Hornell, New York

• W2: Christina Hancock (R) • W3: John Allison (D) • W4: Mike Morey (R) • W5: Daniel Warriner (R) • W6: Jessica Cleveland (R) • W7: Kevin Valentine (R) • W8: James M. Bassage (R) • W9: Robert Colucci (R) Hornell is a city in Steuben County, New York, United States.

It had two radio stations, WWHG and WLEA, and three movie theaters - the Steuben and the Majestic were located on Broadway, the Hornell on Main Street.

President Millard Fillmore, himself a native of western New York, and Secretary of State Daniel Webster rode through Hornell on the inaugural train.

According to an 1882 traveler's guide to the Erie Railroad, in Hornell "There are an immense amount of side-tracks, ample engine-houses, repair-shops, and other railroad structures, as the village is the dividing-point of the Susquehanna and Western Divisions, and the point of junction of the Buffalo Division of the Erie Railway....

It has banks, newspapers, a nourishing library association, which maintains a course of popular lectures, and is one of the most efficient and attractive institutions of the kind in the interior of the State.

"[9] In 1895 the Erie constructed "at the foot of Pine Street...an immense stock barn" for the large number of cattle being shipped east on its trains.

[10] For the next hundred years Hornell enjoyed prosperity, with its steam engine shop doing the repairs for the entire Erie line.

The most important point in town was the train station, which survives and since 2005 houses the Hornell Erie Depot Museum.

Next to it were the police station and fire department, at the beginning of Broadway, a wide street with stores, a luncheonette, and the Steuben and Majestic Theaters.

Heading south, Broadway ended at Canisteo Street just before it passed under the tracks, a route served for some decades by the Hornell Traction Company.

At the five-way intersection just north of the underpass, where Broadway began, Canisteo Street ran northwestward.

On the east side was a storefront Greyhound station (service Elmira – Corning – Bath – Hornell – Batavia – Buffalo, no direct service to Rochester); on the west side was Hornell's main park, Union Park, destroyed by the Hornell Arterial, with the city's high school (middle school after new high school built), containing the city's largest auditorium, and other businesses.

North of Main Street the downtown area extended another block with the city's pharmacy, Jacobson's, a shoe store, the United States Post Office (all now [2009] vacant), and the Steuben Trust Company (bank).

In 1922, after a recruitment talk by "KKK organizer C. S. Fowler... at the local Grand Army of the Republic hall, the Klan announced its existence by igniting a huge cross on the side of a mountain, a demonstration evidently intended to intimidate the community's sizable immigrant population.

The Erie Accounting Office, in Hornell, was closed and its work transferred to the Lackawanna headquarters in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

In 1972, flooding from Hurricane Agnes destroyed about 200 miles (320 km) of roadbed along the Canisteo River, removing all hope of reoperating the railroad line southeast of Hornell.

Today, the Hornell shops are a major employer, serving as Alstom's main North American assembly and manufacturing site, at which AC traction motors, railway cars, and passenger locomotives are produced.

Alstom won a contract worth $194 million to completely overhaul PATCO Speedline's light rail fleet, beginning in 2011.

[14][15] In January 2021, the plant won a $1.8bn contract to build new passenger railcars for Metra, which is expected to create 250 additional jobs.

Neither of these streets were adequate for the increased automobile and truck traffic which accompanied the decline of the railroad, and they could not be easily expanded.

"The highway required the demolition of 245 houses and many commercial buildings, split the city in half, and sacrificed Hornell's Union Park.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 2.7 square miles (7.0 km2), all land.

Main Street, Hornell in the 1920s
The 2011 Saint Patrick's Day parade in Hornell.
Former Erie Railway repair shop in Hornell. View is looking north towards downtown Hornell. Note the rotating train turntable and the Canisteo River . Photo from 1971.
The Canisteo Street underpass of the Erie Railroad tracks, early 20th century. View is looking north towards downtown.
The Hornell Erie Depot Museum, photographed in July 2013
Canacadea Creek, a tributary of the Canisteo River in a residential neighborhood of Hornell.
Main Street, looking east, 1908