There is a great site you can use to help locate historical New York State directories.

It is simply called “New York Online Historical Directories” and it is organized by county. When you click on your county you will see what is available by decade and the source for the directory.

https://sites.google.com/site/onlinedirectorysite/Home/usa/ny

Some of the directories are on pay sites and that is indicated by a “$”. But many of them are free.

A note about the directories on Ancestry.com – If you have a paid subscription you will have acces to about 120 city directories. However, if you use the version of Ancestry.com available for free in our library, you will still have access to about 55 directories for New York.

One omission on the site is that it does not include any listings from the web site Fold3.com. This is a subscription site but it is worth mentioning that Fold3.com has city directories for Rochester from 1861 – 1899; Buffalo from 1828 and 1861-1923; Brooklyn from 1862 – 1900 and 1902- 1913 and New York County, 1786 – 1922.