While perusing the Plat Maps–how many times am I going to start an entry this way?–I took note of an intriguing building which didn’t seem to fit with its neighborhood friends. As it was facing diagonally on a north-south street, I got the sense that this was a house far older than its fellows.

You can see the structure below; I picked the 1900 Plat Map, but it’s on several: a large stone structure at an angle askew from First Street, near Bay Street:

Intriguing, is it not?

Looking through antique maps of the area, I was able to determine that the structure was of significant age. It appeared as far back as the 1875 Atlas–where it was marked as a school–and if my judgement is correct, seems to correspond to the homestead of the Abner Wakelee farm, below:

Take note that the angle of the building off the North/South axis seems to match the angle of the building on the later maps, and sensibly follows the dividing lines of property parcels, as well as the angles of Hebard Street and the planned route of Rohr Street.

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Abner Wakelee

Abner Wakelee was a prominent citizen of old Rochester, even to its Rochesterville days; upon his arrival in 1815 Wakelee opened a cobbler’s shop on Buffalo Street, having previously been a shoemaker for George Washington’s revolutionary army.

After leaving the shoe manufacturing business in 1833, Wakelee sold his building to Silas Smith [who built the Smith Block there] and purchased the “Wheeler Farm” in Irondequoit, where he would live until 1871.

In 1871, Wakelee sold his farm to the nascent Fourteenth Ward Co-operative Building Lot Association, who subdivided the land into lots for sale as individual homes:

Abner Wakelee would, after selling his farm, move to No. 60 Plymouth Avenue, where he would live the rest of his life, dying in 1880.

The southern extents of the Wakelee Farm lands would go on to be purchased as land for the Public Market.

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Brief Time as a School

The Wakelee Homestead, on the other hand, enjoyed a long life of mixed uses, from educational to residential. The 1875 Atlas marks the homestead as a “school”, although what sort of school it was is unclear. The 1875 Directory does not list any schools with a First Avenue address.

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Ownership by “C. Zoller”

By 1888, the address of the old Wakelee homestead was No. 17 First Avenue.

The 1888 Plat Map shows the property with the name “C. Zoller” appended.

“C. Zoller” may have been Charles Zoller, owner of a furniture shop on North Avenue, who is more well known to our time as a pioneer in color photography. Zoller’s use of autochrome photography–which used orange, violet, and green potato-starch-coated glass plates–allowed the earliest color photographs in America.

The property at No. 17 First Avenue is not listed by Zoller’s name in the directory, and the newspaper archives uncover no clue as to Zoller’s use of it, if indeed he used it.

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No. 52 First Avenue

As of 1892, the old Wakelee homestead had the address of No. 52 First Avenue.

For the next several decades, the house apparently was home to laborers or other low-income families; many Polish and Germans immigrants early on, then in the 1920s Italian immigrants were chief among the short residencies at the address. The named residents change in nearly every edition of the directory, leading me to believe this house was rented out for most of this time.

The above map reveals that the homestead had wooden porches, one facing north-west, the other south-east.

As of 1899, First Avenue became First Street. The original “First Street”, between Ravine and Driving Park, became Tacoma Street.

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No. 168 First Street

By 1910, the address of the old Wakelee homestead had become No. 168 First Street, which it would remain until its demolition.

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The Agnello Family

Around 1912, No. 168 First Street became one of the homes of the Agnello family, a large family who emigrated from Grotte, Sicily, and lived in or boarded at various homes in the Central Park neighborhood. Emanuele Agnello and his sons, Giuseppe [Joseph], Salvatore [Samuel], Calogero [Charles], and Alphonse were mostly in the shoemaking business, which is an intriguing echo of the Wakeley’s shoemaking past from a century before. An exception was Joseph L. Agnello, who tried his hand at a realty business, and seemed to have quite a lot of success with it.

As stated above, the Agnello family moved into at least three houses in this area of town; Samuel Agnello lived until his 1963 death at the house across the street from the Wakelee homestead, No. 171 First Street:

Returning to No. 168 First Street: by 1926, a wooden outbuilding appears to have been constructed southeast of the main house:

Who boarded in which house seems to have been flexible; Antoinette was daughter to Samuel Agnello and yet her address is given as No. 168 First Street in her yearbook:

In addition to his interests as a realtor and builder, Joseph L. Agnello seems to have made some money on the side through “Italian lottery drawings”, a felonious misuse of the mail system which caused his arrest:

In 1930, Joseph L. Agnello built a gasoline station at the corner of Culver Road and Clifford Avenue:

The site had been a house, until 1928 when a terrible fire left the lot empty.

This gas station would be held up at gunpoint at least one time:

Samuel Agnello of No. 171 First Street would die in 1963. His wife Jennie would continue to occupy the home until her own death in 1970, at which point the property seemingly passed out of Agnello hands.

Joseph L. Agnello would die on vacation to Hollywood, Florida in 1969; at this time his address was No. 50 Pinecliff Drive.

The above obituary for Joseph Agnello seems to have an error; Walter was not killed in World War II, but came back a veteran, only to tragically drown in Lake Ontario in 1947:

Emanuel, however, did die in action in 1945; his cousin, also Emanuel Agnello, son of Alphonse, died the following year in action. Both were pilots. Oddly, I can only find prominent mention of Alphonse’s son’s death, and not of Joseph’s, but that’s probably on me:

But all of this takes place long after the demise of No. 168 First Street. This property does not survive to see World War II, being destroyed instead by a far more innocuous cause:

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The First Street Playground

By the 1930s, residents of the Central Park-Bay Street neighborhoods clamored for a recreational field and playground. Children were wont to play in abandoned lots, or else travel to the next-nearest playground on Draper Street. Both exposed them to dangerous accidents. The call was finally answered as 19 houses between First and Second streets were selected for demolition to make way for the field.

Among those houses to be destroyed was No. 168 First Street, home of Joseph L. Agnello and his family. Agnello received $2,700 for his parcel of land.

The below aerial shot of the planned demolition is the clearest photo I was able to find of the old Wakelee homestead:

Below, I have zoomed in on a cropped area and indicated the Wakelee homestead with a red dot. The property stands out due to its diagonal orientation relative to its neighbors:

After the demolition of his home, Joseph L. Agnello moved to No. 2244 Clifford Avenue.

The new playground would come to be enjoyed by Agnello children who remained on First Street, and all the neighborhood children:

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In Modern Day

Something I love about the image of the First Street Park from Google Maps below: the most recent satellite image seems to have been taken during a time of some drought, leaving large areas of dry crispy grass. Due to their effects on the grass, one can see the contours of the buried foundations of houses which once stood in the modern field:

Above, one can see the outlines of several houses razed during the construction of the park, including our target structure, the Wakelee homestead, which stands out due to its diagonal orientation.

The historic homestead has been gone for nearly ninety years, but the ghosts of its foundation yet linger.

If anyone knows of any more images of this historic homestead or has information relating to its history, please let me know! This is one of the ones I’d very much like to know more about. Until then, thanks for reading!

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