GPS- 43.050540, -76.140201
A giant building on the edge of town...a sign that a city is not far off...the Hookway Warehouse!
While it is owned by U-Haul today, it has its own story to tell: one of storage and location, location, location!
This building although plain at first sight, does have decorative brickwork that lets the observer know, there is more underneath its looming façade: a tale of industry, tragedy, and transportation.
The Hookway Warehouse was built along side the canal as a place that goods could be stored until they were loaded onto packet boats, and later railroad cars, to be brought to market.
"Hookways Store House built 1895 for a whopping 30K had a sprinkler system so one of the few buildings that never burned down. More than the name sounds, Hookways served as a distributor to store and ship products to final destination for many manufacturers from furniture to new autos and wagon axels (that I've seen in advertisements). It had a 725 Water St address at time of the canal and many companies used that address as their own business address."- Bob Walker
Storage was necessary as a staging area to get goods to market. Hookways, and other storage warehouses, located on the banks of the Erie Canal helped commerce by holding goods until they were needed to reach markets, the distribution centers of their times.
About the original owner of Hookways who died in a tragic boating accident of his own on Indian Lake in the Adirondacks: Willard E Hookway
...and then it was run by his cousin, Willard H Hookway
Both are buried about a mile south of here in Oakwood Cemetery.
But why choose this spot? Location, Location, Location!...even the street names tell a story back to before the city's founding. Joshua Forman knew this area transected by the Genesee Turnpike had great potential.
In 1810, the Genesee Turnpike went through the crossroads that would later become the Village of Syracuse, but for now, it was Bogardus Corners with not much there but a mill and a few business...but it did mean that the stage coach did pass through it, but it did take the high road whenever possible to avoid the swamplands.
c1810 by James Geddes
Then enter canal: Stage East to West.... it gave Syracuse access to both overland AND water access to ports and places west. Men like Joshua Forman, one of the villages founding fathers, saw the commercial value that would make Syracuse an industrial hub. Goods could get to market and markets could get to the goods! A win-win in 1825...and by 1834 when this map was drawn, plans were in the works to expand Clinton's Ditch and make it an even wider and deeper channel so that larger boats could carry more goods.
Then enter the Railroads! Not long after the completion of the Erie Canal,
the train came to town.
Even more businesses were set up in this hub of trade...map c. 1852
Eventually, all three of these routes would be within a short distance of each other.
Each getting people and goods to where they needed to go...map c 1874
Business grew up all around the canal east of Almond St...
here we can see it labeled in this c 1905 pic
To the left of the building is the canal. You can see a boat in the canal!
However, the stage coach days are long gone. People prefer trains. They travel faster than a canal boat and are much more comfortable than a stage coach could ever be!
Eventually the canal would be filled in and in its place, a road would be put in...and the trains would be elevated in the city, yet still be within close proximity to Hookway Warehouse.
The New York Central Station across the street on Erie Blvd
Once the train was elevated in the 1930s,
the only place there were at-level tracks was Continental Can.
A ghost of yesteryear still above the door
But as time marched on, the train through the city was replaced with something new: the automobile! And so once again, the land change usage and became 690. So today...on what was once a stage coach route, everything from bicycles to buses to cars carry people were they need to go. On what was once the canal, cars, buses, and semis take people and goods to where they need to go. And like the trains, people fly by downtown at a faster clip on 690 getting from one place to another.
And so as we get closer to the city center, we off-load goods along the canal. Trade and commerce stand still for no man...nor for any mule either! And so we press on toward our next stop....as phantoms from other years still grace the walls of the building behind us...because its always good to look back and figure out how we got here... 🙂
WNDR, a radio station, can be still seen in the faded paint
on the Hookway Warehouse...a sign from times-past
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