Long ago, but also not so very long ago, the corner of Main Street and State Street looked very different than it does today. Far from the towering black slab of glass and steel which stands there today, instead the corner of the early 19th century was built upon with rude stone buildings of just two or three stories.

Here, on this patch of land, a young Rochester gathered its first businesses; the first blacksmith, the first jeweler, the first piano salesman. The promise of a wealthy and fast-developing city glimmered in the eyes of many who visited this corner, and they’d put down roots here, becoming either great and lasting names–or else, being forgotten by all but the historians scrabbling their stories from the archives.

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The Burns Block

This corner was, in 1812, the site of the shop of James B. Carter, first blacksmith in Rochester.  Not long after it would become the shop of Erastus Cooke, Rochester’s first Jeweler and Piano salesman, at which point this was known as Cooke’s Corner.  According to an account from Lyman B. Langworthy in Desultory Notes and Reminiscences on the City of Rochester, prior to the Burns block there was a “rude stone building of rough ashlers, guiltless of axe, tool, or hammer or any metal tool, and was the store of Hart and Saxton. [ed: Hart & Saxton were ladies shoes dealers] It was burned and another erected of little better finish, known as Burns’ Block, lately rejuvenated and beautified, and is now the Elwood property.”

The stone store at the corner was a shop belonging to brothers Roswell and Thomas Hart. Seth Saxton joined the business upon Roswell’s death in 1824, and the shop became Hart & Saxton. Hart & Saxton was, according to multiple sources, the bearer of the first gilded shop sign in Rochester, painted in Canandaigua.

It is stated by several sources , including the above 1933 Rochester Times Union article, that the reason for the construction of the Burns Block was the destruction by fire of the buildings on the site previously on May 2nd, 1846. The name of the building was given after John Burns, a prominent meat merchant, who caused the new block to be built.

The below shows a drawing of the Burns Block as it appeared in 1848; at this time it was an office for the Daily Democrat, the Monroe Democrat, and Whig Printing Company. On the first floor, Sage & Brother, a bookseller.

A feature of the Burns Block that held on far longer than on other blocks along Buffalo [Main] and State Streets was the line of hitching posts out front; John Burns was apparently no fan of the 1850s turn towards removing these posts, and left his in place. This would remain in place until about 1860, when the street superintendent was directed to remove all posts on the street.

Some time in the early 1850s, an artesian well was bored in the rock in the rear of the Burns Block, to supply water for the steam engines and washrooms of businesses, such as the Democrat & Chronicle.

One of the most major tenants of the Burns Block/Elwood Block would remain a tenant even after the new Elwood Memorial Building was constructed: E. S. Ettenheimer & Co., jewelers.

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The Elwood Block

The heirs of John Burns would convey the property to the heirs of Isaac R. Elwood around 1873, at which point it would become the Elwood Building.

George H. Monroe, prominent Rochesterian photographer, took the below stereoscopic photo of East Main Street looking east from the Powers Building tower. The Elwood Block is at lower left of both images. This is one of the most recent photos of the Elwood Block before its 1879 demolition.

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Demolishing the Old Elwood Block

Come 1879, the old Burns-Block-turned-Elwood-Block was put on the chopping block. The structure would be razed in favor of the new Elwood Memorial Building.

Learning of the upcoming demise of the block, photographer George H. Monroe took a “fine photograph” of the Elwood Block. I’m not sure which specific image this resulted in, or if it even still exists. He’s taken angles of the Elwood Building before, such as one I shared above.

Property transfers to Frank W. Elwood occurred in March of 1879, the first steps in the formal end of the block’s existence.

The demolition of the Elwood Block would begin in late March, and by April it was well underway:

The long-standing, venerable restaurant in the basement of the Elwood Block, Oyster Ocean, came to its formal end with the block’s razing; the contents of the famous oyster house were auctioned off:

The demolition process of the Elwood Block was extremely disruptive. The Four Corners was the very busiest corner, always thick with pedestrians and vehicles. Debris from the work site plummeting to the ground or blowing into the road caused major havoc, striking people and damaging vehicles.

But after all the mess and fuss, the building eventually came down. The lot was excavated and prepared for the construction of the Elwood Memorial Building, the cornerstone of which was laid on May 13th.

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Constructing the New Elwood Building

The new Elwood Memorial Building was designed by James Goold Cutler and built by the contractor John Barnabas Pike. It was commissioned by Dr. Frank Worcester Elwood in memory of his late father, former Western Union executive and alderman Isaac Russell Elwood, who had perished in February of 1863 after his sleigh was struck by a team of runaway sleigh horses.

The below illustrations are architectural plans from the desk of James Goold Cutler, showing the Elwood Memorial Building pretty much as it ended up. It was a block-with-tower skyscraper, a common form of taller building from this period, where a tall tower rises above a shorter, but still quite substantial, base block. The Elwood Memorial Building was somewhat unusual in that its tower was aligned with the corner at the forty-five-degree angle, flanked by the street-facing facades on either side. The central clock tower brought the structure’s elevation to about 175 feet.

According to “Skyscraper Façades of the Gilded Age”, the Elwood Memorial Building was informed by French Second Empire for the most part; however, it also had a number of spooky French Gothic decorative elements such as gargoyles and grotesques, and even coy allusions to rib vaulting.

The contractor, John Barnabas Pike, was the early progenitor of what is today known as Pike Construction Services. The Dutch immigrant founded the company in 1873.

On May 13th, 1879, the cornerstone of the Elwood Memorial Block was laid. A time capsule was placed with it, containing mostly newspapers of the day; it also contained a photo of the former Elwood Block, a photo of Isaac R. Elwood, a photo of Frank W. Elwood, and a city directory. Very few people attended the simple afternoon stone-laying ceremony.

Construction began, and went extremely quickly. Also nearby, the remodeling of the grand old Corinthian Hall on the corner of Exchange Place and Mill Street.

Construction projects tended to draw a crowd. This prominent public project was no different

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The Cutler Mail Chute

The construction of the Elwood Memorial Building would be instrumental in launching the career of one of Rochester’s most famous and wealthy industrialists, James Goold Cutler. An architect by trade, he was tapped by the Elwood family to design the building in memoriam of their beloved late father.

It is in this building that Frank W. Elwood requested a solution for the collection of mail in the tower, having seen an ungainly mail-collection system installed in an already-extant bank building. Realizing that a new construct would allow for a more integrated solution, Elwood made note of his desire.

While this illustration of the Cutler mail chute in use shows the Wilder Building as an example, it gives one the idea of how it worked–if one were struggling to figure out how a mail chute works:

The Democrat & Chronicle would report that both men applied for patents on the concept of a really tall mail chute, Frank W. Elwood in 1882 and Cutler in 1883.

This was, however, clarified in the following issue: Elwood had applied for the earlier patent, yes, but had decided not to pursue it as an industrial product; when the architect Cutler pursued his own patent on the product, Elwood didn’t lift a finger to stop him–however, he didn’t revoke his application, which probably would have been prudent. Regardless, the men felt no enmity towards one another, personally or professionally, and the mail chute patent was rightfully–as history will attest–the property of J. G. Cutler.

And so, the Elwood Memorial Building would become the motivating factor behind the invention and application of the Cutler Mail Chute, a product that would go on to put Rochester on the map in major cities worldwide. Embossed on the brass door-covers of every Cutler mail chute from New York City to Boston, to Chicago, Detroit and Los Angeles and London, was the name of the city Rochester, N.Y.

The NOTA Neighborhood Association recently successfully applied for landmark designation status from the Rochester Preservation Board for the Cutler Mail Chute Company Building on Anderson Avenue.

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Elwood Memorial Building

The imposing edifice of the Elwood Memorial Building was a landmark of the corner from its completion in 1879 until its destruction in 1967, approximately 88 years. For 53 years, it stood shoulder-to-shoulder with its elderly neighbor, the Reynold’s Arcade, until that was razed and replaced with a newer structure in 1932. Though a deep buff to begin with, the stone of the Elwood Building would drink in decades of downtown traffic exhaust, growing darker and more mottled with age.

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The Gargoyles

The Elwood Memorial Building featured a set of distinctive gargoyles protruding from its various architectural apices.  They may have been technically grotesques since I don’t believe they disgorged rainwater. Regardless, they were almost universally referred to as gargoyles, so gargoyles we shall call them. Spoking out from the great central tower or arrayed along the roofline, these medieval-looking creatures menaced the Powers and Wilder buildings across the way. Grr!

There were 16 gargoyles in total, four large ones with wings at the corners of the tower and and 12 smaller wingless ones arrayed along the cornice of the building.  The gargoyles were made of wooden cores with a decorative tin jacket. 

Also visible in the above article is one of the creepy faces that topped off the central tower window arch. I’m both enchanted and unsettled by the decorative details on this building.

In 1962, employees at the Powers Building noticed a couple of gargoyles leaning in the wind; on inspection the wooden cores had rotted, undermining the anchorage. One of the gargoyles was badly in need of repair and
easily removed by steeplejack Basil E. “Whitey” Comfort. The rest were supposed to be removed for restoration, but this was back-burnered due to possible plans to raze the structure.

When the Elwood Building finally came down in 1967, some of its 16 gargoyles were put into storage and others were redistributed.

One of the gargoyles was donated by the Landmark Society to serve as a bidding item for Channel 21’s second-ever live auction in 1970, alongside the 1961 Volkswagen of Rochester Mayor Stephen May, and a genuine Strong & Woodbury bullwhip.

One of the wee baby gargoyles found a new perch high atop the All Souls Chapel at the Holy Sepulchre cemetery:

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The Stone Lions

On the sixth floor of the Elwood Building were two carved stone “lions”, or at least that’s what we’ll call them. Though difficult to make out in most photos of the Elwood Memorial Building, the lions were at the extreme corners of the building, one on State Street and the other on Main Street, situated just above the arched sixth story windows.

This photograph was unfortunately the clearest image I could find of the lions in situ:

When the Elwood Building was razed, these were whisked off to a warehouse in Charlotte, where they remained in storage until pulled out by the Corn Hill Neighbors Association for use in a memorial for Rochester’s 150th anniversary in 1984. The lions were restored and the monument constructed by Raymond P. Nau. Nau, an historic preservationist, worked with the Landmark Society, the Corn Hill Neighbors Association, and architecture firm Bero Associates; he was tragically found dead of an accidental hanging at age 37, only two years after the creation of this monument, leaving it as an enduring symbol of his all-too-brief legacy.

The monument was erected on the median of Exchange Boulevard: https://maps.app.goo.gl/aYvk6iY2RbQJ9nQh7

Sadly, the south-facing lion sculpture–the one pictured in the article above–is no longer extant, as of surprisingly recently.

As far as I can tell from observing Google Maps archived images, there were six metal pins embedded into the lion, three on either side of the sculpture–perhaps remnants of whatever anchored them to the Elwood Building. Repeated heating and cooling of the pins due to the elements probably caused expansion and contraction of the metal, which stressed the surrounding stone and caused cracking. There is some evidence in older Google Maps captures that attempts had been made to patch these cracks when they were smaller, but without long-term success.

Between 2018 and 2019, cracking around the metal pins grew extensively; by 2021, the fissure was massive and reaching the bottom of the sculpture. If left, the sculpture would probably have calved off. Seemingly, someone removed the lion from the monument, or from the ground in front of it.

By 2023, the remnants of the crumbling lion were removed completely, leaving the southern niche empty:

The surviving lion, on the north side of the monument, [personally, I named the lions Dexter & Gauche] is approximately 146 years old as of 2025; its crumbly neighbor to the south [Gauche] only made it to around 142-143 years old before its destruction. However, they both far outlived their parent building, which is a mercy not afforded all architectural sculptures.

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Demolishing the Elwood Building

The Genesee Crossroads urban renewal project of the late 1960s saw numerous historic structures razed. The buildings along the Main Street Bridge, the majority of Front Street, a huge swathe of Water Street and innumerable other long-standing structures were unceremoniously destroyed. The papers and pedestrians would look on with mixed feelings as the Rochester of their grandfathers was deleted.

Though it can be a bit difficult to make out, the below photo from the D&C shows the demolition of the Elwood Memorial Building; it is slightly right of center, in front of the Times Square Building tower.

In the 1968 photograph below, the excavated basement formerly occupied by the Elwood Memorial Building is visible at center right. The Powers Building’s State Street side is unobscured for the first time since 1879, when the original Burns-slash-Elwood Block was razed.

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The Crossroads Building

The Crossroads Building was all planned and ready to begin construction the moment the dust cleared from the Elwood demolition.

Below, an architect’s rendering of the Crossroads Building:

Honestly I think it looks more like a mosque with an onion dome than a pagoda.

The below photo shows the hundreds of panes of smoke-colored tinted glass as they were being raised and secured in place. It’s not a great image but you take what you can get:

Speaking of hundreds of windows, the Crossroads Building was outfitted with a new, efficient window-cleaning solution: an electric “rig” that would travel via tracks on the roof and walls of the building. On this “rig”, workers could clean the windows from a scaffold.

The Crossroads Building would finally open for business in December of 1969. The Security Trust Company was one of its major occupants:

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The Butts Building

The Crossroads Building has a much larger footprint than that of the Elwood Memorial Building; it reached all the way back to Corinthian Street–previously known as Exchange Place–meaning that it also takes the place of another former building, the Exchange Place Buildings or, the Butts Block.

According to the 1892 Sanborn map, the front of the Exchange Place Building was wood clad in copper:

I reserve the right to go into the Butts Building deeper during a future post. [Oof, phrasing…] As such, I’ll draw this section to a close and, with it, the entirety of the article.

When one passes that black glass monolith at the corner of State Street, seldom would they envision in its place a weird gothy stone clock tower bedecked with gargoyles. I mean, who would? This isn’t Gotham City, and I’m no Batman. But that’s the fun thing about history: every parcel holds a long and sometimes unexpected history.

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