Here’s a good workout for your imagination. Stand at the corner of Main Street and Ford Avenue where the Wilber National Bank is today, and take a guess as to what this area might have looked like in the mid-19th century. The view might surprise you.

The Oneonta Herald of Sept. 25, 1927, issued somewhat of a similar challenge to one’s memory of that area along Main Street, as excavations were being made for D.F. Keyes’ new building, as it was planned to move the J.C. Penney store to this site. We know it today as Resnick’s mattress store, across from city hall. Penney’s relocated to the Southside Mall in the early 1980s.

The Herald article posed this opening question: "How many of Oneonta’s younger generation can imagine Main Street with a ravine in it at the present location of the post office (today’s city hall) deep enough to completely hide a stage coach from a person standing in front of the department store (the former Bresee’s)? Such was the condition of the street in 1860 before the filling operations of the village and city of Oneonta were started."

Standing on that corner near the bank before 1860, you were on the property of Eliakim R. Ford, who had a large stone mansion. The Ford homestead was built in 1840, and stood close to the present alley on the western side of the bank.

The front yard of the homestead covered the rest of the present bank buildings and was unbroken across today’s Ford Avenue and well into the area now occupied by brick buildings across from city hall.

Between 1840 and 1850, a marshy spot where the excavations were being made for Penney’s was dug deeper and made into a pond fed by several springs in the area.

The pond was stocked with trout. It was lined with willow and elm trees.

A spring large enough to run a water wheel to pump water to the Ford house operated under today’s sidewalk on the east side of Ford Avenue, where the 1927 excavations were being made.

The pond was an attractive sight in the summer and it became a recreational area in the winter months. Children skated on the frozen pond. The ravine was also a site for youngsters to "coast," or what we now call sledding.

One edge of the dip was near the present St. James’ Episcopal Church, with the bottom of the slope being at today’s city hall, and the other edge of the dip at the former Ford stone mansion.

During the Civil War, the only news from the front came along with a stagecoach, which arrived from the east along the Charlotte Turnpike at about 7 p.m. each day. People used to gather in front of the post office, which was then found in a stone building on the site of the former Bresee’s Department Store, to hear news as well as get their mail.

That is how the observation of the stagecoach temporarily disappearing into the ravine was made in The Herald.

Slowly the ravine was filled in to a height just above the pond. One year Silver Creek, which had a slightly different course than today, went on a rampage and overflowed, down today’s Ford Avenue, into the pond.

When waters receded, gravel, stones and other debris nearly filled the pond in. James Stewart, who then owned the land, filled it in and graded the area to the present level of the street.

Ford Avenue was laid out in 1869. It was originally known as Hazel Street, but the name was later changed.

David Forrest Wilber built a home next to Ford’s mansion in 1883, which stood until 1922, when it was torn down to make way for the former Palace Theater.

Ford’s mansion was razed in 1928. The entire area is now occupied by Wilber National Bank, completed in 1967 after the Palace was torn down a year earlier.

On the site of today’s city hall, Harvey Barnes ran a cooper shop for many years. Then a sawmill was operated by Barnes and Wright.

Later, the firm of Briggs and Miller used the structure in connection with their building operations. Nathan Briggs, who was a partner of the firm, was the father of Roscoe Briggs, who went on to form the well-known Briggs Lumber Co., which lasted late into the 20th century.

When construction began in 1913 for a post office on that site, the old buildings were torn down.

The new building, opened in 1915, served as a post office until 1968. It was dedicated as the new city hall in the late autumn of 1980.

On Monday: Oneonta had three mayors during 1942.

City Historian Mark Simonson’s column appears twice weekly. On Saturdays, his column focuses on the area during the Depression and before. His Monday columns address local history after the Depression. If you have feedback or ideas about the column, write to him at The Daily Star, or e-mail him at simmark@stny.rr.com.

His website is

www.oneontahistorian.com.