BACK BEFORE HIGHWAYS DESTROYED AMERICA:

On Route 20, Where the Past Is Present (TRACIE ROZHON, 8/12/06, NY Times)

AMID high grass, sky-blue chicory and hollyhocks the color of strawberry syrup, the old house was easy to miss, a blur of tobacco-hued walls along a once-prosperous highway in upstate New York.

Perhaps it was the house’s columns that caused me to make a U-turn, or maybe it was the strange texture that, seen at highway speed, resembled stacks and stacks of brown eggs with — wait — was that an inscription carved in the lintel above the door? Was that a “for sale” sign stuck in the lawn? Would this rare cobblestone house, so close to the road in Geneva, N.Y., be torn down for some surefire development designed to bring back the crowds?

Architectural history — and some of its mysteries — was unfolding on my road trip west along Route 20 and then 20A, its interesting southern loop, from Albany to East Aurora: from 18th-century mansions to 19th-century storefronts, from tourist cabins built in the Great Depression to drive-ins visited in doo-wop days.

When the New York State Thruway was built in the 1950’s, to the north of the old highway and roughly parallel, progress along Route 20 skidded to a halt. To historians, the road is like a highway set in aspic, with vignettes of architecture, some of which may not be around next year.

We'd take it to and from Colgate and as we drove by the Fountain View Hotel in Richfield Springs would ask: What came first, the fountain or the Fountain View? To drunk college kids that seemed like a near zen koan until Wingnut answered: "Route 20."

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 12, 2006 12:29 AM