Watertown landmarks celebrated with photographer's vision

Oct. 14—WATERTOWN — Perhaps no one has taken more photos of the city's landmarks than Richard Margolis.

For the past half dozen years or so, Margolis, a Rochester photographer and artist, has been on a mission — to photograph and chronicle Watertown's most iconic landmarks and historic locations.

Now he has put together a showcase of that effort, selecting 23 of the most well-recognized landmarks.

The exhibit, Watertown Landmarks: A Celebration, is displayed in the Franklin Building on Public Square, one of the historic icons that Margolis photographed.

On the list in the exhibit are the Paddock Arcade, First Baptist Church, the Woolworth Building, Thompson Park, the Crystal Restaurant and the Thomas Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church.

"The Crystal Restaurant is obvious," he said. "You can't miss it. It's stunning."

For the past 25 years, Margolis, 80, and his wife, Sherry Phillips, have been spending their summers at their Thousand Islands Park cottage, so they've driven through Watertown.

But he didn't know much about the city.

Through his camera lens, he's had a different view of Watertown than people who have lived here for years or grew up in Watertown, he said.

"I have fresh eyes, a different perspective," he said.

His first impression of the city?

Watertown had some beautiful structures, he said, but there were gaps between buildings where other notable landmarks once stood, lost to demolition.

Over the last several years, Margolis — who refers to his decades of work as an architectural photography — has visited Watertown about a dozen times to focus his camera on the remaining landmarks.

In that time, he's taken photographs of approximately 100 buildings, coming back over and over again. With each visit and photograph, the lighting was different and he captured different angles of the buildings.

"I like buildings," he said.

He's driven around the city discovering buildings to photograph. Margolis also relied on Google searches, Instagram and other research to come up with subjects for his project.

And the more he photographed, the more he learned about the landmarks' history and significance to the community.

Take the Paddock Arcade at 1 Public Square for instance. Besides the building's architectural beauty, he learned that it's the second oldest covered shopping mall and the oldest continuously running, enclosed shopping mall in the country.

He has also watched the Paddock Arcade go through a rebirth during the past year with a major restoration project completed by its new owner, developer Jake Johnson.

It was an 1850s newspaper clipping about the opening of the Paddock Arcade that piqued Margolis' interest in Watertown and eventually the project.

That photo showed a sign for Hart's Photography, so he started researching the business. With help from the Flower Memorial Library, he discovered an unusual photo at the Library of Congress that showed a group of Watertown men wearing Klu Klux Klan hats.

While he was unable to learn more about that photo, he started thinking about Watertown's involvement in the Civil Rights movement and the Underground Railroad.

From there, he found out about the Thomas Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church, at 715 Morrison St., and its connections to the Underground Railroad. His first photos in Watertown were taken of the longtime vacant church that was threatened with demolition.

He's become a founding member of a group dedicated to preserving the historic church. In recent years, the group has made progress in saving it.

Those efforts with the church prompted him to take more photographs of Watertown buildings and learn more about them.

He knew nothing about the Flower Memorial Library until a friend and artist, Maureen Barros, told him that he should make sure to go inside and see for himself just how special the Washington Street landmark is, he recalled.

"It's just amazing," he said.

His visits to Watertown to take more photos continued through the COVID-19 pandemic. His work on the project also included cataloguing historic information on the landmarks, such as when they were built, who owns them and a narrative about their significance.

In the time that he's collected the landmark photos, he's seen Watertown grow and begin to prosper.

When he finally began to put together the exhibit, he had no place to show it. The Jefferson County Historical Society's Paddock Mansion was still closed because of the pandemic.

But Reginald J. Schweitzer Jr., executive director of Neighbors of Watertown, suggested showing the landmarks in the Franklin Building, which was also saved from the wrecking ball and has been restored. The former YWCA building houses retail space on the ground floor and apartments on the upper floors.

He knew Schweitzer through their work together in saving the A.M.E. church.

Several of those landmarks in the exhibit are buildings that Neighbors owns and has restored for reuse. Margolis credits the housing organization for preserving so much of Watertown.

"Neighbors has done so much for Watertown," he said. "And my exhibit is in this wonderful building."

Schweitzer is impressed with what the photographer has chronicled of Watertown.

"I just think it's a great opportunity to raise awareness of the buildings and things we have around here," he said.

Early on during the project, he met with Dr. Jason White, who knows a lot about the city's history and its landmarks, at the Crystal Restaurant to talk about what Margolis wanted to do.

Dr. White also took him around Public Square to point out some of the interesting buildings. A few months ago on a trip to the Rochester area, Dr. White stopped at the photographer's gallery and saw the exhibit before its debut at the Franklin Building.

"I think it looks great," he said.

Margolis, who lives in Rochester when he can't be on the St. Lawrence River, has been a professional photographer for nearly 60 years. His photography gallery is among about 40 artist studios in an old factory in Rochester.

For nearly 40 years, he's been photographing the Thousand Islands. His projects include "Boat Houses in the St. Lawrence River"; a poster for Save the River; photographs for "Stone Houses of Jefferson County"; and "Silver and Stone," an exhibit with Barros at the Thousand Islands Arts Center in Clayton; and the book, "Will Salisbury: Sculptor" three years ago.

His photography experience began when he was a journalism student at Kent State University in Ohio.

He was there on the day in May 1968 when the Ohio National Guard shot and killed four Kent State students protesting the expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia.

The Kent State shooting triggered immediate outrage and expanded opposition into the war.

Margolis, who was the yearbook editor that year, remembered taking photos from behind the crowd of students that day.

He knew the two college students whose award-winning photographs captured the massacre that day.

He recalled how Kent State officials later tried to hide that past by planting trees at the spot where the students were killed. Instead, a memorial marks the spot.

After graduating from Kent State a year later, Margolis moved to Rochester to attend Rochester Institute of Technology's famed photography program.

After getting his master's degree, he stayed in Rochester, where he was an aspiring photographer.

In those days, it was hard to make ends meet as a photographer. But Rochester, the home of the Eastman Kodak company, was known as the center of photography, where young photographers got their start.

His early jobs included working for the marketing department for Fashion 220 cosmetics and taking photos of the company's models.

One of his photos landed on the cover of the cosmetics company's sales campaign. From there, he got a lot of work from Rochester developers who hired him to photograph the progress of their construction projects.

From that experience, Margolis got interested in old buildings and his fascination with architectural photography grew.

"I liked taking photographs of objects," he remembered.

Now nearly six decades later, that interest in old buildings eventually led him to Watertown — and finding that the city has so many that he's preserved in his photographs.