The story of Hilton’s Main Street before Sunday, March 21, 1965
by David Crumb
What started out to be a quiet Sunday morning in mid-March 1965 turned out to be a colossal visitation of fire and terror as the north side of Main Street in Hilton was engulfed in flame. Anyone who was present that day will have the picture of that event well etched on their brain. Within a few hours the Main Street that residents had taken for granted, and had appreciated for its quaint and friendly ambiance, was changed forever – reduced to a pile of rubble. This was the heart of the community.
For members of the Parma Hilton community who remember the old Main Street, and for new residents who have only heard how it once was, but are curious to know more; this article is written.
In the beginning there was only an Indian Trail that began near Avon, New York in a small Native American village known as Canawagus. The name Canawagus means “Stinking Waters,” probably due to the sulphur springs near Avon. These people would travel north to Lake Ontario and the surrounding bays and marshes to hunt and fish in the spring and fall. Summers were too hot and mosquito infested, and winters were too dark and cold. The Canawagus Trial was a well traveled pathway for the Indians and later became the early white settler’s route north and south. This road is today known as Route 259 or South Avenue or Union Street.
Where South Avenue in Hilton abuts Main Street, local legend tells us that in the 1700s there was a giant sycamore tree that had fallen somewhere about where East Avenue meets Main Street. The tree fell across what is known as Hovey Street. The Indians instead of removing the tree just went around it to the first opening which is present day Lake Avenue. So this is the story of how Main Street was formed. Instead of going straight from South Avenue to Lake Ontario, the traveler would take a left jog until they reached Lake Avenue, and then turn right and head for the Lake. This jog would create a natural setting for a meeting and trading place, and so Main Street began to take shape.
The first name of Main Street was “The Crossroads,” later Tyler’s Corners after the area’s first settlers, the Tyler family; later still an early postmark notes the area as Salmon Creek Post Office. The first official name for Main Street and the hamlet was Unionville (about l840).
The Monroe County Map of 1852 shows Hilton as Unionville. Around 1856, Postmaster William Berridge moved his North Parma post office from North Parma (Bartlett’s Corners, intersection of Curtis Road and Route 259) to Unionville. Due to resulting confusion over mail deliveries, the name Unionville was changed to North Parma, and North Parma became Barlett’s Corners. In 1896, the village was renamed Hilton after Rev. Charles A. Hilton, a popular and departing Baptist minister.
Anyone who can, in their mind’s eye, remember Main Street before the 1965 fire will bring up a vision of one long block of two story buildings from Lake Avenue to Hovey Street. The block’s street level shops housed a variety of successful businesses. They were the Orange Green Drug Store, Madden’s Red and White grocery store, Graupman’s Meat Market, the Hardware Store, The State Bank of Hilton, Mikels or McNall’s Furniture; Barili’s Cobbler Shop; the U.S. Post Office; the RG&E; Grace and Archie Wilkin’s Pleasure Shop, and finally Bert Daily’s Barber Shop. All of these businesses would have been found in other small towns across America, but here we knew the people, and here we were recognized as part of the local scene. Above the stores on the second floor were large roomy apartments in what had once been furniture show rooms, lodges, and warehouses spaces. On the south side of Main Street were some similar buildings with Orb and Hazel Kenyon’s Hart’s Food Store, Hank Smith and Al McMann’s Barber Shop, and The Panarites’ famous Ice Cream Parlor known by a variety of names: Louie’s, Nick’s, the Candy Kitchen, and the Greek’s. A gas station in the middle of the block and then the popular Hiltonia Movie Theater built around 1913 and run in the 1950s by Ray and Lorraine Algier.
This was the Hilton that many of the village’s senior members well remember. The personalities, the seasons, the parades, the gossip, the shopping and everything else that happened on Main Street. The shape and style of this Main Street dated from about 1903 to 1965. Earlier fires changed an even older picture of Main Street long faded from living memory.
Some readers may not realize that there were two hotels on Main Street, two churches, two early houses, a village green, a wagon shop, an 1836 General Store, a very large general store with a peddler’s wagon, gas lamps, and the “famous stump.” The early barber shop was located on Hovey Street about where the entrance of the M&T bank is.
On March 12, a program will be presented at the Parma Town Hall by the Parma-Hilton Historical Society that will explore and review all of the different buildings that once graced Main Street from the earliest record until 1965. The local public is invited to attend this event and enjoy a nostalgic reminiscence in photographs and narration of how Main Street once appeared in its different phases.
