Main Streets across New York
For the 25th Anniversary of our flagship Seven to Save program, we wanted to look back with a thematic retrospective – highlighting seven themes we’ve seen pop up in our listings over the past 25 years. Over the course of the year, we’ll be digging into our STS archive to highlight places across the state that help tell a broader story of preservation in New York.
A section of Schenectady’s Main Street (State Street). The rightmost building is Proctor’s Theatre, which won an Excellence in Historic Preservation Award from the League in 2008 following a successful restoration.
Main Streets serve as the physical, economic, and cultural center of a community, home to municipal offices, banks, local businesses, and community gathering spaces. They can be one block long or ten (or more!); rural, suburban, or urban; with simple single story wood frame buildings or high style multi-story masonry buildings, and everything in between. Over the past 25 years, many Main Streets across the state have landed on our Seven to Save list – from Downtown State Street in Schenectady back in 2000 to the listing of Downtown Oneonta’s Historic District just last year.
Despite the diversity of Main Streets, they have a few common elements: first floor commercial spaces with storefronts and big display windows that encourage foot traffic; sidewalks for window shopping and dining; and upper floors that house offices, apartments, and communal spaces such as meeting halls and opera houses. Combined, these elements make for a vibrant, self-contained, walkable neighborhood with amenities that serve residents’ daily needs and encourage social interaction.
In the latter half of the 20th century, many of New York’s Main Streets were hit hard by population loss, shifting economies, urban renewal, construction of the interstate highway system, and suburban sprawl. Disinvestment, the loss of local jobs, and the shuttering of local businesses left once-thriving communities nearly empty.
One truth about Main Streets is that they are constantly evolving. Looking back at our early listing of State Street in Schenectady highlights this point. The section of State Street making up Schenectady’s downtown is nearly a mile long. The reason the district was included as a Seven to Save was because of proposed demolition projects, and indeed, sections of historic buildings have been lost on State Street. However, local advocates who champion the historic character of State Street and incentives like Historic Tax Credits that make reuse feasible have both helped save historic buildings as well. The Foster Complex is a good recent example. The former Foster Hotel and Schenectady Railway Buildings, plus two connecting buildings, sit at a prominent corner but were vacant and suffered from significant disrepair. The rehabilitation project utilized Historic Tax Credits, taking these four historic buildings and bringing them back to active use, with retail and restaurants on the first floor and apartments above.
Further down State Street, historic buildings on the corner of the highly trafficked Erie Blvd also appear to have brighter futures. In 2022, the League happily supplied a support letter in favor of historic overlay zoning of the 1918 Masonic Temple — which we were pleased the City approved. And caddy-corner to that, the Wedgeway Building, which had been falling apart for years, is now in the middle of a major rehabilitation.
Vacant and boarded up buildings at 132-140 State St. (also known as Wellington Row) in Albany, 2011.
Along with Schenectady’s State Street, our second Seven to Save list in 2000 also featured Lower State Street in Albany. At the time, the five historic properties at 132-140 State St. were marketed by an out-of-town developer for clearance and new development. As late as 2011, the buildings remained vacant and boarded up.
Thanks to continued advocacy, each of these buildings have been rehabbed, including the largest building in the block — the 11-story former 1927 DeWitt Clinton Hotel, today the home of the Renaissance Albany Hotel. This $51 million rehabilitation was funded, in part, by historic tax credits and received a 2016 Excellence Award from the League.
Photos of the Renaissance Albany Hotel after its rehabilitation.
At the other end of the state in Orleans County, the Albion Business District was a 2002 Seven to Save. This rural Erie Canal village boasted an impressive and intact collection of 19th century commercial buildings. At the time, those buildings were underutilized due, in part, to suburban style commercial development on the outskirts of the village.
Historic American Buildings Survey, C., Boucher, J. E., photographer. (1933) Pratt Opera House, 114-120 North Main Street, Albion, Orleans County, NY. New York Albion Orleans County, 1933. Documentation Compiled After. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress
Today, Albion continues to face similar challenges — many of its historic buildings and commercial storefronts remain vacant. There are, however, several bright spots. Local residents Michael and Judy Bonafede, owners of the Pratt Opera House and the adjacent Day Building (built in 1882), have spent almost 20 years carefully rehabilitating both buildings. In April, the Bonafedes (pictured, right) hosted a concert with a 300-person crowd. Locals believe this was the first event at the Pratt since at least 1930, when the theater closed.
Another Albion resident — and talented craftsman — Chad Fabry recently purchased the former Swan Library and is single-handedly bringing this elegant Greek Revival-turned-Colonial Revival style brick building back to its former glory. He already has a young, local barber established in the ground floor and will soon be welcoming other local businesses into the rest of the building.
When we visited Albion (inset photos), we also toured a former mansion on Main Street that a local couple had converted to an art gallery and studio. The couple purchased the vacant building to save it from further deterioration and kept themselves busy during pandemic isolation by repairing plaster, restoring woodwork, and refinishing floors.
Main Streets are always evolving, just as the populations of their cities do. These examples show clearly how embracing the historic character of Main Streets can be a boon for a community, providing opportunity for reinvention while celebrating the past.