The metal railings peeking out of downtown streets and the usual patterns of properties and roads hint at the city's past.

In the mid-1800s, small storefronts and family owned shops bounded Auburn's dusty streets. Most often, the owners lived in the floors above their dry-goods shops, bakeries and clothiers, said Michael Long, Community Preservation Committee member.

Even larger operations kept their workers close at hand in tenant rows.

John L. Hardenbergh, a founder of Auburn, built a mill in 1793 on land that used to be a military lot, which is what the city started off as. Hardenbergh took the city's title from Irish writer Oliver Goldmith's 1770 poem “The Deserted Village,” which begins with the line “sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain.”

He housed thousands of employees on or near the same property his mill stood on, a 1991 comprehensive city plan said.

Another early settler Abijah Fitch offered the first residential lots in the form of a subdivision. The owner of an early woolen mill and shoe factories built rows of homes for his employees. The residential neighborhoods of the city continued to develop during the period from 1837 to the economic depression of 1873. Then, private property in subdivisions' split up without government involvement and planning.

D.M. Osborne Co. once covered the place where shoppers now pick up groceries in Wegmans. Nearly 4,000 employees worked within walking distance.

Then, a loud invention would change the way people lived, worked and moved.

Accessible transportation shook up the way of life in the 1930s. As electric trolleys and affordable automobiles hit the streets of Auburn, people began to move away from the downtown stores and began building on surrounding open land.

This is when Owasco, Fleming and other doughnut towns began to develop. Before, people could not find much work in these areas and had to stay close to their jobs, which meant staying a walk away in Auburn.

In a trend that lasts until today, most families lived away from where they worked.

No longer needed to house families, buildings then could allow commercial or office space to take over the upper floors. Banks serve as the prime example. A few financial institutions sprouted near State Street so prison guards could deposit their paychecks as they walked home.

Some business owners combined neighboring stores and utilized the upper floors for commerce or business. The H.R. Wait Company Inc. family did just that.

They expanded their Genesee Street store into the next building, then the next. Later, they unified the structures and created a mass home furnishings business. A fire gutted the building.

Planners pushed for a project that would keep the size of the business, Long said. A non-profit organization opened Lattimore Hall in its place.

Some people clamored for parking lots or smaller buildings, but they wanted to maintain the scale of downtown.

“It's like a smile with teeth missing. It just doesn't look right, to urban planners at least,” Long said.

The Auburn city housing trend followed the national pattern through the decades. Now, city officials want their downtown to have a comeback, similar to Syracuse or Rochester.

A goal for downtown development is to encourage the use of upper floors in older buildings to increase economic usefulness and vitality, according to a housing study adopted in January.

In 1964, the Central Area Plan sought the remaking of downtown Auburn by emphasizing access for automobile traffic as the city's key feature. So the Loop Road and the Arterials were born.

During the time, the design called for closing off several downtown streets and caused the demolition of 250 structures.

As subdivisions grew, along with the automobile use, suburbs crept up on the south and northeast of the city. and malls and shopping centers attracted people away from the central business district. As this happened, buildings downtown became offices, as part of a national trend.

Staff writer Jessica Soule can be reached at 253-5311 ext 267 or jessica.soule@lee.net