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Join Us for a Historic Walk in Arkport!

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In the beginning, there was – muck!
“Muck” is the western New York name for a rich, silty soil that’s really good for raising crops. In Steuben County it’s mostly in the northwest corner, then extends on into Allegany, Livingston, and beyond.
Which helps explain why Arkport became a community, and how it got its name. Arkport’s “Old Main Street” was a well-traveled Native American footpath in the days before white people muscled in. (Today’s Route 36 roughly follows that old trail.) A community was created here because it was on the land route, but ALSO because it was the head of navigation on the Canisteo River.
In other words this is far as you can go upstream, and still be able to launch large “arks.” And large they were – hundred-foot monstrosities, built with the abundant local timber, laden with a year’s produce, and then poled or drifted as far down as Maryland. They’d sell their goods wherever the got a good enough price for them… then sell the “ark” for the lumber… and walk back home.
Dozens of arks would lie up, waiting for the spring freshets to raise the river, and speed the flow, so they could make their “returnless journey.” The Wadsworth brothers hauled their produce down from Geneseo to the “ark-port,” and so did just about everyone else in the region.
All well and good until the Erie Canal opened in 1825, killing the need for river traffic and impoverishing the Southern Tier. Arkport folks took advantage of a bad situation to move the river a quarter-mile westward – formerly a mighty highway, it had become only a source of floods.
So things lay fallow (not to mention quiet) until the Erie Railroad came through in the 1850s. Arkporters again had an easy outlet for their produce, not to mention passenger travel to Buffalo on one end, and New York City on the other. A hundred years later, rail traffic was less important because HIGHWAY travel, with individual motor vehicles, had taken over. The state created the new Route 36, and while Arkport continued as a farming and retail center, it also became a bedroom community, fit for the baby boom.
We’ll get a glimpse of this on Friday, September 16, when Steuben County Historical Society and Canisteo Valley Historical Society team up to lead a historic walking tour through the village. Among other things we’ll get a look at the Hurlbut House, which is about 220 years old, making it one of the oldest houses… more, one of the oldest STRUCTURES… in Steuben County.
Along with this we’ll see “Queen Anne” style houses along East Avenue, where the village started to extend about 1880. In keeping with the post-Civil War economic boom, this is a playful style – often asymmetrical, sometimes with different materials for different sections of the house, often with repeated features – such as windows – varying from floor to floor.
Farther out on East Ave is Arkport Central School, built in 1937 with help from the state (financially encouraging centralization), and from the New Deal in Washington, designed to put people back to work on construction projects. It’s been expanded and renovated repeatedly in the past 85 years, but it’s still a busy public school – a pretty good use of that money, back in the Great Depression!
After taking in some baby boom architecture, we plan to stop at “The Grove,” site of picnics, sports, Chautauquas, band concerts, and all the other joys of small-town life in the nineteenth century – and in the twenty-first, too. The free walk starts 4 PM at the village hall on Park Avenue. We hope we’ll see you in Arkport!

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.

A Walk in Wayland

Wayland’s a nice village. Steuben County being as big as it is, if you live in Corning or Addison, you may never have gotten there. But I have, frequently, and I like it.

*Wayland’s a village in the larger town of the same name. It’s in potato country, and it’s almost the last thing in Steuben before you cross into Livingston County and North Dansville. Like 13 of the 14 incorporated cities and villages in Steuben County, it was on the Erie Railroad. That transportation link helped make the communty, along with the fact that Route 15 rides straight through, on its way from Rochester down to Virginia.

*A little later, though, the DL&W Railroad would lay its route to the south of the village, and even later yet Interstate Route 390 would be run within a stone’s throw of that rail line. The Erie line, and Route 15, each became less significant. The village, now set back a mile or two from the main routes, was no linger as vibrant as it had been – the fate of almost all the old market towns that served surrounding farm lands.

*Right by the 390 exit, and the old DL&W depot, is Gunlocke, which for generations has been a mainstay of Wayland’s fortunes, making high-quality chairs and other furniture.

*In the village itself I’m leading a historic walk on June 7, meeting in the historical society museum (100 South Main Street) at 4 PM. One of the spots we’ll be taking in is Bennett’s, founded almost a century ago, the oldest Buick dealership in the world, and still a very busy business. The Bennett brothers started the operation after they got back from World War I.

*Also a sign of those fast-paced postwar days is the 1922 American Legion on North Main. Originally an organization for Great War veterans, the Wayland post celebrated modern times by including a movie theater when they built the place.

*Several churches along the walk give us a picture of the community’s religious and ethnic history. Two church edifices on Route 15 – United Methodist and Lighthouse Wesleyan – actually started out as homes for German-speaking congregations. The Seventh-Day Adventists have a more modern home on Third Street. Their denomination grew out of religious upheaval in upstate and western New York, back in the 1840s. Sacred Heart is the home for area Catholics, again largely German in the early days.

*Not far from the church is the old village hospital, to which victimes were rushed after a 1943 train wreck near Gunlocke killed 29 people.

*Besides the Legion, North Main is also home to interesting commercial blocks, while 19th-century homes are sprinkled throughout the village. A much more modern place is the Gunlocke home (now a funeral home), and the 1973 Gunlocke library. The library’s modern design is elegantly executed in wood, stone, and glass, but the wood and stone also lend it dignity and link it to the past. Of course, the wood links it to the Gunlocke company, too.

*Wayland is home to Wayland-Cohocton High School, and Way-Co’s most famous alumnus is perhaps Bill T. Jones ’70. He was three years old when he came to Wayland in a family of migrant farm workers. After going on to SUNY Binghamton Mr. Jones went into dance, for which he received a MacArthur “Genius” Grant. Since then he’s also received Kennedy Center Honors, numerous honorary degrees, and membership in the Steuben County Hall of Fame. I recently found a photo of sophomore “Billy” Jones as Marcellus in “The Music Man,” going into his star turn to teach River Citizens how to dance the Shipoopi.

*Anyhow, we’d be happy to have you join us on our free historic walk. As I said, we’re meeting at Wayland Historical Society Museum, and if the weather’s bad, the walking tour will become a museum tour. So you win either way.