Berkshire Village Historic District

Berkshire Village Historic District is a compact group of seventeen properties clustered around the main crossroads of the hamlet of Berkshire, in Tioga County, New York. It includes thirteen historic houses, a church, a community hall and ten outbuildings, mostly frame buildings with clapboard siding. They date from about 1820 to 1932 and show vernacular versions of Federal, Greek Revival, Italianate, Victorian Gothic and Queen Anne styles. The hamlet grew from early mills and shops along Owego Creek and Main Street into a commercial and market center for surrounding farms, helped by the arrival of the Southern Central Railroad in 1869. Its Methodist church, completed in 1889 to designs by Elmira architects Pierce and Dockstader, reflects the prosperity of that period. A modern fire station replaced an 1888 school, but the library and churches remain in historic buildings. The district is considered the only surviving part of the hamlet that keeps its nineteenth-century character and remains a center of community activity.