Three Hours —Give or Take— in Syracuse, NY

Marianne Janack

I have seen clams, lobsters, fish, oysters, and crabs on huge piles of ice in the middle of a palatial space.  I have seen cases full of cheese from Spain, Switzerland, France, Greece, and other far-off lands wrapped in cloth.  I have perused the refrigerated display full of varieties of caviar. I have stopped to admire the large displays of Syracuse University-themed items, including Syracuse style potato chips. I have walked the cavernous aisles of craft beers.  

Yes, dear reader: I have been to the Wegmans on the east side of Syracuse, a trek which rewards the visitor every time.

Wegmans is a symbol of abundance, and one might be tempted to think that it contrasts sharply with Syracuse itself—a city that seems more like that high school friend who never quite made it-- defined by missed chances, unfulfilled promises, a history of ruin or of banality. Steve Featherstone says that “Syracuse is the lover you leave for more attractive prospects.” But an intrepid and imaginative visitor—like your faithful reporter-- open to the possibilities of rebirth and willing to look beyond surfaces, will find something special hiding behind the appearance of a forgotten Rust Belt city.

Syracuse was settled by Europeans in the 19th century, when salt was an important commodity.  Syracuse—also known as “the salt city”—produced more salt than any other place in the United States during that century, the plentiful salt brine boiled in large pots and laid out to dry in the sun in large vats with retractable roofs. In 1820, before the Erie Canal was built the population of Syracuse was 250 and so desolate “it would make an owl weep to fly over it,” an early visitor said.

Thirty years later, it was compared to Venice because it was, like Venice, a salt port. And, like Venice, it was a canal city. Two canals intersected in the city; the bridges over those canals were torch-lit. (Click on the link to see a painting of downtown Syracuse during the canal era). In the 1920s, the canal was paved over to accommodate the new era of cars.  It is now Erie Boulevard, and modern-day mules (shopping carts) are pushed by modern-day mule drivers past warehouses and used car lots—the mules filled with clothes, black plastic bags, and empty bottles. Do the mule drivers know of the history that they re-enact?

The large mall on Syracuse’s westside—once called Carousel Center and now called Destiny USA-- is now the largest mall in New York state, and the sixth largest in the United States.  But the promises that it would become a tourist destination—like the King of Prussia mall, or the Mall of America-- never quite came true.   But in Destiny USA, you will find an escape room, a hall of mirrors, theatres, stores, restaurants, a comedy club, an old carousel, and spectacular views of Onondaga Lake.

Onondaga Lake’s status as one of the most polluted bodies of water in the United States is what most people know about the lake.  If you know it for the fact that it once caught fire, I’m sorry to relate that is not true.  The lake has now become one of the biggest challenges to superfund management in the US. And to hope. It used to smell strongly of ammonia and something tar-like, but now one can drive by it without closing car windows.  Though swimming in the lake is not encouraged (as with the Seine) and the mercury levels are still too high for people to safely eat fish that were caught in the lake, nevertheless the lake glimmers, and is beautiful to look at. One can imagine how it looked to the Haudenosaunee who once lived near it, or how it looked in the days when salt was carried in ships that floated across its pristine, glittering surface.  One hundred years of industrial waste and dumping are now in the process of being reversed by modern chemistry and engineering, but the lake is still not clean.  

Traveling farther west from the mall, you will also find the only traffic light in the country with the green light on top on the west side of Syracuse.  Many of the workers in Syracuse’s salt works and on the Erie Canal were Irish; Tipperary Hill was so named in 1860 to pay homage to Ireland and the Irish who had settled there. When the first traffic lights were installed in Syracuse in the 1920s, the Tipperary Hill light was vandalized (some say because of the opposition to British rule of Ireland) and eventually city planners realized that it would continue to be vandalized as long as the green light was below the yellow and the red.  In 1928, the traffic light was permanently changed: the green light was on top.  Nearly 100 years later, the traffic light at the corner of Tompkins St. and Milton Ave, in the heart of Tipperary Hill, is the only traffic light in the US where the green light is on top.

And did I mention?  Three different Wegmans stores lay within a 15 minute drive of the mall and Tipperary Hill.  If you’re willing to drive a bit farther, there are two more.

So maybe you’re thinking of going to Barcelona, but you know that the people who live there hate tourists; or maybe you’re thinking of going to Paris or London, but it’s too crowded; or maybe you’re thinking about going to New York City, but it’s a bit overwhelming.  But Syracuse…

And besides, none of those other cities has as many Wegmans stores as Syracuse.  Maybe Rochester does, but it’s not the same.