Lima Village Historic District

Lima's historic core centers on Four Corners, where East Main Street meets Rochester Street in Livingston County. The district covers about eight acres and 21 properties, including attached brick commercial blocks, a brick Presbyterian church, a former library and jail, and seven frame houses on large landscaped lots. Fires in 1858 and 1865 prompted rebuilding, and the American Hotel was reconstructed in 1861-62 as a three-story Greek Revival building, a late example of that style. The nomination suggests that the conservatism of the local seminary slowed the arrival of Italianate design, so Lima's architecture lagged behind comparable villages. Stores on the south side of East Main Street form the earliest surviving intact commercial group in the village. The church, completed around 1873, combines Romanesque Revival arches with Italianate and Queen Anne details. Nearby streets with heavily altered buildings were left out, so the district contains the most intact historic streetscape in Lima.