Now you’re at the corner of First and Main, and if you look left across Main Street, there’s a building with a painted sign on it. It says Smith Sprayers. It’s kind of faded but you can still read it. That was where the D.B. Smith Company was located.  They built farm-spraying equipment that was used by farmers all over the country.

Now to the right of Smith Sprayers, there’s a building that says Hurd across the top.

 

That’s the Hurd Shoe Company building. The Hurd Shoe Company in the late 1800s was one of four shoe companies in Utica. Which made Utica one of the major shoe manufacturing sites in the country.

To the right of the Hurd building – on the opposite corner of First and Main – there’s a building that if you look closely down First Street and up at the roofline, you’ll notice is actually two separate buildings


The front part was a clothier called HP Cross. And the back section, closest to you, was the Brandegee and Wood Clothier. They both manufactured clothes, right at the time that ready-made clothes became popular. Before then clothes were often custom-made. And about 1950, the building was taken over by Doyle Hardware.

It had had four floors of everything you can name, from a little screw to a big part.  It was fascinating. It was like a museum when you went in there. I used to go in there just to see old parts, old tools. And it was like a museum.

Now you’re crossing over First Street, walking down Main Street With the Doyle Hardware Building on your left. You’re going to go all the way to the next intersection – the corner of Main Street and Railroad Street.

Now, facing Main Street, with Railroad on your right, there’s a wooden sculpture on the other side of Main, a little to the left? It looks like a several pieces of lumber standing straight up around an iron frame.

That’s where we’ll pick up the next part of our Detour.


Onward!