Fenster writes:
For the upstate NY devotees here.
Wolcott is a small town in upstate New York, on Lake Ontario between Rochester and Syracuse. It is weathered and somewhat beaten down looking but not yet beat. There are some handsome old buildings in the center of town and some rough elegance in the housing stock.
More here.
Blowhard, Esq.
Callowman
Sherbrooke
Eddie Pensier
Enzo Nakamura
Epaminondas
Fabrizio del Wrongo
Fenster
Brundle Guy
Glynn Marshes
Paleo Retiree
Atypical Neurotic
Question Lady
Sax von Stroheim
Sir Barken Hyena
The Mistaken
Uncouth Reflections 
Thanks for the great upstate history. Lots of stuff I didn’t know. Lots of those “upstate” (downstate to us North Country folk) along Lake Ontario and the Erie Canal are charming to walk around, and most of them seem to have their own museum.
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re museums: my wife is from an Erie Canal town near Wolcott. Once home to the world’s largest rose garden, now no more.
http://www.playle.com/listing.php?i=SUNSHINEPCS121194
Not much there nowadays but there is a historical society to remind people of what once was, and a clock museum, too.
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I have a friend–someone who has visited this site–who ribbed me for saying that the Erie Canal-Lake Ontario stretch is “upstate”. In her view upstate means only one thing: the area where you live and thereabouts. Adirondacks, Watertown, Canton, Potdam. That is “up”. I was writing about “Western New York”. Maybe eastern Ohio. I guess you can get Saul Steinbergian from any angle, and believe it if you are there long enough.
I will point out, however, especially if she is listening, the she hails from around Kingston, and what would you expect from someone from New York City. . . .
And BTW. We may have discussed this in the past and maybe you’ve come to it on your own but the best source for all this Puritan/Scots-Irish and related cultural history is Albion’s Seed, a book that covers the four distinct folkways of separate British settlement in the US, and how they are with us still. A good, though longish, summary here.
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New York state has a huge number of small towns that are attractive enough that they potentially could attract investment, which unfortunately means that a lot of them won’t. A friend of mine who lives in Cooperstown, which has benefitted from three rich families investing heavily in it, thinks that, other than Cooperstown, the college towns are most likely to survive and flourish.
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I agree that there is only so much to go around and the there will be winners and, mostly, losers, with the winners having some kind of edge. As Cooperstown does with the location and the baseball thing. Skaneateles is lovely given the housing stock is in good shape, the fact that it was moneyed in the past, and the lake. Geneva, long on potential with the lake, the college and the great architecture was iffy but now seems to have turned a corner with local wineries and the foodie movement.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/Oyu51iEdOBcDf2Eo1
Palmyra is on the edge but one hopes that its natural charms and Mormon tourism will help it climb back.
Wolcott . . . hard to say. I wish it well.
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