A day in Syracuse
22 November 2004 | filed under General, TravelOn Friday we drove up to Syracuse, an hour northeast of Ithaca. Matt spoke to the physicists at the university there while I saw a bit of the city. It’s not the prettiest city I’ve seen, sorry to say.
Matt’s shot of the Syracuse Banana man:
In the physics building, a motivational neon sign:
I drove around to a couple of camera stores, and found an area much like Yaletown in Vancouver. It had several boutique shops and restaurants with nifty names like I’ve Been Framed, Pastabilities and Freedom of Espresso. And many buidings were reworked old warehouses.
Syracuse is also not the safest city from what we hear on the evening news. Lately it seems plagued by domestic stabbings and shootings. I asked a guy which direction I should go (downtown) to see galleries or museums.
“Well, don’t go west of here, it’s not very safe. And don’t go east of here, either,” he said.
North of where we stood was a circuit of highways, and to the south was the same, leading back to the University. But a few blocks away was the Everson Museum of Art, so that’s where I went.
From the museum, looking across the man-made pond:
Is it art?
Several sculptures surround the building, including many created by (the late) Rodger Mack who was a professor at Syracuse University.
Inside the Everson had an exhibit of a private collection of American Landscape Photography thatt included one Ansel Adams print, and a couple of images of Ithaca.
Back at the University to pick up Matt, I took this photo of the quad:
Hi Tiffany,
I just started reading your blog and ran across your comments about Little Italy in Syracuse (where you saw Pastabilities and Freedom of Espresso). Did you happen to stop into the Columbus Bakery or Theno’s deli on that same street? If you didn’t, definitely make a point to next time!
I grew up in Binghamton, and my family used to stop at the Columbus Bakery and Theno’s on our way to the St. Lawrence river on summer weekends. We’d leave with a dozen “rounds” (big, flat, scored breads that you could break open for sandwiches) and piles of italian meats and cheeses, spiced olives and hot peppers. All of my summer memories are laced with the smell of fresh Columbus Bakery bread (and the crumbs we left all over the back seat of the car), and the taste of salami and hot pepper cheese sandwiches with Theno’s special recipe olives on the side.
Columbus Bakery has been in that same spot for decades (I read somewhere that they’ve been in business for over a century). Its a sight to see inside — big stone ovens, and rack upon wooden rack of cooling bread, and the family workers in white cotton outfits made whiter by the flour everywhere. My grandmother used to get her bread there too.
If you buy a round at Columbus Bakey, you can take it over to Theno’s and the old guys that have worked there forever will make it into a sandwhiches for you. They’ll also joke and make small talk, and if you’re nice, they’ll likely give you a slice on the house of whatever you’re buying as they cut it.
Anyway… thanks for the trip down memory lane, and for your blog — its fun to read about your adventures around Ithaca.
–Jackie
comment by Jackie on 01 December 2004 at 9:06 am
Syracuse, New York, a second tier rustbelt city in ecomonic decline. Much of this is true for the industrialized north east, and Upstate New York, but this place imparts a grittiness all it’s own. Salt evaporation is what initially made this city prosper, for a few decades in the 19th Century. Perhaps best compared to Scranton, PA, only farther north and further out of the way of the major east coast interstate highway infrastructure. A bit more frigid and lot more precipitation, beautiful hills are seen in the surrounding landscape however. Never has this domain risen to the status of sophisticated cosmopolitan landmark. The city’s downtown is currently 35% either vacant office space, or buildings slated for controlled demolition, and devoid of any pedestrian activity after 6:00 PM. The nightlife is limited to a ‘trendily’ refurbished warehouse section of streets known as ‘Armory Square.’ Syracuse University holds strong as the city’s largest employer, and does lend some charming college town amenities to a small portion of certain city neighborhoods. There is also a slight residual immigrant charm as well, such as the Columbus bakery, and various other Italian American establishments still doing business on a mostly dilapidated and vacated North Salina Street. The distinctive onion domes of the Russian and Greek Orthodox churches are always a pleasant site on the city’s west side. Due to the steady hemorraging of former city residents, either to affordable suburban communities or warmer destinations, much of the inner city has crumbled into a bleak residential slum. Absentee landlords abound and tend to rent to low income families, or transients. Magnificent Queen Anne Victorian houses sit vacant, abandoned and decaying. The trend has no end in sight, unfortunately, as this phenomena reflects our society’s desire for a good real estate ‘value,’ privacy (nearly to the point of social isolation & refusal of community,)personal convenience and of course plenty of driveway space to park our SUVs; rather than bothering with these crumbling decrepit buildings in unsafe pot holed streets & keeping a sense of community alive in friendly, walkable, energetic neighborhoods.
comment by Zac on 25 February 2005 at 3:09 pm