A Tour Of Massena, New York - Part 2

I was on a driving tour of Massena, New York, just 18 miles north of my farm. I found it to be a sort of nitty gritty town of industry and commerce, reminding me very much of the near west side of Cleveland. Once I'd left the highway lined with big box stores I began driving through residential streets looking at houses:

Perhaps the overcast day and dirty snow piles influenced my impressions of Massena, but it did not feel particularly welcoming or pleasant to me. The houses, while perfectly fine, were not as grand as what I'd seen in Potsdam and Canton. But those were university towns while Massena was an industrial town. I really liked the stonework on this house and its steel roof, a practical concession to living in snow country:

More nice stonework on this fireplace chimney:

Residential streets and middle class houses. I didn't find any ritzy neighborhoods, though I know they exist from my internet searches:

I passed this American Legion Post and its helicopter as I left the residential streets and headed downtown:

Massena's Town Hall was built with more impressive stonework. I noticed that it was not Potsdam Red Sandstone. Perhaps granite is available near Massena though I could find no mention of it when I Googled it:

Once again, I found that downtown Massena was very different from the bustling downtown streets of Potsdam and Canton. Massena had lots of closed buildings and streets without much traffic:

This was Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year, and the big box stores on the highway were booming, with full parking lots. The downtown stores seemed to have no customers at all. This was quite unlike Potsdam and Canton:

With no cars parked on the road I had no trouble stopping to snap photos:

Two major rivers flow through the heart of Massena on their way to the St. Lawrence Seaway. I crossed both the Raquette River and the Grasse River in downtown Massena. But instead of using them for parks and green spaces, Massena seemed to largely ignore them and just put functionary bridges over them. Once again, this reminded me of the steel mill section of Cleveland where I grew up called "The Flats:"

But I had yet another destination in mind, the St. Lawrence Seaway. So I headed west on Route 37 toward the town of Waddington. I passed Massena's general hospital on my way out of town. I'll post more tomorrow: