I wrote back in January about the possible fate of the Seymour Pottery Shop, the little wooden one-and-a-half-story building on the southeast corner of Ferry and Fourth Street.

I was hoping the owners would be creative — knowing the site would become another taco eatery — and that they would pay homage to the building’s original purpose. What was I thinking? Let me reinterate the history.

Noted preservationist, museum exhibit designer, and historic building restorer Carl Erickson dubbed that area around Ferry and Fourth the “Pottery District.” He knows. He renovated a building (The Pumpkin House) next to St Ann’s Church. He has singly handily renovated about a dozen historic buildings in Troy. We met back in 1974 when the Troy Savings Bank was trying to tear down a historic building at 50 Second so the president of the bank could park his caddy there.

RPI Professor Bill Brower didn’t think it wise and organized what was probably Troy’s first real protest over historic preservation. Carl and I and others picketed the bank.

The bank president is gone along with the bank. The historic building is still there. It might have been the first successful preservation fight in Troy.

This area saw more than a dozen pottery makers making pottery for 80 some years........

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