Public Square, Watertown
Downtown Watertown's Public Square on a live webcam, the heart of Jefferson County in northern New York.
About this view
Public Square is the centre of downtown Watertown, the seat of Jefferson County in northern New York, and this live camera looks over it: the long plaza at its middle, the traffic circling it and the nineteenth-century commercial blocks around it.
Watertown grew on the water power of the Black River, which drops through the city in a run of falls and rapids, and on the mills that power drove. The square carries the town's best-known story: in 1878 a young clerk named Frank Woolworth, working in a store here, set up a counter of goods all priced at five cents, the idea that became the five-and-dime chain. The square and its buildings are listed together as a historic district.
Watertown keeps Eastern Time, UTC−5, UTC−4 in summer, so the evening traffic here falls in the European night. Some 25,000 people live in the city; lake-effect snow off Lake Ontario makes the winters long, and summer evenings are when the square is liveliest.
