Court Street Historic District

Court Street in Plattsburgh, New York, is lined by a four-block residential district of fifty-four buildings, stretching from Oak Street on the east to Beekman Street on the west. Most are large frame houses from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with Queen Anne and Colonial Revival details and a shared scale, massing and setback. A number of earlier houses show Greek Revival, Italianate and Eclectic influences, including a stone Greek Revival house at 70 Court Street and a richly decorated Eclectic residence at 15 Pleasant Street. The district was listed because it records the prosperity of Plattsburgh, which grew as the commercial and legal center of northern New York and the Champlain Valley after the War of 1812. Merchants, bankers and professional men built stylish homes here from 1850 into the early twentieth century. Bracketed cornices, porte-cochères, towers and classical porticos give variety to the street, and the district is described as the city's best preserved concentration of buildings from this era.