LeRoy Pennysaver & News

LE ROY PENNYSAVER & NEWS - FEBRUARY 16, 2020 by Lynne Belluscio I looked carefully at the stereo card on Ebay and it looked very familiar, but it was late at night and I didn’t have time to drive into town and check the collection of our stereo cards. So, I put a bid on the card and bought it. When it arrived in the mail a few days later, I pulled out the card that we had in the collection and put them side by side and immediately I was glad I took the chance. Although the two views are very similar, and both are numbered 718, there are significant differences. The new stereo card is on the right and the old one is on the left. Immediately, when you look at the trees, you can see that they were taken at different times of the year. And the photographer took the photos from a slightly different location. Off in the distance, you can see the old iron bridge. And if you look really close, in the photo on the left, you can see a wagon going over the bridge and there are planks or perhaps shutters set out on saw horses. Also in this photo, you can see the bank building and sign on the corner of Bank Street (the old Shelby’s store) and you can see the exterior stairs that went up to the second floor. Main Street at this time was not paved, but the gutters on the sides were paved with cobble stones. This channeled the rain water down to the creek but the road was often muddy and dusty so there were “cross walks” at places on Main Street. One of those crosswalks can be seen in both photos as well as the “bridge” over the cobblestones. It’s hard to tell whether they are wood or stone. The large stone step on the right was placed near the road to allow people to step up into a carriage. The photo on the right, from a different perspective, shows the row of stone posts that lined the stone curb and sidewalk. Some of these stones are still in place in front of LeRoy House. Some of these stones had rings in the top so horses could be tied. It was against the law to tie your horse to a tree since horses would eat the bark and girdle the trees. The sign for the Lampson House Barn is very clear in the new photo on the right. The Lampson House, which doesn’t show in the photo, was the huge three-story building on the north side of Main Street. It was also known as the “Arcade” because it was built with an open hall from front to back with stores and shops along the hallway. It was built in 1873 by William Lampson and was the largest building on Main Street. The upper floors provided meeting rooms and office space and the “finest hotel rooms in town”. The building survived a fire in 1903 and was rebuilt. But a devastating fire in 1945 brought the walls down and it was razed. The site is now where the Town Hall is located and the gym and the buildings in between. Livery barns were very important for people who came to town and needed a place to board their horse for the day. The only surviving livery barn today is the stone building where Bob Stephanie’s sign shop and bottle return is located. That was the livery for the Wiss Hotel on the corner. The Eagle Hotel had a livery barn behind and so did the Presbyterian Church, where the McDonald’s parking lot is now. The Lampson livery shows up on the 1897 map. A short alley between the buildings allowed carriages to pass through to the livery barn. And it is noted on the map that there was also a blacksmith shop attached. A New View of Old Main Street