Fort Plain Historic District (Additional Documentation)

Fort Plain is a canal-era village on the Mohawk River in Montgomery County, New York, and this district takes in most of the part of it built up by about 1920. Its street plan was laid out in anticipation of the Erie Canal, set over older, long riverfront farm lots. Canal Street keeps a nearly continuous row of three-story warehouses and storefronts, while Main Street and Otsquago Creek hold the remains of water-powered mills such as the 1860 Red Mill. Steam-powered factories stand along Willett Street. Churches from the 1870s to about 1900, an 1870s Italianate village hall and a 1915 Beaux-Arts high school add civic character. Houses range from the 1786 Isaac Paris house to Queen Anne mansions on Prospect Street, showing the social range of a prosperous canal town. Local limestone foundations unify many buildings. Streetscapes still resemble their late nineteenth-century appearance, with few losses beyond the filled-in canal.