Former Farming Equipment Factory in NY Destroyed by Storm July 2024

Whiteside, Barnett and Co. Agricultural Works, Brockport New York

Date added: July 18, 2024 Categories:

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The Whiteside, Barnett & Co. Agricultural Works is the only surviving buildings built and used for the reaper industry, which lent Brockport a nationwide reputation as a center for innovative agricultural equipment between the 1840s and the 1880s. The site of the agricultural works was the business headquarters, including a boatyard, brickyard and packet boat office, of Brockport's namesake, Hiel Brockway. After the destruction by fire in 1848 of Brockway's operations on the site, the existing buildings were constructed between 1850 and 1852 for the Agricultural Works in Brockport, later known as Whiteside, Barnett and Co. After the decline of this business at the site in the 1880s, the property was used as a lumberyard from 1890 to 1904, and as a food processing plant until 1945. Both the farm equipment factory and the canning business were second-tier players in the leading local industries of their respective times, and all of the businesses on the site through 1945 can be assumed to have made use of the Erie Canal frontage to gather raw materials and to distribute their products.

Clinton Street, which runs south of and parallel to the Erie Canal on the west side of Main Street in Brockport, was initially laid out by Hiel Brockway in 1822. Brockway was a key player in the early history of the community, having acquired much of the western portion of the village between 1817 and 1822, before and after the decision that brought the Erie Canal through Brockport. The canal opened from Brockport east in 1823, and Brockway prospered both in land development and in canal commerce, with his own brick and boat yard and packet boat line, the Red Bird Packet Boat Company.

The original buildings on this site, associated with Brockway's canal-front operations, were demolished during or after a major fire in 1848; they housed a brick and boatyard, by then owned by Brockway's son-in-law, Elias B. Holmes. The present stone buildings on the site were in place by the time of an 1852 Village map, and the existing wood section at the east end of the main building appears on an 1862 Village map. By this time, the entire north side of Clinton Street was developed from Main Street to the subject site.

An 1872 plat map of Brockport shows the existing building configuration labeled "Agricultural Works Whiteside, Barnett & Co.", with four small structures and a large vacant area labeled "Underhill Bramen & Co. Lumber, Coal, etc" to the west, between the warehouse and the end of Perry Street. By this time a bridge over the canal had been constructed, joining Perry Street with Smith Street on the north side. An 1880 Bird's Eye View shows the Village in three-dimensional detail; the existing building appears, with a series of eight one- and two-story warehouse buildings on the site formerly identified as the Underhill property. By the time of the next plat map, in 1902, the Underhill warehouses are gone, their site labeled simply "L.T. Underhill", and the former Whiteside Barnett structure is labeled as "Geo. L. Lovejoy Mill."

Deed records from the mid to late nineteenth century identify George B. Whiteside Et al as the property owner at the time the warehouse was built. Whiteside made five purchases of land in the Village of Brockport between 1843 and 1854, including two purchases in 1850 and 1851 of portions of Lot 56, which is the location of the existing main building. In 1886 Whiteside died, and his wife, Susan E. Whiteside, became owner; in 1890 she sold Lot 56 to Lucius T. Underhill, and Lot 57 (to the east) to James M. Barnett. In addition a transfer was made in 1890 from George F. Barnett to James M. Barnett.

Deed records indicate that the "Lovejoy property" was transferred to Monroe Canning in 1905, while the Underhill property was transferred to Monroe Canning in 1904. Monroe Canning continued its food processing and distribution from the site until 1945; presumably during this time the importance of canal access for receiving fresh produce and distributing canned goods gradually diminished as the trucking industry assumed prominence in this area. During this period of time the separate stone structure to the west, currently residential, was used as the scales house. Between 1945 and 1948 the property changed hands four times, with the former Underhill property and the former Lovejoy property assembled into a single parcel and ultimately transferred to Fay LaDue, the father of the current owner, Charles LaDue, who took over ownership in 1976. The use as a service garage dates from 1948, and the name "Fay's Garage and Auto Parts" still appears on a sign on the east facade. During the service garage period, the canal frontage has been largely ignored, and openings facing the canal have been boarded up.

The complex is the last remaining local canal-front industrial building, which was common in Brockport and elsewhere along the Erie Canal during the period when the canal was the key to commerce and prosperity across upstate New York. The brownstone construction material was most likely imported from nearby Medina, and can be seen in two other canal-front sites in Brockport: in a portion of one other Clinton Street building and in the building at 1 Park Avenue, at the east end of Market Street, on the other side of Main Street. Medina stone was widely used along the canal and was shipped by canal boat to various construction sites throughout the state. The unfinished interior, with exposed stone and wood walls and wood floor structures, and the somewhat haphazard arrangement of windows and doors on the Clinton Street as well as the canal facades, has adapted itself readily to the various types of use that have occupied the building over its roughly 150-year life.

Between 1828, when the forge of Backus and Ganson began to operate on South Street, and 1844, Brockport became known for its concentration of blacksmiths and foundries specializing in threshing machines, and for the inventive spirit of its metalworkers. Beginning in 1844, two local forges contracted with Cyrus McCormick to build his patented reaper. Despite McCormick's eventual move to a Chicago manufacturing facility in 1850, Brockport continued as a center for innovation in the development of farm machinery. The firms of Seymour, Morgan and Allen (later D. S. Morgan and Company), located on the canal east of Main Street, and Ganson and Huntley (later Johnston Harvester Company, a precursor of International Harvester), on North Main Street, were the largest of a number of farm equipment manufacturers that flourished in Brockport from the 1840s to the early1880s. Despite the coming of the railroad to Brockport in 1852, the Erie Canal continued to be a major transportation method for heavy goods such as the lumber, coal and iron needed for manufacturing and the reapers, grain drills, and other finished products which were shipped across the Midwest, as well as east to east coast ports and to Europe.

George F. Barnett, a principal in the firm which first occupied the stone warehouse, came to Brockport in 1826 and worked as an architect and builder before joining McCormick Harvesting Company in 1840. After ten years of learning the farm equipment manufacturing business at McCormick and then at Seymour and Morgan, he began his own Agricultural Works in Brockport in 1850, the approximate date of construction for the existing stone buildings. By 1861 he had entered a successful partnership with George B. Whiteside. The 1861 map and an 1864 Directory list the business at 18 Clinton Street as Whiteside, Barnett & Co. An 1880 advertisement in the Monroe County Directory notes the name as Brockport Agricultural Works (established in 1850) and as Whiteside, Barnett & Co., and lists as principal products the Empire Grain Drill, the Ithaca Wheel Rake, and assorted other plows, planters, cultivators, etc. The same year his partner, George Whiteside, died, Mr. Barnett retired from his business in 1886; he died in 1897. The eventual transfer of the property to Monroe Canning in 1904-1905 reflects the overall decline of the farm equipment business as the backbone of Brockport's economy after 1882, when a major fire at the Johnston Harvester plant resulted in the relocation of that major employer to the City of Batavia. While Brockport never regained the industrial prominence that it enjoyed in the heyday of its farm equipment days, it continued to rely on the agricultural prosperity of the region, and the processing of agricultural products became a major industrial focus, with A & P's Quaker Main Canning Co. and Brockport Cold Storage as local leading employers. As it had in the farm equipment days, the building continued to house a second-tier participant in Brockport's major industry.

According to Brockport Mayor Margay Blackman, the building was left on the verge of collapse after the storms that blew through the region on July 15^th 2024.

Historic Brockport building to be demolished after storms July 17^th, 2024

Site Description

The Whiteside, Barnett & Co. Agricultural Works complex is located on a rectangular lot between the north side of Clinton Street and the Erie Barge Canal opposite the north end of Utica Street. The site is part of the canal-front commercial district which occupies the first block west from Brockport's Main Street. This district consists of nineteenth- and twentieth-century commercial buildings on the north side of Clinton Street and mostly nineteenth-century residential buildings on the south side. There are several other buildings on or near the canal in Brockport exhibiting similar stonework; however, this one has been largely unaltered since its construction in the mid-nineteenth century.

The main building consists of three two-story sections, each with a gable roof parallel to the canal; the western two sections have brownstone masonry walls and wood-framed floors, while the eastern section is entirely wood-framed. A smaller building lies to the west of the main building and has one story of similar stone masonry and a second floor encased in a later mansard roof. The building has a largely unfinished and open interior, which has allowed a ready adaptation to its sequence of uses.

The stone masonry of the main building and the secondary building is of random-sized field stone, probably of local origin, with larger cut stone quoins at the corners. The deepest portion is the westernmost section of the main building; this is currently a double-height space on the interior, although joist pockets suggest that it had a second floor at one time. It has four bays of windows with wood lintels across the south (Clinton St.) facade, and a large opening for an overhead door. It has four bays of higher windows at the west facade. Boarded-up openings below the south windows suggest a one-time below-grade level. The masonry walls end short of the roof level, suggesting that the present roof structure is not original.

The central portion of the main building has six bays across the front and rear; one opening at each level has been enlarged to a doorway on the front. Rear (canal-front) doors and windows have been boarded up. Several original twelve-over-twelve double-hung wood sash remain on the first-story front. The interior has heavy wood framing with open wood floors, including the attic level.

The easternmost section of the building has six windows, one pedestrian door and two overhead doors along the south facade, with four widely spaced windows at the second-floor level. The first-story window sash have been replaced, while those on the second floor retain the original six-over-six double-hung sash. The structure is post and beam, with king post trusses oriented north-south supporting the roof. Siding is asbestos shingles on the south and east facades, and vertical boarding on the north facade. A difference in finishes on the north facade suggests that an addition or open shed may at one time have existed north of this section of the building. The first floor consists of a service garage area to the west and an office area to the east; a straight stair leads to the open second floor from within the office area.

The secondary residential building to the west of the main structure is roughly square, with a wide entrance and three bays of windows at the first floor and three dormers at the second floor, south facade. The entrance, large enough for a vehicle, has been filled in with a single pedestrian entrance. The west facade has three bays at the first floor and a dormer of paired windows at the second floor. The second floor is encased by a flared mansard around all four sides of the building, but the eaves and gable roof above this suggest that the mansard and dormers may be a twentieth-century addition. The interior has been converted to residential use.

The buildings are all sited close to the property line at Clinton Street, with a rear yard of varying depth between the building and the canal edge. The deepest (westernmost) part of the main building is approximately fifteen to twenty from the canal edge; the narrower eastern portion of the building is about 50' from the canal. The rear yard is characterized by grass, shrubby trees and piles of scrap metal. The narrowest portion has a dense build-up of trees and shrubs. The area to the west of the buildings is used for parking and yard for the residential unit, and has some larger trees and grassy areas.

The condition of the property is stable through deteriorated. The stone and mortar of the masonry walls is largely intact, though some substantial cracks and bulges have developed on the north facade of the westernmost section. The wood of the windows and lintels is deteriorated due to lack of painting. The roofs, which are of asphalt shingles, appear to have been replaced in the past 30 years.