From collection Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Company Collection
Main St., Cincinnatus, N.Y. 53.
Angled view across the dirt Main Street of a rural village showing a line of mostly frame buildings with storefronts, and several early motor cars. A steep hillside with a partly open pasture rises up beyond the end of the street. The two hamlets of Cincinnatus, N.Y. are located on the east bank of the Otselic River in the central part of the state. With the the arrival of a branch line of the Delaware, Lakawanna and Western Railroad in 1898 (perhaps a decade before this photograph was made,) Cincinnatus became a center of milk processing, facilitated by a creamery, an ice cream plant, and a cheese box factory. Storefronts generally unchanged since the later 1800s are hung with signs indicating a bakery, an auto company and garage, "P.B. Foster", a barber shop. At the end of the street is the Corning and Haskins Building, commercial building housing a stove and paint store, and the Bank of Cincinnatus and an insurance company. This is one of a series of images made in upstate New York state by one of the three Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Company photographers assigned to New England or New York State. The glass plates would be sent back to Belfast, Maine, and processed into postcards at the printing plant on High Street.
