Introduction – Decline…and Revival…in Upstate New YorkThe Past Is Future
Case Study – Quality of Life in Hamlets, Villages, Towns and CitiesCase Study – The New Agriculture: Fields of Silicon

People gather into communities for a multitude of reasons, cultural, trade, defense, geography. In his 2020 book Metropolis, Ben Wilson recounted the many ways, over millennia, that this gathering phenomenon has occurred, documenting the rise and fall of cities and civilizations. New York, the city, New York, the state, Upstate, the region – all are recent manifestations of this collecting of souls into an interactive political entity, by any name and of any size.

In Upstate, agriculture, transportation and commerce were the initial drivers to form communities two and a half centuries ago. The clusters of people – members of a community – formed a hamlet, the hamlet became a village, the village grew into a town and then the town to a city. Cities needed to trade. Transport evolved, taking advantage initially of geography and topography. Paths and roads took the least resistant geographic routes. Rivers and then canals were built to connect the rivers and enhance this network, creating an ever more efficient transportation mesh within the state.

Economic cycles, initially kind to Upstate, allowed it to boast of being The Empire State. Over time and with economic reversals, prospects dimmed for agriculture and commerce, along its lines of transportation, the canals, rivers, railroads and highways, as other parts of the nation stepped forward, assuming greater importance. The innovation and uniqueness of Upstate were threatened, through no fault of its own. The world had moved on and away.

As Wilson lamented, though, of the decline in Utica in the 1960s:

I had stopped in Utica to go to Planter’s.  I wanted to get some Beluga caviar, which used to last me three or four days in Talcottville when I made it into luncheon sandwiches.  I was appalled to find that Planter’s had gone out of business.  The liquor store next door was still open, and the old proprietor was there.  He said that he couldn’t keep the business up.  The neighborhood was run down, and there was no longer much demand for such delicacies.  He said that I shouldn’t be able to find any Beluga caviar in Utica.  This is typical of the decline of the well-to-do classes who were able to afford such luxuries.

Upstate / Wilson / pp 280-281

It was clear that decay was being replaced, slowly initially but now with greater momentum.  A hollowed-out core in Utica, a sea of parking lots by the Mohawk River and the Canal, by the long-abandoned warehouses, was being transformed into a new dynamic core.

Just past empty parking lots in the recovering warehouse district rose a gleaming multi-story medical complex, then in its final stages of construction, about to provide 373 beds of the latest and highest-grade medical care and technology for the region.

This would in fact be the most advanced medical care available between Albany and Syracuse, rivaling both in its modernity.  With of course its own helipad, heated as was its dedicated walkway access to the hospital, for those winters still bringing snow to the city.  Even that was changing.

Facing all of this boldly were two major sports venues, the auditorium-turned-convention center for professional sports and the other, a newer sports arena, part of Utica University, designed for amateur sports events, the two joined-at-the-hip as it were for larger sports events.

Housing stock, well-constructed a century back, was in many areas in decay.  Nonetheless, those properties with “good bones” were worthy of reconstruction, especially given relatively low acquisition costs, current costs of new building material, lower quality of that material available today and overall housing needs.

A simple drive around the neighborhoods close in to the center of Utica provided justification for this renewal.  In the area around the Munson Museum, a nationally recognized art collection housed in the International Style structure that Philip Johnson designed in 1958 and was completed in 1960, there was an impressive cluster of Italianate houses and other homes of architectural distinction.  All had been retrieved from decay and destruction, now restored to their original grandeur, as residences.  Just blocks away stood an 1898 architectural masterpiece of apartment living, Olbiston Flats, originally built in a Romanesque Revival style but allowed to decay to ‘condemned’ status.  Retrieved, reconfigured and restored, it almost doubled the number of units through clever architecting, rental units now in 7 glorious floors, on the main drag barely out of downtown.  A stunning structure on the National Register of Historic Places and deservedly so.

Immigration had brought industrious new citizens to formerly depressed areas, well beyond the traditional landing places in the five boroughs.  Roughly one in five residents in the state overall are immigrants, double the national average, with an employment rate that far exceeds their representation in the population.  Upstate has been particularly welcoming to them.  They have out-performed the native-born in starting new businesses, as statistics continue to show.

Utica’s population had declined in the early 2000s and 2010s by 50% - before resettlement.  The infusion of well over 15,000 immigrants stabilized and then reversed what seemed like inevitable losses and declines in the city, to the point now that 20% of the population is foreign-born, the economy has stabilized and there are definitive signs of growth.

Utica, for instance, has seen Bosnian, Vietnamese, Burmese and former Soviet Union populations appear and grow, with a broad smattering of many other nationalities, to produce a polyglot of over 40 languages heard in the local schools.

Amidst immigration is tradition.  Northville, nestled into the foothills of the Adirondacks, even earned the nickname in the late 1800s of the “Coney Island of the North,” a reputation that persisted until the Depression.  Then Northville ground to a halt economically.  But its mercantile center, the 5 & 10, survived and has persisted.  In the middle of the village, near the principal stop light, is this we-sell-everything-you-need two-story retail operation.  It is very much alive, as it was a century ago, serving campers, fisherman, hunters, local residents, virtually everyone, a true department store of old.  It features, well, sort of everything, the widest array of goods for diverse needs.  Including candy.  Penny candy for 5 cents.  Not a bad deal these days.

As they prospered, as the inhabitants in those cities set down roots and accumulated wealth, architecture flourished to accommodate the citizenry and the cities grew.  Styles emerged that were iconic for an area, sometimes reflecting the surrounding nature and need for protection, other times simply an esthetic that was appealing and therefore popular and prevalent in that area.

One distinctive design in Upstate was something designated as the Hudson River Bracketed style, a stand-out on the landscape, with wide, overhanging eaves held up by elaborate brackets.  While emanating originally from the river towns with some resemblance to Italianate, an imposing style seen heading north from New York City, and sometimes encompassing features of Gothic Revival as well, these distinctive bracketed homes are scattered throughout Upstate.