Valentown Hall

About this property

Valentown Hall is the name of an abandoned historic shopping and community center located in Victor, New York. The structure was built in 1879 by Levi Valentine, and today it is operated as a museum on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1879, Levi Valentine built the four-story structure as the central commercial and community building of a new town to be created by Valentine and named "Valentown" (a combination of his parents' names "Valentine" & "Town"). Valentine's motive was a forthcoming railroad line that was to travel past the building. However, his forward-thinking plan yielded an unfortunate result when the railroad company went bankrupt and did not complete the line. With no demand for a commercial center in the location, "Valentown" eventually failed as an enterprise and was abandoned in the early 1900s. In 1940, local historian J. Sheldon Fisher purchased the property, restored it, and officially opened Valentown as a museum in 1950. The property is owned and operated today by the Victor Historical Society as a local history museum, with artifacts from nineteenth century life in the Fishers, Victor and Rochester, New York area. Most of the building's interior remains in the same condition and setup as it was when it was originally built. It currently contains a general store, meeting room, bakery, harness shop, cobbler's shop, millinery shop, music school, ticket office, grange room and grand ballroom. There are multiple display cases and exhibits including artifacts from the original local insulator industry, Civil War artifacts, clothing & hats galore, farm implements and household utensils, candle making molds, spinning wheels, railroad & trolley memorabilia, blacksmith tools, paintings, old maps, and much more. It also contains a wagon from the 1700s which was used in the American Revolutionary War. In 1997 the Hall was included in the National Register of Historical Places. Fisher remained the owner of Valentown until 1998, when the Victor Historical Society, a non-profit organization, bought the museum, its collection, and approximately 13 acres. The organization also bought the Ichabod Town Homestead built in 1835, the early 1800s schoolhouse, and additional buildings. Valentown Museum (originally called Valentown Hall) is just one in a cluster of historic 19th century buildings at 13-acre Valentown Square, off Rt. 96 across from Eastview Mall in Victor, New York. In 1879, Levi and Alanson Valentine constructed the 4-story shopping plaza and community center (complete with underground parking) on a busy crossroads homestead owned by their grandfather, Ichabod Town, hoping the property would be a stop on the Pittsburgh, Shawmut, and Northern Railroad. The Valentine homestead and farm remained in the family for much of the 19th century, but by 1892, the former Ichabod Town homestead was occupied by George Pickering and his wife, Jane Baker Pickering. The latter was the first female doctor in Victor and she established her medical office in the historic home.

Location

Categories

Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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