March 1990

About this Issue

Note from the Editors

This issue features classical architecture and the long popularity of the Greek Revival style in New York State. So many beautiful buildings were constructed then, and many still stand in Western New York.

Bill Treichler's article gives an overview. Much of the information for this article came from Roger G. Kennedy's Greek Revival America just published last year by Stewart, Tabori & Chang. This book with its many full-color pictures is as much a social history of the country during the first half of the nineteenth century as it is a study of the men who developed the Greek style in America. Kennedy is Director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.

Another valuable source book used, Talbot Hamlin's Greek Revival Architecture in America, was first published in 1944 and is still available from Dover Publications.

The era in this country from 1800 to 1850, when craftsmen studied the achievements of the ancient builders and adapted their principles, coincided with a period of prosperity and increased individual confidence. Hamlin wrote of the people of the Greek Revival time: "A culture flowering lustily in hundreds of local centers and not yet centralized in the big cities. A culture radical, libertarian, experimental, eagerly searching for American expression . . . Is it strange, in such a culture and such a country, that the Greek Revival flourished and with all its variations produced an architecture alive, native, gracious, and sensitive, and towns that are delightful in their quiet harmony?"

The beautiful Greek Revival Balcom House in Bath, New York, is the subject of the other article based on a composition prepared by Nick Dugo in Bath, about 1960. Richard Sherer, Steuben County Historian, provided this booklet which included several old postcard pictures of the house when the Balcom family lived there.

a proposal for the establishment of a history study center in the Balcom House in Bath. The idea for such a place, to make available for study the books, documents, and valuable private collections that have been given to the County, has been suggested by the present and former county historians. This fine house that has existed through so much of Bath's history is certainly the ideal place for such an institution

Read again, of life on the bluff of Keuka Lake as Shirley McNulty recalls winter and early spring work .

Helen Dumack's lovely tribute to Marie Cornell.

"The Crooked Lake Canal - Part One" another installment from Fran Dumas' series about the Keuka Lake Outlet.

Harpendings Corners, the book by Edwin Harris, continues with the story of Sam Harpending and his wife Hannah Cosad, early settlers where Dundee is now.

Start reading Chapter 28 from Caroline Kirkland's A New Home.

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