Today, Armory Square is home to 33 restaurants and about 3,800 residents. But that hasn’t always been the case.

When George Curry and Robert Doucette first proposed the idea of developing Armory Square in the early 1980s, they got a lot of confused looks.

“Did we have people ask us what the hell are we doing?” Curry said. “The answer is yes, (they said) you’re nuts!”

Curry, a landscape architect and distinguished teaching professor emeritus at SUNY-ESF, along with  Doucette, co-founder of Paramount Realty and president of Armory Development & Management, first came up with the idea while out to dinner one night, Curry said.

Troops perform drills on the lawn of the Armory. Many of the buildings in the background still stand today. Courtesy of the Onondaga Historical Association

Both shared an interest in urban development and design and had the idea of creating an all-inclusive place to live, eat, shop and work — a 24-hour experience, Curry said, which was uncommon for smaller cities at the time. Curry and Doucette started by buying and renovating the Labor Temple Building at 309 S. Franklin St., with the help of the architectural firm Crawford & Stearns. Since 1985, the first floor has been home to the restaurant Pastabilities, while apartments occupy the building’s upper levels.

“It had really nothing, I think, to do with investment in terms of money, it had to do with an investment in an idea,” Curry said. “The idea was to basically to show people that there was the possibility and there was a desire on some people’s part to live in the downtown.”

Before becoming Armory Square, the area was known as Walton’s Track, said Robert Searing, curator of history at the Onondaga Historical Association. Searing said the Syracuse section of the Erie Canal opened in 1821, which brought commerce to the city, and the area officially became the City of Syracuse in 1848.

Armory Square gets its name from the armory first built in the 1850s, which housed National Guard units and a cavalry unit. The cavalry unit practiced at the armory right up until around World War I, and Searing said old stables can still be seen on one side of the building. Since 1992, the armory has been home to the Milton J. Rubenstein Museum of Science & Technology.

In addition to activity from both the armory and Erie Canal, the railroad also brought business to Syracuse. Armory Square was previously a train station, with many of the old buildings once used as factories and warehouses that merchants could easily get their goods to railroad depots, Searing said.  One of the oldest buildings left standing in Armory Square today — including those that hold Kitty Hoyne’s Irish Pub and Empire Brewing Company — were built in the 1860s or soon afterward.

Soldiers clean artillery at the Syracuse Armory during World War I. Courtesy of the Onondaga Historical Association

With the decline of the railroad around the 1930s, though, Searing said many factories and businesses closed, and warehouses were left vacant and abandoned.

“Armory Square was a place that you just didn’t go,” Searing said. “It was run-down, basically burned out old factory blocks and the railroad station.”

During the late 1970s, an artist community began to form, Searing added, but otherwise, Armory Square remained mostly empty.

“Much of the rework of downtown is often accompanied by some sort of gentrification,” Curry said. “But that wasn’t a real problem because most of the buildings were empty, so it wasn’t a matter of moving certain populations out of a neighborhood or a certain group of retailers out of a neighborhood.”

One of the first new businesses to open in Armory Square was Pastabilities. Owner and founder Karyn Korteling said she started the restaurant initially in another downtown location, hesitant to open a business in Armory Square because of its vacancies. But as the area continued to develop, she saw the potential for the location to have a neighborhood-like feel.

“Other than (one or two apartments), there wasn’t a soul down there,” Korteling said. “The vision was that it just had this charm about it that didn’t exist in the other areas of downtown at the time.”

The Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad Company, incorporated in 1853, still stands in downtown Syracuse today. Courtesy of the Onondaga Historical Association

Korteling and her husband rented an apartment in 1985 and were some of the first people to both live and work in Armory Square, she said. Now, Korteling sees lots of joggers, people walking dogs and even some baby strollers.

“It’s a sign of life that they’re actually living downtown and making their lives down there, and not just commuting,” Korteling said.

The continuing development of Armory Square led Jim Dauphin, owner of the boutique Midnight Sun, to open his store in Armory Square in 2014. The original Midnight Sun is located in Oswego, but Dauphin said he opened a second location in Syracuse because he wanted to expand his market.

“I love being here,” Dauphin said. “It’s a really fun place. It has such a nice vibe down here and business owners and people are just really nice. It’s like a community down here.”

One thing Dauphin said he would like to see more of in Armory Square, though, is students. Since the Connective Corridor Project was finished in fall 2015, that development has been a work-in-progress. The project is intended to connect Syracuse University with downtown through bicycle lanes, walkways and a Centro bus route, which includes a stop in Armory Square.

Along with the Connective Corridor and the legalization of ride sharing services such as Uber and Lyft across New York in June 2018, Alice Maggiore — the director of communications at the Downtown Committee of Syracuse — said SU’s Nancy Cantor Warehouse’s proximity to Armory Square has also helped to introduce students to the neighborhood.

The Downtown Committee of Syracuse, which works like a not-for-profit neighborhood business improvement district, began in 1975 and set a precedent for other business improvement districts in New York state, Maggiore said. The revitalization of Armory Square served as a point of reference for other New York towns to follow, Korteling added.

“It’s been a tremendous experience to have been part of the renaissance of a downtown, especially when they do a look-back and look at the side to side photos at the different time periods (to see) what came to life after a stretch of years,” Korteling said.

With the success of the revitalization of Armory Square, Korteling added that she thinks there’s the potential for it to work anywhere.

“It does take a lot of heart and soul with entrepreneurs and those that support small businesses,” she said, “because small business owners are truly a good piece of what brings back life to a city.”

Published on February 26, 2019 at 11:29 pm

Contact Caroline: cbarthol@syr.edu