Erie beat a path to the shops and stores in West Park Place to buy clothes, groceries, hardware, imported foodstuffs, silverware, paintings, books, real estate, insurance; and to seek the services of lawyers (the 1879 City Directory listed 15 attorneys on North Park Row), doctors, engineers, and dentists. People went there to bank, to buy tickets on the Erie and Pittsburgh Railroad, and possibly to school at Erie Commercial College; but above all, they went to be entertained.

In 1871 the American Block was built, with its Union Hall at 9 East Main Street, billed as “the best public hall aside from the Opera House at Dunkirk.” It was a lavishly frescoed room with seating for 1,000, although the main entrance had to be altered in 1872 to eliminate drafts. The competition that Union Hall offered was too much, and at that point, the Concert Hall in the Center Block, in effect, went out of business and was sold to be remodeled as a Masonic lodge.

The Wieting Opera House was a performance hall in Syracuse, New York, that hosted operas, films, and other performances from 1852 to 1930. Initially built by John Wieting in 1852 as Wieting Hall, the building burnt down in 1856. He rebuilt it that year, and in 1870 renovated the hall into an opera house.

The Building and the Site. The Academy of Music could seat about 1400 persons on the second floor of the building it occupied; stores filled the ground floor. It stood on North Street just north of Genesee Street, abutting the Owasco River. That placed it about 200 feet north of the Orestes Brownson newspaper office location, today’s Phoenix Building.

In March 1855 a fire took out several buildings on the north side of Seneca Street, starting at the corner of Maiden Lane. John S. King proceeded to erect a block of buildings with a public hall on the second floor. Such halls were recognizable by the taller windows and can still be found in towns in this area. The village took advantage of the fire and new construction to widen Maiden Lane by fifteen feet to its current width. In honor of Jenny Lind, the street and new hall were both named Linden.

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Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) spoke before a “large assemblage at Barber Hall” in Homer on Saturday, 2 December. Clemens spent Sunday, 3 December, in Homer and then took the train to Geneva, New York, the following day. According to the Reverend James P. Foster, who attended the lecture, it was “unexceptionably delightful; the stories were told in a masterly manner, and were chaste and delightful; the envelope of pure humor often covering a touching moral”. Barber Hall, was built by Jedidiah Barber, the first permanent merchant to locate in the village of Homer.

The Building and Site. The boxy, mixed-use building stood just north of the Market House, the surviving structure known today as Old City Hall. It was built at an unknown date by Oswego businessman and developer Sylvester Doolittle (1800–1881), who erected a number of commercial structures in the Lake Ontario port city. The building was a nondescript wharfside affair.

Tweddle Hall was the pre-eminent concert venue in Albany on the corner of State St. and North Pearl St. for decades (a Citizen’s Bank is there today). It was mostly destroyed by fire in 1883, and then re-built as the Tweddle Building several years later, housing office and stores. (By now there were other concert venues.) The Tweddle Building was demolished circa 1912 to accomodate the expansion of the Ten Eyck Hotel, which was demolished circa 1970 for the bank,

Friends of Albany History

The Courthouse (1861). The first courthouse was built in 1765 by the colonial government in Centre Square (Third & Northhampton) and torn down in 1861. The present courthouse is several blocks north (SiC) from the town center atop one of Easton's many hills and the front faces Walnut Street. The oldest part is the center section with portico and tower, built in 1861 in the Classical Revival style.

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