Pulaski’s downtown grew from land laid out in 1810 as a militia drill field, following the formation of a militia under Thomas Meacham in 1811, the designation of Pulaski as the eastern seat of county government in 1816, and the construction of the first courthouse in Oswego County in 1817. A log cabin tavern was erected at the corner of Salina and Lewis Streets in 1804, a steel framed Short Bridge was erected in 1825, the village was renamed from Fishville to Pulaski in 1830, incorporated in 1832, and its downtown area and two parks were laid out by William Dewey in 1837. After an 1881 fire destroyed all buildings in the business district, most of the present downtown was rebuilt, with eighteen of twenty-three downtown buildings constructed between 1882 and 1901 in fire resistant materials and ornate classical styles, and the first Long Bridge erected in 1887. The district also reflects the influence of prominent local families and businesses: Charles Tollner built a water-powered box factory in 1875 and started the community’s first electric and natural gas companies; James Clark and Charles Clark formed a bank in 1862 and built the present bank in 1882; in 1887 Ella M. Clark became the first female president of a national bank in the United States; the Moody family supported a library in Pulaski Academy, and Harry Moody served on Woolworth’s Board of Directors and as president of the People’s National Bank; John Ben Snow, grandson of Benjamin Snow who came to Pulaski in 1832, benefited the village through the Snow Foundation, including the erection of the Snow Memorial Building. Formed in 1983, the district preserves one of the most intact clusters of nineteenth- and twentieth-century residential and commercial buildings in northern New York, with boundaries that closely follow the original drill field, and it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.