Montreal Construction Co. has begun turning a former pasta sauce factory, one of the oldest buildings in Syracuse’s lakefront area, into apartments and office space.
Workers have begun building out 14 apartments on the upper two floors of the former Ventre Packing Co. building at 373 Spencer St., on the east side of Onondaga Creek. The first floor of the three-story building will contain 9,000 square feet of office space.
The building was erected around 1896, making it one of the oldest buildings in the area south of Onondaga Lake and older by a few years than most of the buildings in nearby Franklin Square, said Dennis Connors, curator of history for the Onondaga Historical Association.
It originally housed the PB&H Molding Co., a manufacturer of picture frames and wood molding founded in 1888 by moulders George Papworth and Philip Burkhart and financier Edward Hall, Connors said. The company moved to DeWitt in 1976 and only ceased operations in 2012.