64 Center Street

This house was built in 1854 for Luke and Abba Douglas and sold the same year to Mr. and Mrs. John F. Bishop.  They added the mansard roof in 1874. John Bishop came to Geneseo in 1837 as a clerk in the dry goods store of Lyman Turner.  He later became a partner in the business. He was appointed Postmaster under President Hayes; a position he held for two terms.  He then returned to business, retiring about two years before his death in 1895.  After Mrs. Bishop’s death in 1903, the house was owned and occupied by their son, William, and his wife, the former Sara Booth.  William Bishop was employed as an abstract clerk in the County Clerk’s Office where “his knowledge and ability in his office were almost uncanny.”  Mrs. Bishop died in 1915 and after Mr. Bishop’s death in 1924, the house passed to their only son, John A. Bishop and his wife Dorothy who lived there until 1952 when they sold the house to J. Howard and F. Virginia Brown.  Thus, for almost a century, this was known in Geneseo as “the Bishop House.”