Corning, New York

Gaffer District – Corning, New YorkThe last time that we visited Corning, New York, we had barely enough time to visit the Corning Museum of Glass. This time around, we had time for a bit of a walking tour of Corning’s Gaffer District.

The Gaffer is an industry term for a master glass blower, hence the name chosen for the business district of the area of upper New York State made famous by the Corning Glass Company and its many commercial successes. There are a number of self-guided walking tours outlined in various publications.  For those who like chocolate, for instance, the chocolate tour highlights a fine selection of chocolate merchants.

I don’t normally like staying in a downtown hotel but on this visit we chose to stay at the Radisson so that we could just park our car and walk from the hotel to anywhere that we wanted to go.  Worked well for us. We were advised by the staff at the Radisson to walk along the five blocks of the business district starting right beside the Radisson, so we did – persons following these blogs will know that I don’t always follow instructions too well :-).

The photos that follow are a collection of images from a walk along one five block stretch of the business district – a mixture of new and old buildings with many intriguing places to shop and a nice selection of places to eat.

Of course, I just had to photograph the post box and the fire hydrant before getting too far. The last time that we had something mailed to us from this part of the country delivery time was more than a week but some things just don’t physically fit in an e-mail! The next time, perhaps, I can arrange for it to be hand-delivered in a Ferrari for a few dollars more :-).

 

The building in the back of the following photo houses the Rockwell Museum of Western Art which we planned on visiting in the morning.

Along the street there are many interesting old buildings to look at and always interesting to do a bit of window peering.  One of the buildings owned by Corning has an extensive display of finely crafted glass objects.  A few examples follow which I photographed through the window as dusk was arriving.

I wasn’t interested in seeing the new movie “The Three Stooges”.  That is unfortunate because it would have been interesting to see the inside of Corning’s theatre.

The theatre wasn’t the only building that I would have liked to have entered but it was getting late and most building were closed for the night so we decided to have a nice meal at the Main Street Brewery and call it a night.

 

 

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About Ron

Ron has long had an interest in photography and traveling and, in recent years, has had more time to devote to both activities. Long a Pentax user, Ron switched to Nikon gear when he went digital. The advent of the digital SLR camera, and the ease of the internet blogging process, has provided a venue for sharing his photography and travel experience at the local, national and international level. More about Ron
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