Main Street Historic District

Three blocks of two- and three-story commercial buildings line Main Street in Whitehall, facing the Champlain Canal, with wooded hills rising behind them. The district includes about forty structures, most built of brick from two local brickyards, along with several buildings on Williams Street. Their details include mansard and flat roofs, arched tracery windows, decorative metal lintels, corbelled brick cornices and Italianate brackets. The street has served as a traffic route and business center since the lake-boat era, through the canal period that began in 1817 and the arrival of the railroad in 1846. A fire in 1864 destroyed much of the early commercial area, including mills, a foundry and a sash and door factory. Local architect Almon Chandler Hopson, who came from Vermont about 1862, rebuilt most of the buildings between 1865 and 1900, giving the street its unified appearance. Though shop fronts have been modernized, the district keeps the look of a nineteenth century canal town.