I am trying to write a program in C# that will connect to an FTP site, download a .gz that contains hundreds of files, extract those files to a local folder, then close the connection.   Are there any examples available of this being done?  Do I have to write it in two steps: 

1) FTP download file to local folder

2) Extract the files

Or is it possible to extract it in the stream?  I am very new at this whole stream and compression thing, so any help would be appreciated! 

You can use the FtpClient.ReceiveFile( String, Stream ) method overload, which will permit you to receive the file into a stream.  You can wrap a MemoryFile around that stream, and use that MemoryFile to extract the files to the local disk.