At the north end of Keuka Lake, where the water gathers itself and slips quietly into the Keuka Lake Outlet, Penn Yan once hummed with a different kind of shoreline activity. Before wine trails, tasting passports, and weekend visitors, this was a working village — a place of barrels, railcars, and the steady rhythm of industry.
In the late 1800s, the Empire State Wine Company built a large stone winery near the outlet. It wasn’t designed to charm travelers. It was built to work.
The hills around the lake were already covered in grapes, and the lake itself functioned as the region’s highway. Steamboats and wagons delivered harvests to the village, and from here wine was crushed, stored, bottled, and shipped across the country. Thick masonry walls helped regulate temperature long before refrigeration existed. This was production, not presentation — the Finger Lakes wine industry in its first life.
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For decades the building stood as a symbol of Penn Yan’s place in New York’s wine economy. But history has a way of turning pages whether a town is ready or not.
Prohibition struck in 1920, and like many wineries across the region, operations struggled to survive the sudden collapse of legal wine production. The industry never fully returned to its earlier industrial scale. Eventually, in
1956, winery operations closed for good. The building passed into other uses, but the purpose it had been built for was over.
By the late 1980s the structure had deteriorated badly. Preservation efforts were discussed, hopes raised, and plans imagined — but the cost was too great. In
June of 1990, the Empire State Winery Building was demolished.
Except… not entirely.
Before the walls came down, one piece was carefully removed.
The cupola.
For generations it had stood above the roofline, a small architectural crown overlooking the meeting of lake and outlet — watching boats arrive, grapes unload, and a village grow into its identity. When the building disappeared, the cupola became the last physical witness to Penn Yan’s industrial wine era.
And then, for years, it simply waited.
Not forgotten — just waiting for the right moment and the right people
In 2013, local resident Steve Knapp felt that quiet pull of history — the kind many of us recognize but few act on. For years the cupola had sat removed from public view, carefully set aside after the 1990 demolition of the Empire State Wine Company building (later American Legion Post 355). It wasn’t gone… just waiting. And Steve understood something important: Penn Yan didn’t simply lose a building that day — it lost a landmark that once helped tell visitors they had arrived at the heart of a working wine town.
He began asking questions. Then he began making calls.
What started as curiosity quickly became stewardship. Steve assembled an advisory board of neighbors, historians, and community supporters, launched a Facebook page so residents could share memories and photographs, and — alongside Jeff Johnstone — formally established
The Cupola Restoration Project of Penn Yan, NY as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Their mission was simple in words but enormous in meaning: not to recreate history, but to return a real piece of it to the skyline.
Because this cupola once watched over barrels, rail shipments, lake traffic, and generations of workers whose livelihoods were tied to grapes grown on the surrounding hills. It marked industry, community pride, and the era when Penn Yan’s waterfront was alive with commerce instead of memory.
Because sometimes history doesn’t vanish.
Sometimes it waits quietly for a community to remember what it once meant.
And along the water in Penn Yan, a single roofline silhouette carried the story of when the village wasn’t a destination yet — it was the place where the work happened.
Today the organization is working toward reinstalling the cupola near its historic home — at the meeting of Keuka Lake and the Keuka Lake Outlet — restoring a visible marker to the landscape where Penn Yan’s wine industry once lived and breathed.
When it rises again, it won’t just be architectural restoration.
It will be orientation.
A reminder of who we were… and therefore who we still are.
Since 1990, when the Empire State Winery Cupola was saved from demolition, it has stood silently waiting to be restored to its former glory. In its day the illuminated cupola, atop the beautiful stone building, helped guide steamboats into the Keuka Lake Outlet and the Port of Penn Yan, where cargoes of grapes were transferred to waiting railcars bound for New York City. It was not decoration — it was direction. A working light for a working village.
Today, inspired by the vision of those who first saved the cupola and those who continue the effort now, the project is moving forward with architects and local contractors to bring that landmark back to life along the water it once served.
And perhaps that is the real meaning of this restoration.
Not nostalgia — continuity.
The same hills still grow grapes.
The same lake still carries reflections at sunset.
And soon, if the community wills it, the same skyline will once again hold the shape that told travelers and workers alike: this is Penn Yan.
Home to the innovators and the workers — the experimenters who believed grapes could thrive here, the laborers who loaded barrels before sunrise, the captains who followed the light into the outlet, and the families whose lives quietly revolved around harvest seasons and whistle calls.
A skyline is never just architecture.
It is identity drawn against the sky.
To raise the cupola again is to acknowledge that this village was not built only by beauty, but by effort — by hands stained with soil, by risk, by stubborn hope, and by people who showed up every day and did the work that turned a lakeshore into a livelihood.
And perhaps that is why it still matters.
Because when we restore the landmark, we also remember the people who gave it meaning.
Be a Part of Bringing History Home
Support Save the Cupola!
Help restore and place the Empire State Winery Cupola as an investment in the future — and the memory — of Penn Yan.
Donate by Check (Tax-deductible):
Make checks payable to:
The Cupola Restoration Project
Mail to:
The Cupola Restoration Project
P.O. Box 676
Penn Yan, NY 14527
Contact Details
Cupola Restoration Project
P.O. Box 676
Penn Yan, NY 14527
π 315-759-0764
βοΈ SaveTheCupola@gmail.com
π
https://www.savethecupola.com/
A Keuka Roots Thought
Places change. Buildings come and go. But the stories that shaped a village only disappear if we let them. The cupola reminds us that even one small piece of the past can anchor generations — giving children something to point at and say, “That was here before me. My roots are woven in that.”
May we always keep something standing that tells those stories.
Stay Rooted. Stay Keuka.
