s enough to keep you busy for six trips on six days! We’ll be happy to send you a packet!

Join Us for a Historic Walking Tour on Corning Northside

Ever hear of Knoxville? It’s what we call the Corning Northside. It used to be a separate incorporated village, and it was bigger than the village of Corning (what we now call Southside), which was mainly farmfields with a few scattered houses. An 1890 merger created the City of Corning, after which BOTH sides started to boom.
*In 1873 (pre-merger), Northside development was centered on the strip between Dodge Street and Sly Street. After the merger, Knoxville had 30% growth in two years. In 1891 year, 114 new dwellings were erected, plus a brick business block on Bridge Street and three stores at Bridge & Pulteney. McBurney plots east of Sly were developed beginning 1903, while the Fuller plots west of Dodge developed after 1913.
*Going back to 1796, land agent Charles Williamson built an inn on what we call West Pulteney Street, and installed Benjamin Patterson as the innkeeper. That was the road to the west in those days, and the Chemung River flowed just a few rods away. From this, the city grew.
*Patterson Inn, at Heritage Village of the Finger Lakes, is where we’ll start a free historic walking tour at 4 PM on Friday, August 2. (If it’s bad weather, we’ll have a tour of Heritage Village.) From there we’ll see a number of things, including:
*The former Merrill Silk mill. Merrill operated in Steuben County at least from 1891 to 1925. There were also silk mills in Hornell (the center of the industry, and of Merrill), Canisteo, Wayland, Cohocton, and Bath… the latter capitalized by community subscription.
*Hugh Gregg School, which goes back to about 1950 – PRECEDING the new buildings constructed in the late ‘fifties, in the run-up to, or aftermath of, consolidation during the Baby Boom.
*St. Vincent’s Church and School. A graduation celebration was taking place here in June of 1972, and about a hundred people got stranded by Hurricane Agnes and spent the night on the roof of the school. The school later closed, and the building was used by Christian Learning Center, now Corning Christian Academy. The church itself was already scheduled for closing when a stringer broke in the roof, so it was officially closed 11 months ago, leaving one Catholic worship center in Corning, and one in Painted Post.
*The Hazel Street area, where many houses are built to similar plan, or to mirror plans.
*Grace Methodist Church, which formed in 1897 and dedicated a frame building in 1898. The church enthusiastically welcomed a large Ku Klux Klan delegation in 1924 – 30 men, masked and robed, were welcomed with applause and the church quickly filled up as word spread through the neighborhood – they had to borrow folding chairs from the funeral home. The church at the time was already working on a major building program which had begun in 1922 but got stalled after the crash of 1929. They had to meet in the basement until work could be finished in 1938.
*The current location of Northside Liquor Company, formerly Corning Fire Department Station 2, home to Crystal City Hook and Ladder Company # 2.
*Several fine homes on Ontario Street.
*Once we approach Bridge and Pulteney we encounter late 19th- and 20th-century commercial block architecture. This includes the “Joe Sofia” building. In 1923, Joseph Sofia was a shoemaker on Market Street, renting a home on Front. By 1950 Joseph Sofia and Ralph Scott had Sophia Grocery on this spot… note change in spelling.
*Our route will also give us a peek at the much more-modern Corning Glass Works/Corning Incorporated facilities. And on Bridge we’ll see the M. L. Allen block, built around 1910. Mr. Maynard, who had a furniture and trucking business, was on the Board of Public Works in 1916. The furniture store closed in 1984 after 92 years and three generations in the same family.
*The Hotel Stanton on Bridge first appears in the 1923 directory. In 1950 it offered “Rooms with bath $2.00 to $5.00 double, running water, legal beverages and meals. Phone 35.” Next door was Randy’s Stanton Diner (phone 2380), a manufactured diner now sadly gone.
*We will also notice wall art at Brick House Brewery; Marconi Post 47, Italian American War Veterans of the United States; Kapral Motors, with its elaborate ornamental facade; the Corning Leader building; North Baptist Church, built 1906… besides giving a nod to Hokey Pokey!
*And of course we won’t forget the horrible tragedy of 1972, when lives were lost and every foot of our route was under water. We hope you’ll join us.