Clayton Historic District

Clayton's main commercial blocks, along Riverside Drive and the north end of James Street on the St. Lawrence River, form a district of thirty-one contributing buildings dating from 1854 to the 1920s. Most are two- and three-story attached rows with ground-floor shops and upper-floor residences or storage. Italianate brick and wood buildings predominate, joined by three Richardsonian Romanesque stone-faced buildings and some early twentieth century concrete block and wood structures. The earliest survivor is the 1854 Barker Building, which keeps two cast-iron storefronts and set the scale for its neighbors. The streetscape took shape through commercial growth tied to shipping, lumbering, farming and Thousand Islands tourism, and through rebuilding after fires in 1853, 1856, 1887 and 1895. Although many storefronts have been altered, pressed-metal cornices and window crowns above them remain. Little new construction since the 1920s has left a cohesive main street of a kind rarely preserved in the region. A c.1932 gas station is the only non-contributing building.