The Ellwanger Estate

Rochester’s His­tory

Rochester — High Falls

Rochester is a city in the Fin­ger Lakes region of New York state.  Rochester is known as the “Flour City” and the “Flower City.” It began as a small vil­lage around a flour mill. When the Erie Canal was built through Rochester, the city became a major trade cen­ter for grain shipped from the Mid­west to the East, as well as the sup­plies that were shipped back to the Mid­west. Rochester’s strate­gic loca­tion on the Gene­see river allowed for the con­struc­tion of numer­ous flour mills in the city.

On Novem­ber 8, , a 100 acre (ca. 40 ) tract in West­ern New York along the Gene­see River was pur­chased by Colonel Nathaniel Rochester, Major Charles Car­roll, and Colonel William Fitzhugh, all of Hager­stown, Mary­land. The site was cho­sen because of three cataracts on the Gene­see, offer­ing great poten­tial for water power. Begin­ning in 1811, and with a pop­u­la­tion of 15, the three founders sur­veyed the land and laid out streets and tracts. In 1817, the Brown broth­ers and other landown­ers joined their lands with the Hun­dred Acre Tract to form the vil­lage of Rochesterville.

Erie Canal as it was built in 1842, replac­ing the orig­i­nal con­struc­tion from 1823. In the 1920s, the Broad Street Bridge was erected on top of it.  By 1821, Rochester­ville was the seat of Mon­roe County. In 1823, Rochester­ville con­sisted of 1,012 acres (4 km2) and 2,500 res­i­dents, and the Vil­lage of Rochester­ville became known as Rochester. Also in 1823, the Erie Canal aque­duct over the Gene­see River was com­pleted, and the Erie Canal east to the Hud­son River was opened.

Later, after the advent of rail­roads, the pres­ence of the canal in the cen­ter city became both­er­some, and it was re-routed south of Rochester. By 1830, Rochester’s pop­u­la­tion was 9,200 and in 1834, it was re-chartered as a city.

High­land Park — Lilac Festival

Rochester was first known as “The Young Lion of the West”, and then as the “Flour City”. By 1838, Rochester was the largest flour-producing city in the United States. Hav­ing dou­bled its pop­u­la­tion in only ten years, Rochester became America’s first “boomtown.”

In 1847, Fred­er­ick Dou­glass founded the abo­li­tion­ist news­pa­per The North Star in Rochester. Dou­glass, a for­mer slave and an anti­slav­ery speaker and writer, gained a cir­cu­la­tion of over 4,000 read­ers in the United States, Europe and the Caribbean. The North Star served as a forum for abo­li­tion­ist views.

Thanks to the phil­an­thropy of George East­man, the indus­tri­al­ist who lived in Rochester and founded sev­eral world-renowned insti­tu­tions, Rochester is home to the East­man Kodak Co., the East­man School of Music, and the George East­man House Inter­na­tional Museum of Pho­tog­ra­phy and Film.

Rochester has a his­tory of pro­gres­sivism. Large num­bers of freed slaves lived in the city and Fred­er­ick Douglass’s paper, The North Star was printed there. Susan B. Anthony hailed from Rochester and her influ­ence helped lead the Uni­ver­sity of Rochester to accept women in 1900.

Since World War II, Rochester saw a decline in pop­u­la­tion but has also seen peri­ods of urban renewal funded by indus­try, such as Xerox. In the 60’s and 70’s, the city became known as the lead­ing Jazz town in upstate New York. Today, the city holds its annual Inter­na­tional Jazz Fes­ti­val every June.

In the early 20th cen­tury, Rochester became a cen­ter of the gar­ment indus­try, par­tic­u­larly men’s fash­ions. It was home of enter­prises such as Fash­ion Park and Hickey-Freeman. It was home to the pio­neer­auto­mo­bile com­pany Cun­ning­ham, pro­duced by car­riage maker James Cun­ning­ham and Sons.

Park lands

High­land Park — Reser­voir Foun­tain — ©Matthew D. Wil­son 2007

The city’s Vic­to­rian era Mt. Hope Ceme­tery includes the final rest­ing place of Susan B. Anthony, Fred­er­ick Dou­glass, and George Bald­win Selden. Other scenic ceme­ter­ies are Holy Sepul­chre and its neigh­bor the River­side Ceme­tery. Rochester is also known for its parks, includ­ing the High­land Park, Cobb’s Hill Park, Durand-Eastman Park, Gene­see Val­ley Park, Maple­wood Park, Edger­ton Park, Seneca Park and Ontario Beach Park. Lam­ber­ton Con­ser­va­tory from 1911 in the High­land Park.

The city has 13 full-time recre­ation cen­ters, 19 swim­ming pro­grams, 3 arti­fi­cial ice rinks, 66 softball/baseball fields, 47 ten­nis courts, 5 foot­ball fields, 7 soc­cer fields, and 43 out­door bas­ket­ball courts. As a legacy of its time as “The Flower City”, Rochester hosts a Lilac Fes­ti­val for ten days every May, when nearly 400 vari­eties of lilacs bloom, and 100,000 vis­i­tors arrive.

Fes­ti­vals

Rochester has a num­ber of fes­ti­vals, many of which occur in late spring and through­out the sum­mer. These include the Rochester Inter­na­tional Jazz Fes­ti­val, estab­lished in 2002; the Corn Hill Fes­ti­val (arts, crafts, and food in this Third Ward neigh­bor­hood); the Rochester-High Falls Inter­na­tional Film Fes­ti­val; Clothes­line Art Fes­ti­val (artists from the region dis­play their works on the grounds of the Memo­r­ial Art Gallery); Park Avenue Mer­chants Fes­ti­val; Lilac Fes­ti­val at High­land Park; St. Patrick’s Day parade (March); Rose Fes­ti­val at Maple­wood Park; Irish fes­ti­val (Sep­tem­ber); two Greek fes­ti­vals — one on East Avenue (in June) and one on South Avenue (in Auguest); Gay Pride Fes­ti­val (July); Puerto Rican Fes­ti­val (August); Rochester Music Fes­ti­val; and the Cold Rush Win­ter Cel­e­bra­tion (cel­e­brat­ing win­ter sports in the Rochester area). Dur­ing the sum­mer, and espe­cially on the Fourth of July, down­town after dark is lit with fire­works and a laser show at the High Falls venue.

Geog­ra­phy and climate

High Falls dur­ing the sum­mer.  The city is east of Buf­falo, west of Syra­cuse and sits on the south­ern shore of Lake Ontario. The Gene­see River bisects the city.  Accord­ing to the United States Cen­sus Bureau, the city has a total area of 37.1 square miles (96.1 km²), of which, 35.8 square miles (92.7 km²) of it is land and 1.3 square miles (3.4 km²) of it (3.42%) is water.  Rochester’s geog­ra­phy comes from the ice sheets dur­ing the Pleis­tocene epoch. The retreat­ing ice sheets reached a stand­still at what is now the south­ern bor­der of the city, melt­ing at the same rate as they were advanc­ing, deposit­ing sed­i­ment along the south­ern edge of the ice mass. This cre­ated a line of hills, includ­ing (from west to east) Mt. Hope, the hills of High­land Park, Pin­na­cle Hill, and Cobb’s Hill. Because the sed­i­ment of these hills was deposited into a preglacial lake they are strat­i­fied and clas­si­fied as a “kame delta.” A brief retreat and re-advance of the ice sheet onto the delta piled unstrat­i­fied (moraine) mate­r­ial there, cre­at­ing a rare hybrid struc­ture called a “kame moraine.”

The ice sheets also left behind Lake Ontario (one of the five fresh-water Great Lakes), the Gene­see River with its water­falls and gorges, Iron­d­e­quoit Bay, Sodus Bay, Braddock’s Bay, Men­don Ponds, numer­ous local streams and ponds, the Ridge, and the nearby Fin­ger Lakes. The prin­ci­pal source of water is Hem­lock Lake, which, with its water­shed, is owned by the city. Other water sources are Canadice Lake­and Lake Ontario. The 30-year annual aver­age snow­fall is 95.0 inches (241 cm), mak­ing Rochester the snowiest large city in the U.S. The mean July tem­per­a­ture is 71.3℉ (21.8℃).  Rochester  has four dis­tinct sea­sons, Autumn fea­tures bril­liant foliage col­ors, and sum­mer sees com­fort­able tem­per­a­tures that usu­ally stay in the low to mid 80s (upper 20s Cel­sius). Pre­cip­i­ta­tion is plen­ti­ful year round.

Rochester is home to a large num­ber of cul­tural insti­tu­tions con­sid­er­ing its pop­u­la­tion. These include the world-renowned Garth Fagan Dance, the Rochester Phil­har­monic Orches­tra, George East­man House Inter­na­tional Museum of Pho­tog­ra­phy and Film, Memo­r­ial Art Gallery, Rochester Con­tem­po­rary Art Cen­ter, Rochester Museum & Sci­ence Cen­ter, Strong — National Museum of Play, the A|V Room, the Strasen­burgh Plan­e­tar­ium, and numer­ous arts orga­ni­za­tions. Rochester’s Geva The­atre Cen­ter is the city’s largest pro­fes­sional theatre.

Rochester is also home to Wet Planet Bev­er­ages, pro­ducer of Jolt Cola and other bev­er­ages. High Falls Brew­ing Com­pany, maker of the Gene­see beers and JW Dundee’s brand (Honey Brown) also calls Rochester home. Arbor Mist wines are pro­duced in nearby Canandaigua, NY by owner Con­stel­la­tion Brands.  National frozen food man­u­fac­turer Birds Eye is head­quar­tered in sub­ur­ban Rochester. Heluva Good Cheeses and Seneca Foods are in nearby Wayne County. The Ragú brand of pasta sauce was orig­i­nally pro­duced in Rochester, and the Francesco Rinaldi pasta sauce is man­u­fac­tured in Rochester. Bar­illa has a food man­u­fac­tur­ing plant in nearby Liv­ingston County, in the Vil­lage of Avon.

Other local fran­chises include: Bill Gray’s (a hamburger/hot dog joint that lays claim to hav­ing “The World’s Great­est Cheese­burger”), Coun­try Sweet (known for their chicken wings and BBQ sauce), Boss Sauce, described as a “tan­ta­liz­ing sweet, spicy-hot gourmet after-sauce,” was born from the restau­rant Eddie’s Chicken Coop, Tom Wahl’s, Dibella’s, Great North­ern Pizza Kitchen, Zebb’s, Don’s Orig­i­nal, and Abbott’s Frozen Cus­tard. Dinosaur Bar-b-que, which orig­i­nated in Syra­cuse, also oper­ates their sec­ond fran­chise down­town in the for­mer Lehigh Val­ley Rail­road sta­tion on the Gene­see River.

Lit­tle Theatre

Nightlife

The Lit­tle The­atre on East Avenue, Rochester has sev­eral dis­tricts con­tain­ing bars and nightspots but the pri­mary area is the East End Dis­trict in the south­east part of down­town. Restau­rants, bistros, and night­clubs can also be found in the St. Paul Quar­ter, Mon­roe Avenue (and Upper Mon­roe), as well as Park Avenue. The South Wedge neigh­bor­hood boasts a wine bar, a British-style pub, an Irish pub, a honky-tonk cajun bar-b-que joint and numer­ous other restau­rants and bars.