Thank You NYSCA!
We are excited to announce a $25,000 grant award from the New York State Council on the Arts. This grant supports operations in FY2026. Thank you, NYSCA!
A successful 7th Annual Garden & Historic Building Tour!
Our 2025 Tour featured eight all-new sites in Canandaigua, showcasing five private gardens and three historic buildings – the West Lake School House, Woodlawn Cemetery Chapel, and Finger Lakes Visitors Connection. The gardens illustrated landscaping with succulents, native plants, edibles, as well as rewilding. We introduced “Garden Month” this year by offering unique programming throughout […]
The Weight of Judgement: The History of Capital Punishment in Ontario County, NY
To listen to this blogpost, click here! You will find additional photos and visuals. If I asked you to name which states in the U.S. have the highest number of executions, which states come to mind? Are the first ones you think of Texas and Oklahoma, two states that have been the most active in […]
People of Ontario County: Erma B. Hewitt
Excerpted from Wilma Townsend’s Sept. 2011, “What’s in the Collection” article. While researching some of the artifacts in the current exhibit “So Where’s All the Old Stuff?”, we ran across some very interesting people. One of these is Erma B. Hewitt, a fine jewelry designer who grew up in West Bloomfield and taught at […]
Segregated Schools in Canandaigua
Excerpt from Preston E Pierce’s A Tour Guide to Black History Sites in Canandaigua, NY. A mark of the turmoil brought by increasing debates about abolition, anti-abolition, and racism in Northern states in the 1840s-50s was the drive to allow the rise of political “nativism” and the establishment of the American, or “Know-Nothing” party. Supporters […]
Bijou Dream Theatre
The Bijou Dream Theatre was located on the corner of S. Main St. and Chapin St. in Canandaigua. The theater originally opened in 1907 as an early silent film house, and one of the first motion picture theaters in Canandaigua, but eventually closed in 1940. The name “Bijou Dream Theatre” was a popular name for […]
African Methodist Meeting Places in Canandaigua
Excerpt from Preston E Pierce’s A Tour Guide to Black History Sites in Canandaigua, NY. Five times in the 19th Century, African Methodists tried to sustain congregations in Canandaigua. In 1832, they were meeting on Chapel Street, probably in the Methodist Chapel there. One congregation met here, for a while, in the former Saladin monument […]
“1st of August” Emancipation Day Celebrations
Excerpt from Preston E Pierce’s A Tour Guide to Black History Sites in Canandaigua, NY. Some years, “1st of August” Emancipation Day celebrations were hosted by Black residents of the Canandaigua area. They included picnics with baseball and other games held on the county fairgrounds, at the end of Fort Hill Avenue and at earlier […]
Dudley Tavern
Excerpt from Preston E Pierce’s A Tour Guide to Black History Sites in Canandaigua, NY. The Dudley Tavern, once located on the corner of Foster and South Main Streets in Canandaigua, burned in 1911. At that time, it was located well out of the business district on South Main Street. The area between Saltonstall Street […]
People of Ontario County: Richard Valentine
Excerpt from Preston E Pierce’s A Tour Guide to Black History Sites in Canandaigua, NY. Known for many years as a voice of conscience, Richard Valentine frequently made the Canandaigua community uncomfortable with his lectures on the subject of prejudice. Formerly enslaved, he was almost certainly a local conductor on the Underground Railroad. Valentine was […]