Potsdam, New York, A College Town - Part 1

After hiking to Duck Pond, or to be more precise - hiking a trail on which no Duck Pond was located, I decided to take a driving tour of Potsdam, New York. I put the two biggest dogs, Seamus and Fergus, in the new barn stall we'd tried out the previous day. Potsdam is only 14 miles from my door and a lovely town with two large universities and big, old lovely homes like this one:

And these two:

There were lots of old churches from many mainline denominations. Potsdam doesn't seem to have any (at least not that I saw) of the fundamentalist mega-churches which are so much in the news these days:

Most homes were wooden, but there were also brick and what appeared to be brownstone homes. I read somewhere that there was a quarry nearby but I've never found it. I did, however, look it up on the Internet and learned that Potsdam Red Sandstone is one of the finest building stones in the country and was used to build Columbia College in New York City (as well as many local buildings, of course):

One of the two Potsdam universities is Clarkson. There's this one old building downtown, but I hadn't yet located the rest of the university:

Library, municipal offices and museum:

This busy intersection is where Routes 11 and 11B diverge. Either one will take you to my farm. Is that fine old church built with Potsdam red sandstone? I'll wager that it is:

More lovely, old, well kept houses just outside of the "downtown" of Potsdam:

They had an interesting Food Co-Op and and I would have liked to stop in but had too many planned stops on my itinerary. Business was booming on that day. Potsdam appears to be liberal, college, "crunchy granola and Birkenstocks" sort of town:

And out behind the health food store, located in the old carriage house, was a bakery. I really, really, really wanted to stop there but knew better:

There was a rather large and impressive Post Office:

And this oddly painted restaurant. I couldn't read its name because the script was too ornate (and I didn't get close enough), but it appeared to be French. I hope, given the color of the paint job, that it was named after a peach: