How did Church Street get its name? This building holds the key.
On Church Street, a building holds a bicentennial, and the history is surprising.
Positively Saratoga
This exciting Positively Saratoga news is brought to you by our friends at the Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce. Lauren Behan works with the Chamber.
A Spa City building is marking its 200th birthday, and its inhabitants are thrilled to celebrate the occasion.
The folks at Country Corner Cafe recently hosted a 200th anniversary event for its beloved building set at the corner of Church Street and Woodlawn Avenue in downtown Saratoga Springs.
“My love for the building began before I even bought the business. I dined here as a customer and knew it was so special,” said owner Julee O’Callaghan, who was intrigued to discover the businesses at the site have been women-owned since 1939.
“This building holds so much rich history in Saratoga Springs and we are so lucky to call it the home of Country Corner Cafe,” O’Callaghan said.
The cafe’s previous owner Roseanne Hotaling along with Saratoga Springs Mayor John Safford and New York State Sen. Jim Tedisco all joined for the bicentennial celebration.
Samantha Bosshart, executive director of the Saratoga Springs Preservation Foundation, was in attendance as well, with lots of history to share about 25 Church St.
A foundation plaque on the 1825 building explains that the whole street is named after this structure, which was originally a Universalist Church, but for its bicentennial O’Callaghan and Bosshart dove a little deeper into its history.
“Not many would ever have guessed that the building had originally served as a church,” Bosshart said.
"Julee's enthusiasm to learn more about the history of the building that her business was located in was infectious,” she continued. “We were happy to assist her in learning more so she could share it with her customers.”
After it’s short-lived time as a church, the building became a boarding house for “restorationists,” whose goal was to restore the original teachings of Christianity.
Its role as a commercial hotspot began in 1880 when a grocery and tobacco store opened. The year 1939 began the era of women-owned businesses at the property, including general store Kaye’s Newsroom run by Betty Kaye, then Anthony’s Country Kitchen operated by the Fitzgerald sisters, and finally Country Corner Cafe, founded by Hotaling in 1991.
Today, O’Callaghan is the woman whose entrepreneurial spirit occupies 25 Church St., and she is delighted to run her restaurant in such a beautiful, historical place.
The Saratoga Springs Preservation Foundation publicly thanked O’Callaghan for recognizing the building’s importance, and the owners, the Braim Family, for being good stewards of the building as “historic buildings make Saratoga Springs special and help to remind people of those who came before us."
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