Tompkins Street/Main Street Historic District (Boundary Increase)

Downtown Cortland and its adjoining residential street form this district of 109 properties on roughly 97.6 acres. The northern part holds about sixty commercial buildings along three blocks of Main Street and one block of Central Avenue, mostly deep brick blocks of three or four stories built between 1860 and 1910. Public buildings, including the Post Office, YWCA, YMCA, Masonic Temple and VFW building, cluster near Clayton Avenue. To the southwest, two long blocks of Tompkins Street hold about forty houses on large landscaped lots, ranging from modest 1830s vernacular homes to mansions of 1890-1916. The Cortland Rural Cemetery closes the district at its southwestern end. The district enlarges an earlier residential district listed in 1975. Later research showed that the commercial area was shaped by the same forces and architectural fashions as Tompkins Street, so the boundaries were redrawn to include it. Cortland grew after becoming county seat in 1810, and expanded rapidly after the Civil War with wagonmaking and wire industries.