Three Small Towns

Me in Cooperstown, NY.

In central state New York is a picturesque small town by the name of Cooperstown.  The hamlet sits along side the beautiful Otsego Lake and has retained its early 20th Century quaintness.  To say it was untouched by time would be a stretch, but it sure seems that way.  Some locals might complain that there is nothing to do––that the sidewalks are rolled up at night.  But, as I was in town for work to see a production of The Music Man at the Glimmerglass Opera, I was charmed by the park-like town that looked like it could have been the movie set for The Music Man.

The Main Street does not really function like it must have even thirty years ago, as the businesses have focused on a tourist trade.  The town is famous for its Baseball Hall of Fame ball park and museum.  To that end, the old movie theater has been gutted and houses a baseball memorabilia shop.  Once upon a time it was the Smalley’s Theatre.  Later is was renamed Cooperstown Theater, but everyone still called it Smalley’s.  The combination of emerging video stores and a new cineplex in nearby Oneonta killed it in 1987, though from the outside it still looks like a good old Main Street single screen theater with its operating marquee and 1940s cinema detailing.

The National Baseball Hall of Fame is a beautiful exhibit housed in one of the biggest buildings on Main Street, having opened in 1939 as a way to draw attention to the small town––a plan that worked.  However, there is more to the place than baseball and a cute Main Street.  The town also has the recreational asset of the Otesego lake.  Close to Main Street and right on the lake is the majestic Otesego Resort Hotel, built in 1909 in a colonial style that would sit well in Old Town Philadelphia.  The hotel has large and beautiful public interior spaces: lounge areas, libraries, restaurant and expansive lobby all with fireplaces.  The lakeside grounds include a large expansive deck full of seating, pool area and paths surrounded by green lawns and a view of a golf course all right on the lake.

Down the road along the lake is the great Glimmer Glass Opera, a modern theater building in the look of a large mill.  The spacious grounds have barns, pond and shaded picnic grounds.  The sides of the theater are screened and completely open to the fresh air.  For matinee shows, automated panels close off the open views to create a dark environment for the theatrical lighting to be effective, but on summer nights the walls are left open for a delightful cross breeze.  The summer opera season mixes classic opera titles with more rarely produced operas and a Broadway musical here and there.  The environment created for going to the opera is so special, so beautiful, so well produced that opera fan or not, the experience is a total delight and is alone a reason to make a trip to Cooperstown.

Another gorgeous building belongs to the Fenimore Art Museum, filled with Indian and other folk art exhibits celebrating New York history.  This museum rivals the best museums in America.  The building was formerly a kind of manor house owned by Stephen Carlton Clark, who was dedicated to the preservation of New York history and supported the New York Historical Society’s mission.  In 1944 he donated his mansion in Cooperstown for use as a museum for the Historical Society’s collection.  The impressive neo-Georgian structure was built in the 1930s on the site of James Fenimore Cooper's early 19th century farmhouse.  Connected to this organization is also a Farmer’s Museum, which is a kind of hands on living history museum about 19th Century farming.  This farm was also a Fenimore family property and later changed hands to the prominent Clark family.  The current stone structures date back to 1918 and are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.  In 1944 the facility was opened as a museum dedicated to the history of farming.

The serenity of the lake, rolling hills, post card perfect views and the variety of activities from golf to opera to art to water recreation, make Cooperstown unusually delightful.  It is a long drive on winding back roads off the highway, driving past one dead small town after another, before you come to the colorful and vibrant Cooperstown.  It seems like it is the middle of nowhere and in a way it is, for it is far enough away from the turbulence of modern society to really enable a fellow to release and relax.  One can take in the sweet air of nature and take refuge in the beauty of simplicity.

Main Street, Catskill, NY.

On my way to a wedding at the Apple Barn Farm in Germantown, NY, my friend Brett and I drove through a small town called Catskill.  This area is the famed “Catskills” where once upon a time the city folk got out of town in the summer to enjoy the mountain resorts that popped up during the early part of the 20th Century.  At these resorts some of the great American entertainers, writers, directors and choreographers learned their craft by creating entertainments for all the people vacationing in the Catskills during the summer.  What amazed me as we drove down the main street of Catskill was that the place was so well kept and the shops seemed to be filled with useful businesses of the kind that started to die out of most of America’s Main Streets in the 1970s.

The Main Street of Catskill is made up of Turn-of-the-Century buildings housing restaurants, hotels, hardware, furniture stores, cleaners, grocery, pharmacy, stationary, book shop, a pretty little church with a steeple and a functioning movie theater.  No, not repurposed, but actually functioning and showing first run movies.  The theatre has the mundane name of Community Theater, but the name couldn’t be more appropriate for it literally belongs to the community.  The theater was formerly called Nelida Theater, presenting vaudeville and local events until it burned down in 1977.  The community bought shares in a new theater built in 1920 and so it was named the Community Theatre––a 1200 seat combination vaudeville and movie theater.  In the 1970s the balcony was converted into a second screen and today the theater is beautifully maintained with all modern projection and sound equipment.  The 1860 chandelier from France still hangs over the staircase to the balcony.

Catskill was known as one of the great crossroad towns of New York because it is where everyone stopped, usually to enjoy the Bull and Head Tavern in the 1880s before traveling on to Albany or Montreal.  Because of this, the place had an unusual number of hotels for such a small town.  Through all these years, Catskill has maintained it’s early 20th Century charm.  With no suburb growth of big box stores to deplete the business, this particular Main Street has maintained its original usefulness to serve the needs of its residents.

Postcard perfect Hudson, NY.

Just a little further up the Hudson River is a bigger small town with an amazing number of streets adorned with historical buildings known simply as Hudson.  This is a place where they still have a parade for Flag Day and it is groomed in a way that would make Disneyland proud.  Here, the old movie houses have died and been repurposed, though new avenues of entertainment have emerged.  However, the majority of the town might as well be the set of Bedford Falls from It’s a Wonderful Life.  Every corner, every street, every building is post card perfect and there are dozens of useful businesses lining the streets.  Trains even pull into the local train station, just as they have since the 19th Century when the tracks were first laid down.  New York and the eastern region has retained its train culture, so unlike the rest of the U.S., it is still possible to take passenger trains into small towns, but how can you argue with the serene pleasure of comfortably traveling up the Hudson River by train––it’s woods and nature and river all the way and then you step off the train into The Music Man.  Everything changes for better or worse and you can’t say that these small towns of the Empire State haven’t changed, but they have retained a good portion of their original charm and it is possible, while still checking your email on your smart phone, to retreat to a simpler time where the shop keepers give you a friendly hello and take pride in participating in the vibrancy and traditions of their little towns.