White Creek Historic District

White Creek is a crossroads hamlet in the southeastern corner of Washington County, New York, close to the Vermont line. Its historic district takes in twenty-two properties built between 1770 and about 1885, most of them timber-framed, clapboard-sided buildings with gable roofs. Quakers settled the area in the late eighteenth century, and John Allen built the first permanent house in 1770; it remains the best-preserved eighteenth-century structure in the hamlet. The hamlet became a regional commercial center, reaching its peak of prosperity in the 1840s. That period left rare rural Greek Revival commercial buildings, including a hotel and tavern, a harness shop now serving as the fire station, and the three-story Dyer Sisson general store. Merchants' homes in Georgian, Federal, Greek Revival and Queen Anne styles show how local tastes changed. Later shifts in transportation bypassed the community, which helped preserve its architecture with only two modern intrusions.