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When November rolls around, confectioners’ sugar, flour, piping tips and more fill Kimberly Flomerfelt-Puc’s kitchen. Cardboard cutouts turn into gingerbread walls, and soon she’ll have an elaborate house to take to the Erie Canal Museum.

“During the month that I’m making it, I can go eight hours and just be lost in the creation of it,” Flomerfelt-Puc said. “It’s stress-free and just a really nice way to spend my time.”

This year is the 40th anniversary of the Erie Canal Museum’s Gingerbread Gallery, which runs from Nov. 21 to Jan. 11. Every winter, dozens of participants build intricate gingerbread houses to showcase in a special exhibit at the museum. Some builders, like Flomerfelt-Puc, enter in the professional confectioners category of the competition, meaning she bakes all the gingerbread from scratch.

This year, her house is modeled after a dollhouse she found at an antique sale, which she deconstructed and used the walls as a template. Since the Erie Canal turns 200 years old this year, she said she wanted to emulate the supply stores that were found along the canal. Each room in her gingerbread house is decorated with ornate details, like tiny food products and price tags.

“Sometimes less is more, but in gingerbread houses, more is better,” Flomerfelt-Puc said.

What started as a way to get the museum more active during the holidays has now become a staple tradition for many in the Syracuse community, like Flomerfelt-Puc. Debbie Stack, a local who worked at the Erie Canal Museum for over 40 years ago, conceptualized the gingerbread gallery with a team in 1985.

During its first year in 1985, the Erie Canal Museum modeled the gallery after an 1800s-style street that the gingerbread houses could line. Most of the houses were from local bakeries, but soon they opened their doors to anyone who wanted to participate.

“It was just you know, ‘Hey, you like to do it. We’d like to have you,’” Stack said. “The community really responded to it.”

Draped with fairy lights and Christmas ornaments, the Erie Canal Museum Gingerbread Gallery features gingerbread houses modeled after movies and tributes to the Erie Canal’s history. The Gingerbread Gallery was first conceptualized in 1985 as a way to expand its outreach during the holiday season. Joe Zhao | Senior Staff Photographer

In her time working at the museum, Stack and her team began to run other holiday programming events alongside the gallery to expand its outreach. They previously incorporated weekend entertainment like live music and organized a workshop for children to make their own graham cracker gingerbread houses. It made the gallery cross-generational — grandparents could bring their grandchildren for a fun holiday event, she said.

“Kids would walk out so thrilled and of course their mouths were full of gumdrops,” Stack said. “They ate as much as they built.”

Forty years later, the gallery still attracts community participants. Syracuse native Jane Verostek and her daughters Octavia and Minerva Miller have been crafting houses for around 17 years, almost the girls’ entire lives. For each house, Octavia and her sister pick the theme — usually a movie or book they’ve recently enjoyed — and Verostek does the “dirty work” of making the house and its characters.

“It’s always something that I look forward to, and it’s always something that’s in the back of my head, like, ‘Oh, what are we gonna do next year?’” Verostek said.

In the past, they’ve recreated “Shrek”, “Ice Age” and more. This year, their pick was the characters from “Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!”, a callback to their childhood and a Mother’s Day gift the daughters gave to Verostek this year. Verostek made the pigeons, elephant and hot dogs out of fondant to assemble the house. It’s a long process; Verostek often works over 12 hours a day on the house, but the result is always worth it, she said.

One of the only rules for the gallery is that everything making up the house must be edible. To accentuate their houses, participants like Flomerfelt-Puc and Verostek get creative with the ingredients and construction methods.

When their theme was “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” in 2013, Verostek used three real potatoes for the “Hippotatomuses.” When they built the Shrek house in 2022, Verostek sourced not just candy, but also other additions like dried fruits and vegetables from Wegmans to make the plants in the marsh. The family was especially excited because it was the first year their house was displayed in the center of the gallery, Verostek said.

Sisters Octavia and Minerva Miller would choose the theme of the gingerbread house before their mother, Jane Verostek, makes the house herself. The sisters decided on characters from the book “Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!” Joe Zhao | Senior Staff Photographer

Their family has always been creative; they often bond over art and go to museums like the Erie Canal Museum, Octavia said. Making the gingerbread houses is a way to channel that, and it’s a fun tradition that keeps the holiday season special, Verostek said.

“It’s like, ‘Why would we stop?’” Octavia said. “I would feel empty without it.”

The ingenuity of all the houses is one of the reasons there’s never a set theme for the gallery, Stack said. Every year, participants come up with all kinds of ideas, from movie-set replications to tributes to the Erie Canal’s history. Being able to see all the thought and hard work that goes into each distinct house is part of the fun, Stack said.

“For some people, … it was a family tradition to bake gingerbread and they made their gingerbread creations the way they do,” Stack said. “You don’t want to stifle that.”

Flomerfelt-Puc has competed in the gallery since 2022, but recalls admiring the houses on museum visits years before. Last year, she won first place for her gingerbread replica of Crouse Hinds Hall, and dedicated it to the Syracuse Orchestra. The year before that she did a “Wizard of Oz” house that won her People’s Choice.

Gingerbread house making had been a custom in Flomerfelt-Puc’s family long before she branched off to participate in the Erie Canal Museum gallery. Every winter, all her extended family come from every corner of the country to make houses together, she said.

To decorate her houses for the Erie Canal Museum, she uses a set of 70 different icing tips that she inherited from her mom, who is a baker. Though she works alone, it always gives her time to reflect on memories with her family, she said.

“I also just have a sense of pride when I go there with my family and they’re very complimentary,” Flomerfelt-Puc said.

Because the gallery is centered around the holidays, it’s become a way to bring participants and the community joy, Stack said. Seeing the success of the gallery is a testament to the “silent partner” that is the Syracuse community, she said.

When the gallery opens, the museum is livelier than ever, and it’s a way to bring in new visitors every year, rather than just once every 10 years, Stack said. People make more regular visits to the museum for the exhibit, she said.

Verostek and her family always go to the Erie Canal Museum the day after Thanksgiving to see the houses wearing matching holiday pajamas. They make it a whole day activity, and it’s rewarding to see all the hard work pay off, Verostek said.

“It’s always fun to just take a step back and watch all the other people looking at it,” she said.

The Erie Canal Museum has been an important museum in Syracuse’s history for years, and the gingerbread gallery only makes it more special, Stack said. It’s a “good for everyone” exhibit, and she hopes it can keep bringing people and cultures together.

“It’s demonstrated that if museums do things right, you become a community connector as well as a community treasure,” Stack said.

Published on December 10, 2025 at 9:22 pm