Main Street Historic District

Main Street in Afton, Chenango County, contains a tight cluster of eleven commercial buildings that preserve the look of a late nineteenth-century small-town business center. Most are two- or three-story brick blocks, many joined together, with corbelled or bracketed cornices, arched brick lintels, rock-faced stone sills, stepped parapets and wrought-iron cresting. The one frame building is a three-story hotel with a two-tiered verandah and an octagonal tower, whose present form dates from 1943. The district reflects Afton's rise as a regional transportation center after the Albany and Susquehanna Railroad arrived in 1867 and a toll-free suspension bridge opened in 1869. New hotels, a bank and shops followed. Fires in 1877 and 1884 destroyed earlier buildings, and residents rebuilt in brick; by 1895 the street was lined with brick commercial blocks. Although some storefronts have been modernized, the buildings largely keep their period design and craftsmanship, and the district still provides commercial services to the village.