It has been acknowledged that environmental factors are to a large extent controllable by personalities. In a reverse manner, the lives and true characters of these personalities may be found mirrored in their intimate surroundings - their friends, customs and shelters. For this very potent reason, the reader will readily grasp the significance of approaching the Greek Revival phase of our present era from an architectural standpoint. However, it is not my true purpose to attempt an analyzation of the character of our grandfathers. Others have written more effectively and fully on that subject. Rather I am presenting the subject as a much needed architectural survey of this tremendously important period and its imprint on the city of Syracuse, New York.
The reader will note that several structures included in this survey remain undated. The dates in these cases are not readily accessible and to trace them back by the lengthy grantee-grantor method is to almost assuredly end indecisively with a span of several, if not many years elapsing between the purchase of the land and its sale for a much higher sum - an indication of a building having been erected. Therefore, rather than utilize approximation, I have included undated (and fortunately minor) examples purely as auxiliary material to show the acceptance accorded to the various phases of the Revival.
For the dates given, tremendous credit is due to the late Mr. Fred Dutcher who established many of them only after amazing detective work and lengthy effort. Nevertheless, he had himself admitted that even this did not always produce the exact date. It is perhaps fortunate that many building dates are not known, for a strictly chronological arrangement would find us entering into psychological explanations as to why a particular structure should regress so completely to earlier tendencies of the style.
There are several to whom I wish to extend grateful acknowledgement for their aid and support; to Professors Walter A. Taylor and Marjorie S. Garfield for their continual guidance, to Mr. E. Q. Williams for several of the old photographs and much of the historic information incorporated herewith, and to the Syracuse Public Library for its assistance and cooperation. I must single out for especial gratitude Major Harry C. Durston and the Onondaga Historical Society who opened their archives to me with unstinted generosity and without whom this work would have been much like a column-less temple. Grateful acknowledgement is also extended to I. U. Doust and Sons for their assistance in the photographic approach.
All photographs, unless otherwise indicated, are my own. The author wishes to reassure the reader that no attempt at prize-winning photography was made. For a survey of this kind, accuracy and clearness of presentation come first. It is likewise not the author's intent to present a complete documentation of the Revival in Syracuse. Such a report, other than the impossibility of uncovering structures long since vanished, would prove monotonous in its repetition.
Regretfully this work must at the present be restricted to Revivalism within existing city limits die to transportation difficulties. However, thumbing through the following pages will reveal that every imaginable phase can be found within these relatively narrow boundaries. Further, it is my firm conviction that nowhere within the entire nation did the Greek Revival reach such wide acceptance and glorious heights as in my beloved city of Syracuse.
L. O. Merrill, Jr.
Syracuse, February 15, 1943