Eben Smith homestead plot
hen John Dorman died in 1821, his large estate was distributed among his children and grandchildren. His eldest son Joel was to get the homestead itself, subject to the life use of his mother. When Sybil Dorman died, Joel wasted no time in breaking up the parcel; he himself now lived on a big valuable farm in Jerusalem, and had no need for small parcels in the village.
In 1827, when Joel Dorman sold this plot, an acre or so in size and the southernmost part of the Dorman homestead, to merchant Eben Smith, this part of Main Street was still largely residential. The Old Red House, which John Dorman had built around the turn of the 19th century, was just to the north, and George Shearman's farm was just to the south. However, there was a store in the Old Red House, and Shearman had a store on his place as well. And within a few years all this neighborhood was commercial -- except for Smith's house, set well back from the street amid big trees, and with a white picket fence across the front.
The original lot had about 125 feet of frontage on Main Street. Smith at one time or another in the next couple of decades or so owned nearly every lot on this block, right down through to East Elm Street, which at the time was called Jacob Street; but this parcel was his first choice, and here is where he built his house, which stood until about 1890. It must by then have looked like an outlandish relic of bygone days, a green oasis set back in its trees, between the village fire house and the Yates County Bank. Smith sold off chunks of his homestead farm, until in 1890 all that was left of the property was the house and its immediate yard.
Originally, the place was just a graceful Greek Revival temple-front house, square in footprint, and comprising a central block with an arcaded porch all the way around it. The standard hipped roof of such a structure was shown on the picture map made in 1874. But within a few years, by the time the only known photograph of the house was taken, the central block had been raised to two stories, and the porches enclosed to make more living space. It must really have been an astonishing-looking structure, and unfortunately the photograph doesn't show the whole of it.
Within a very few years after his 1827 purchase, Smith had broken off about half the plot, and retained only the northern half for his house and yard. The first sale was in 1831, when Smith sold the lot where today stands the Lown's building (131 Main). The Yates County Bank, the county's first, was built there in 1833. In 1836 Smith sold another piece, to the south of the bank, the lot where 127 stands.
The largest piece would today be 133-141, the Roenke & Rogers department store, a vast five-front building that was certainly the largest store ever built in the county; it had lately been the home of J. C. Penney & Co., when it was razed due to damage from the fire next door in the firehouse, in 1968, and became part of the village's Urban Renewal project; this was also the piece where the house stood and disappeared at last. It was sold in three parcels, in 1886 and 1887, to John H. Lown, who built the first store on the property, which was therefore known for a long time as the Lown Block. Lown's own store was built, as mentioned above, at number 131, and of course this store still remains, the last on the east side of Main Street in Penn Yan's nineteenth-century commercial district.
Smith died in the house and his son Franklin E. Smith inherited it; the son was also a merchant and had for several years been his father's partner in several ventures down the street.
Above: The area marked in yellow is where Eben Smith bought his homestead in 1827 from Simpson Buck, who in turn bought it from John Dorman. Buck's plot was about half of the Dorman homestead, and Smith bought about half of Buck's plot.Smith built his house on the northernmost of the three modern lots included in the homestead, 137 Main Street. The other two lots were 131 Main, the Yates County Bank (now Lown's); and 127 Main Street, the Baldwin Bank (now the village's Maxwell Building).
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Eben Smith bought this parcel in 1827 from Joel Dorman, who was selling off his father's estate. It was nearly square, encompassing about an acre and 125 feet wide on Main Street. The southern half was sold to the Yates County Bank in 1831.
