The Village of Brockport has been notified that 60 Clinton Street, Fay's Garage, was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on February 22. This completes another step in the village's effort to develop its canal front.

The registers of historic places give official state and national recognition to structures of important architectural and historic value. Fay's Garage was deemed to have architectural importance as an "unusually intact" example of "the sort of brownstone industrial buildings which lined the Erie Canal" during the peak of the Canal Era and historic value as one of the few structures remaining from the period when Brockport was a major farm implement manufacturing center.

Also, historically, the site was the location of Hiel Brockway's boatyard and brickyard. At one time, Brockway - Brockport's co-founder - was the biggest builder of canal packet boats in the world. Then, too, it was the base of operations for Brockway's Red Bird Packet Line, a leading passenger line on the canal from Albany to Buffalo.

Brockway died in 1841 and his widow, Phoebe, and son-in-law, Elias B. Holmes, continued the business until 1848, when the buildings were destroyed by fire. In 1850, George Whiteside and George Barnett acquired the property and erected the first of the structures now on the site. They used it as a manufacturing plant for farm machines. Barnett had been a collaborator of Cyrus McCormick, inventor of the reaper, for 10 years before the first quantity production of those pioneer agricultural implements by Brockport's Seymour and Morgan foundry in 1846.

Whiteside, Barnett & Co. manufactured grain drills, wheel rakes, bean planters and cultivators, steel gang plows, "and many other farm implements." It remained in business until 1886, when Whiteside died and Barnett retired. In 1890, the property became a lumberyard, first for Lucius T. Underhill and then for George L. Lovejoy. From 1905 until 1945, the Monroe Canning Co. occupied the buildings as a fruit preserving factory. Since 1948, they have been Fay's Garage, first owned by Fay Ladue and, now, by his son, Charles.

The structures are part of the canal front development master plan of the Village. Phase 1 has been completed on the north bank between Fayette Street and North Main Street. Phase 2, on the south bank opposite, is funded and scheduled to begin this spring. Phase 3 will extend Phase 1 from North Main Street to Smith Street. Phase 4 will be a commercial district between Clinton Street and the canal with businesses appropriate to its historic character. The anchor of that phase is to be a small hotel in the Fay's Garage buildings.

Using state grant money, the Village has obtained engineering and architectural studies for such a conversion. It has applied for another grant to have business, financial, and environmental studies done. Two prospective developers and a potential end-user have expressed interest in the project. If the studies now planned produce favorable results, those buildings may once again form an economic relationship to the adjacent Erie Canal. The register listing could be a big boost as it provides important tax credits for the conversion required. If all goes well, the waterway that once carried farm implements from those structures to the far corners of the nation, may bring boaters and bicyclists to them for lodgings.