Solar Panels in Pittsford's Historic District: 4 Applications

On the evening of May 28, three rooftop solar applications came before the Village of Pittsford Historic Preservation Board. Three different things happened. Together with a fourth decision last October, they are the clearest record we have of how Pittsford historic district solar panels actually get decided — and the record is more considered than I expected.

One application was withdrawn after it was determined the panels would not be visible from a public way, which meant the Board had no jurisdiction. One was denied. One received two votes in favor and one against, and failed anyway.

That is not a story about a board getting something wrong. Read the minutes and what comes through is volunteers working carefully through a genuinely hard question, one property at a time, on a night when only three of five members could be there. What is the right way to think about solar on a house in a historic village? Pittsford is not the first place to ask. So I went looking — at our own record first, then at what a comparable village has done.

Four Applications, Ten Months

Four Applications, Ten Months

The May meeting was not the beginning. Going back through the Board's minutes, four solar applications have come before it since September 2025.

The first was 19 Boughton Avenue — an eight-module, roughly four-kilowatt array, flush-mounted on the rear southwest-facing roof of a 1970s addition to a house dating to about 1900, with black panels chosen to match the existing roof. The Board deferred it in September and approved it 4–1 in October. The written findings are worth noting: the addition was not original to the structure, the installation was reversible, the panels were low-profile and minimally visible from public ways, and the application aligned with sustainability objectives in the Village's Comprehensive Plan.

Then came May 28 — a meeting that had itself been rescheduled after the Board could not reach a quorum on its original date. The Chair opened by noting that only three members were present, the bare minimum for action, and told applicants they could proceed or come back before a larger board. All of them chose to proceed.

Sixty-three South Street was denied, with findings citing visibility from public ways and coverage of multiple roof planes that would significantly alter the appearance of the structure. Sixty-five South Street was withdrawn once it was determined the panels were not visible from a public way. And 15 Maple drew two votes in favor and one against — which, under Chapter 112 § 112-4F(3), is not enough. An affirmative vote of a majority of the full Board is required to approve any matter, and on a five-member board that means three votes no matter how many people are in the room.

Here is what each application actually received:

That is the whole of it. Not a pattern of inconsistency — four different sets of facts producing four different answers.

What the Pittsford Historic District Solar Panel Criteria Actually Say

What the Pittsford Historic District Solar Panel Criteria Actually Say

Here is the thing I did not expect to find, and nearly got wrong.

My assumption going in was that Pittsford had no written solar policy — that each application was argued from scratch against the general compatibility standards in the Code. That is not true. Filed in the Board's 2025 meeting materials, and handed out at both the September and October meetings, is a document titled Criteria for Design Principles for Installation of Solar Harvesting Resources on Historic Pittsford Village Buildings, Structures and Resources. Twelve numbered criteria. The October minutes record members debating an application's compliance with "Village solar principles," and the May minutes refer to "the Village solar guidelines." They were using it.

The criteria open with a basic principle: the historic character of all properties in the Village is to be considered, retained and preserved when any solar application is reviewed. Then twelve numbered items, of which these matter most to a homeowner:

• Every Village building — commercial or residential, old or new construction — counts as a historic resource for solar purposes.
• Roof-mounted systems should have no, or very minimal, visibility from any public way.
• Solar shingles are treated differently: they may be visible from a public way if applied to the roof like ordinary shingles, non-reflective, and similar in look and color to the non-solar shingles around them.
• Where minimally visible panels are approved, they must sit parallel to the roof, protrude as little as possible, and stay below the roofline of a primary façade.
• Systems that cannot be seen from the ground will generally meet the Secretary of the Interior's Standards for Rehabilitation.
• Installations must be reversible, leaving no damage to historic fabric if removed later.
• Ground-mounted systems are encouraged in inconspicuous, screened locations.
• There is a stated order of preference: new buildings and additions first, then existing non-historic additions or accessory structures.

Sort the twelve by what they actually govern and something interesting appears:

Only two of the twelve are about visibility from a public way. Yet visibility is what nearly every decision turns on — because it is the criterion that most often decides whether the Board has anything to review at all.

The criteria also mix their verbs. Several say shall. The visibility criterion says should. That is not sloppiness; it is the difference between a rule and a judgment, and it is why four applications produced four answers.

Most volunteer boards never write their reasoning down. This one did.

That is a real gift, and worth naming: it means an applicant can know something about how a proposal will be received before spending money on a design.

Where the Word "Visible" Comes From

Where the Word "Visible" Comes From

The 65 South Street outcome rests on a distinction worth understanding, because the Village Code states it in two places and does not state it identically.

Chapter 210 § 210-23.2A, the zoning law, is the cleaner of the two. It requires a certificate of appropriateness for the construction or exterior alteration of any building, structure, or architectural feature in the Historic District that is, in any respect, visible from a public street, park, the Erie Canal, or any other space accessible to the public. Read plainly, the visibility test governs both construction and alteration.

Chapter 112 § 112-5A puts the same words in a different order — requiring a certificate for the alteration of any exterior architectural feature of any building in the Village, and for construction of any building in the Village that is visible from those same places. Read strictly, the visibility qualifier attaches to construction, and alteration carries no visibility limit at all.

That is a genuine ambiguity, not an error by anyone. Chapter 112 also exempts ordinary maintenance and repair that does not change design, material, color or outward appearance, with the Building Inspector deciding what qualifies — a separate off-ramp that turns on whether something changes, not on who can see it.

One clarification that matters locally: the Village of Pittsford and the Town of Pittsford are separate governments with separate codes and separate boards. If you are reading rules about historic review, check which one you are reading. It is an easy thing to mix up, and the answer differs.

How a Village of Comparable Size Answered It

How a Village of Comparable Size Answered It

Most places that have wrestled with this are cities, and comparisons to New Orleans only go so far. Cooperstown, New York is a closer fit — and the structural resemblance is striking.

Cooperstown's zoning law establishes a Historic and Architectural Control Overlay District encompassing the entire Village, just as Pittsford's Trustees placed the entirety of the Village within a historic district and the H District covers the whole of its corporate limits. Both are governed by five-member appointed boards. Both boards seat a quorum of three. Both villages sit inside National Register districts.

Cooperstown made one choice Pittsford has not. Written into the zoning section governing its historic overlay is a subsection on energy efficiency stating that conservation and reuse of existing buildings, greening the existing building stock, and reinvestment in older communities are important components of energy conservation and combating climate change — and that the section "shall not presumptively prohibit the utilization of renewable energy, green materials or energy conservation technologies for any property." The same subsection says such work should still be assessed for negative impact on historic character, and that character-defining features must not be obscured, damaged or destroyed.

That is a starting presumption, written into law. Pittsford's equivalent thinking exists too — but it operates differently. Chapter 112 directs the Board to apply the Secretary of the Interior's Standards, any regulations adopted by the Trustees, the Village Design Guidelines, and "any other locally developed standards for review." That gives the Board more than one place to stand. Which of those the solar criteria rest on — a regulation the Trustees adopted, or the locally developed standards catch-all — is not something the public record settles. And it is the difference between guidance the Board chose to follow and a rule the Village voted for.

Since the solar criteria were written, the Village has taken its sustainability record to the state level. In September 2025 the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation certified the Village of Pittsford as a newly bronze-level Climate Smart Community. Worth repeating the caution from earlier: this is the Village. The Town earned its own bronze certification back in 2022, and the two are constantly mistaken for each other. Mayor Alysa Plummer says the Village is also a Clean Energy Community and is closing in on silver certification.

So the commitment is real and documented. It simply lives in state programs and Village practice rather than in the historic preservation code. Cooperstown wrote its version into the zoning law. Pittsford put its version to work nearly everywhere else.

Cooperstown's code differs in two other ways worth knowing. It gives its board 62 days from a complete application to approve, deny, or approve with modifications, with a public hearing mandatory only for demolition. And its supplementary regulations name solar energy systems explicitly as requiring a certificate of appropriateness. The word "solar" does not appear anywhere in Pittsford's Chapter 112.

Pittsford has no statutory clock. So how long does it actually take?

Every one of them came in under a deadline Pittsford is not subject to. That is worth saying plainly: the Board is already moving faster than the benchmark, without being made to.

One thing I cannot tell you: whether Cooperstown's rules would have produced a different result at 15 Maple. Its code sets a quorum of three but states no separate voting threshold, and New York's General Construction Law generally requires a majority of the whole body for public bodies anyway. That is a legal question, not something to infer from a code page.

Mayor Plummer says she thinks the Cooperstown code has merit and deserves further review by the Trustees, alongside more contemporary municipal codes — a review that makes sense to her as the technology changes quickly.

Questions a Neighbor Might Ask

Questions a Neighbor Might Ask

If my panels cannot be seen from any street, do I still need a certificate of appropriateness? That is the question 65 South Street raised, and the Board's answer that night was no — not visible from a public way meant no jurisdiction. But Chapter 112 and Chapter 210 do not phrase the test identically, so the safe move is to ask the Building Inspector before you order equipment, not after.

Are solar shingles treated differently from panels? Yes, and this surprises people. The Village's criteria allow solar shingles to be visible from a public way if they are applied like ordinary shingles, non-reflective, and similar in look and color to the surrounding roof. Panels get the visibility test; shingles get a compatibility test.

What about ground-mounted systems? The criteria do not merely tolerate them — they encourage ground-mounted systems in inconspicuous locations, screened from public view. If your roof faces the wrong way, the yard may be the easier path.

Mayor Alysa Plummer raised an analogy I hadn't considered, and it reframed the question for me.

The Village's historic streetlamps are no longer filled with whale oil or lit by gas. They carry LED fixtures now — safer, more efficient, and consistent with the Village's clean energy commitments. The fittings are historic. What's inside them is not.

"It is a use of a modern technology with historic fittings that still enables our village to tell the story of our past."

— Mayor Alysa Plummer, in written comments to Pittsford Village Chat, July 2026

She also points out something easy to miss on an evening walk: the Village has plenty of thoroughly contemporary streetlights too. Do those change how Pittsford reads as historic — or do we simply appreciate a well-lit street on the way home?

From there she offers two questions, and she offers them as questions rather than positions. First: does installing solar panels in the best manner the guidelines allow so negatively affect a historic property that it no longer reads as historic, or of a period of significance, within the Village? Second: if a majority of homes across our neighborhoods carried removable panels, would we stop recognizing those houses for their character, their architectural detail, and what each one contributes to the fabric of the community?

That word removable is doing quiet work. Reversibility is already one of the twelve criteria — an installation must leave no damage to historic fabric if it comes off later. A panel that can be removed is a different kind of change than a window that cannot be put back.

Neither question has an obvious answer, which is presumably why she asked them rather than answered them.

What Happens Next

What Happens Next

The 15 Maple application returned to the Board's June packet and again to its July 20 agenda as continued business. Minutes for those meetings had not been posted when this was written, and the Board's meeting recordings are on the Village's website for anyone who would rather watch the discussion than read the summary.

It is worth seeing what an evening in front of this board actually looks like:

Eleven applications in one evening, worked through by three people who volunteered for it.

The Historic Preservation Board meets monthly, and its meetings are open. Its members took the trouble to write down what they think about a question most communities argue about without ever committing anything to paper. Whether those criteria stay guidance or become something more formal is a decision for the Village — and the people best positioned to shape it are the ones who show up.

What would it mean for your street if the answer got decided by the neighbors who bothered to attend?