The Main Street Historic District in Medina, New York, United States, is the downtown commercial core of the village.

Its buildings, all but three of which contribute to its historic character, reflect the development of Medina from the early days of the canal, where a bend in the route made it a natural harbor, in the 1830s to the 1920s.

Two years later, a rail freight depot at the south end was added when further research established that it was historically related to other buildings in the district.

It then returns to the rear lines of the east side of Main, following the CSX railroad tracks back to the street.

The district takes in the large railroad complex, excluding the hardware store on the corner with West Avenue, which it follows north to just past the tracks.

After that the boundary crosses the street again and takes in the old train station building,[3] then turns north at the back of City Hall to follow rear property lines on the east side of Main, including the buildings with frontage on the east side of Proctor Place.

Within a few years some houses had sprung up for canal workers near the bend, and by 1825 the area in the northeastern portion of the district known as the docks, had been well developed, with a general store.

[2] In 1823 the Holland Land Company, the original European owners of much of Western New York, sent Ebenezer Mix to survey and lay out a village at the Ridgeway-Shelby town line.

In addition to the canal it had good waterpower on Oak Orchard Creek (two mill races, one of which is reportedly still intact underground, ran along today's Main Street) and fertile land surrounding it.

At the same time the Rochester, Lockport and Buffalo Railroad offered electric trolley service that passed through Medina on tracks running along East Center, up Main and then to Commercial Street and east along a private right-of-way to Salt Works Road and then to West Center.

The most architecturally distinguished building in the district, Bent's Opera House at the northwest corner of Main and Center, is an early product of this period.

So prosperous was Medina during this period that residents named the new municipal building in 1908 City Hall, out of the expectation that the village, now with a population of 5,000, would eventually become one.

[2] The district's boundaries contain 54 buildings, one structure (the railroad tracks) and one site (Rotary Park, at the southeast corner of Main and Center).

[4] Businesses, many of which were independent and owned the space they operated from, represented a diverse group of activities, primarily retail goods and services.

They came to downtown a few times a month and were most likely otherwise to go to a big box retailer, shops in nearby towns like Albion or Middleport or malls in the Buffalo area to the southwest.

Specific measures that were suggested to address the issues were several measures to instill pride in the historic downtown, such as the redistribution of sections of the Register application to promote awareness of the district's historic qualities, a window display program in vacant storefronts, making property owners aware of the tax credits available to them for renovating income-producing property, and the creation of a Business Improvement District.