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Hi, I'm a Cornell student, and on my way home from Ithaca a week ago I drove through the lovely town of Owego. I've never seen anything like it before. It has a huge urban looking downtown despite having a population of only 3000.
Would sombody who knows a little bit about this place be kind enough to share some of the towns past and present? How did such a small but urban community develop? What is the towns reputation?
Also, does anybody know of any towns that have a similar to Owego in this sense?
That's funny you should mention Owego. I'm from Buffalo but live in NYC but I've always made a point of stopping in Owego only to take a look at the Carpenter Gothic. It is an interesting looking town.
It was the "Coolest" small town in America in 2009. I believe that while the village has just under 4000 people, the town of Owego has around 20,000 people(Inc. Village of Owego).
As for urban like villages, Baldwinsville, Carthage/West Carthage, Waterloo, Newark, Fayetteville, Cazenovia, Skaneateles, Bath, Johnson City, Endicott, Solvay, East Aurora, Kenmore and Clinton, among others. Some are very blue collar and some are relative busy, but have some dense infrastructure to make them seem bigger than they are. A few I mentioned are relatively upscale too. You can find quite a few villages in Upstate similar to Owego.
As for urban like villages, Baldwinsville, Carthage/West Carthage, Waterloo, Newark, Fayetteville, Cazenovia, Skaneateles, Bath, Johnson City, Endicott, Solvay, East Aurora, Kenmore and Clinton, among others. Some are very blue collar and some are relative busy, but have some dense infrastructure to make them seem bigger than they are. A few I mentioned are relatively upscale too. You can find quite a few villages in Upstate similar to Owego.
Wow, great thanks. Do any of them seem to come out of nowhere the way Owego does?
Wow, great thanks. Do any of them seem to come out of nowhere the way Owego does?
I'd say that Lowville, Carthage/West Carthage and Bath, because they are pretty much on their own, in a sense. I actually was talking to a lady from Lowville that told me how her grandmother walked everywhere to do things in the village. They even have a small hospital, which is something I believe that Owego doesn't have. Same with Carthage.
Most of the other villages have enough separation from a city, some are close to other villages too. I guess villages like Clinton, Hamilton and Brockport could fit too.
Speaking generally, America has some 3,000 county seat or "shire" towns, where the lawyers congregate for each 500-1,000 square mile area. Many are or were also agricultural market towns. Shops would congregate there until the mid-1950's when most relocated to the outskirts for more free parking. So there used to be 3,000 Owegos in this country. Then for 20+ years it was fashionable to tear down the old Victorian piles to make room for parking, or maybe they got flooded, taken out by a tornado, highway construction, or whatever. Maybe that happened to 90% of the old shire or market towns so now that makes Owego exceptional.
A fair bit of the population of the Town of Owego is out the east side as that was a popular place for IBM-ers to build on a little bit of land back in the 1960's when IBM-Endicott was going great guns.
Wellsboro PA, like Owego the shire town for Tioga County, is a small town with a relatively "big" downtown, probably has more going on actually than Owego for similar size population due to its relative isolation (it's a pretty quick drive out to the Vestal Parkway from Owego). The frack trucks have been detracting from its cute, genuinely gas-lit character (although one admits the gas has to come from somewhere ).
Seneca Falls might seem to "come from nowhere" too depending on your direction of approach - let's say, taking NY 89 north from Ithaca, left on Bayard St/CR 16 and turn right across the bridge. SF's history was as more of a market or mill town, nearby Waterloo is actually the shire town.
Often in NY State there's negative value to being the shire town when the Department of Social Services location effect overwhelms the lawyers and surveyors. Then to remain a viable downtown you need (like Cortland) a college with another pedestrian element. In Owego by accident or design the DSS happens to be on the outskirts in the old county home complex so you have a segregation of cute and welfare.
We used to have an active poster from the area, wonder what will happen to this thread if and when that person chimes in.
Wow - hard for me to think of any of these areas as urban ... although some are pretty nice
I think I see the general thought though - the older style "urban" downtown core with the old style rows?
Unfortunately, there isn't much to the main strip in Bath - the elementary school building is empty, then you have a pair of churchs, the police dept, some fire svcs, the post office, a drug store, gas station, a couple places to eat and a string of bars ......... wasn't too long ago where you could buy clothes, there was a news stand, doctors office, etc .... going even further back that is where the movie theater was, etc ..... then at the end of the street you have the park and the county office buildings/courts
Bath also has a bandaid station (it's where I was born! - although technically I think it's Urbana)
They are the county seat for Steuben County and had a good presence with the river and railyards .... Erie Canal and rail consolidation - along with the developing interstate systems slowed growth down in the area over time ..... there was a strong presence of agriculture, lumber, etc ... they have the longest continuing county fair in the states (since 1819) and at one point it was a fairly important town
If you like that one time big town building that still is there now, I would definitely check out Wellsboro PA ..... Penn Yan, NY is another good spot ..... Angelica, NY is another really small town that has a decent core .... really, there are so many town like this in NY & PA that i've never really thought twice about it
as does mount morris (a town that I like - especially as a gateway to letchworth state park)
so many towns have that style I really never thought of it .... even a town like Addison does
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