I was invited by the Highland Park Conservancy to give a presentation at their annual meeting, which was quite an unexpected honor. I was asked to simply do what I do at Gonechester, but in Highland Park. The resulting presentation, which I call “Lost in Highland Park“, will have been performed at the time of this publication, at 6:30 PM on April 29th, 2026.

If you saw that presentation or a recording thereof and you’ve noticed some discrepancies, this post is probably the more correct and accurate information. I have a lot of facts to juggle for an hourlong presentation, and though I try to be accurate sometimes I loudly and confidently say incorrect things. I have corrected the record here, though, where I am able, and update with new or more accurate information as I am made aware of it.

There’s also inclusions in this post that were not included into the in-person presentation due to time constraints or just being difficult to share as part of a slideshow. Enjoy!

So let us go now to that fecund, floral heart of our fair Flower City, and become Lost in Highland Park.

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The Gardener’s Cottage

Pictured below is May Bragdon, the sister of famed architect Claude Fayette Bragdon, designer of many buildings in Rochester such as the First Universalist Church and the former New York Central Train Station.  May was an avid outdoorswoman and bicyclist.  This photograph is included in her diary entry from August 29th, 1896, a Saturday.

Several other photographs are included, among them being this one of a small “gardener’s cottage” mentioned in her entry:

In the below passage, May describes how she and her companions

“…went up to Highland Park. The first time this year for me. The valley did look beautiful. When we had absorbed the view we went down along the high edge of the shrub garden and sat on the ground under a tree, facing the Valley & I read a story from Scribner’s aloud. Later we strolled down through, back of the pretty little cottage of the gardener and into new Goodman St. Extension & so exploring down to the South Clinton St. car at last.”

August 29, 1896 Diary of May Bragdon
UofR River Campus Libraries Digital Collections

First off, let’s examine what the “new Goodman Street Extension” entailed:

As one can see on the 1888 map below, South Goodman Street previously only went slightly south of Oakland Street [now Rockingham Street] where it stopped, that being the city line at that point in time. The city line was extended down to Highland Avenue in 1875 when the City took possession of this land for the Mt. Hope Reservoir project.

One can see the situation as it existed in 1880 in the below etching:

In 1896, the decision is made to extend South Goodman Street all the way south to Elmwood Avenue.

As for the artificial lake mentioned in the article, I haven’t a clue. That must have been scrapped.

By the time of the 1900 plat, South Goodman wends a wavy course along the east side of Highland Park, down to meet Highland Avenue.  The extension of Goodman from the City Line to Highland Avenue took place around 1896 through 1897, with the change appearing first in the 1898 Directory.

After their trip to the park, her group would have gone generally northeast along this freshly-laid pavement until they reached South Clinton, and boarded a streetcar for home.

From this, we can piece together that the “gardener’s cottage” Bragdon was referring to was the small house at the southeast extent of Highland Park, on the north side of Highland Avenue, nearby its connection with South Goodman Street; the spot it occupied was very near where the pansy garden is today.

The house seems to have already been extant at the time of Ellwanger & Barry’s huge real estate exchange with the Parks Commission.

As the home was convenient to Mt. Hope Reservoir–known today as Highland Park Reservoir–it would be used to house a man working in the capacity of reservoir gatekeeper–that is, a city employee whose job it was to monitor and alter the intake and outlet valves of the reservoir.

That would have been done in the gatehouse proper, which at the time was the familiar building below:

Constructed in 1875 alongside the Mt. Hope Reservoir, the tool-house on the right side of the image was added the following year, 1876. Interestingly, the signature observation tower would not be added on until 1878.

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Gatekeeper’s House

The small house began as the home of one of the gatekeepers of the Mt. Hope Reservoir, Samuel H. MacElwee. MacElwee was listed at the address starting in the 1889 City Directory.

He would live in this house until the 1894 directory, at which time he would move into the newly-constructed gatekeeper’s double house on Reservoir Avenue.

By the time of MacElwee’s death in 1904, he was living at No. 66 South Clinton Avenue, and was working as a “collector” for the Democrat & Chronicle at No. 61 East Main Street.

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Foreman’s House

A new gatekeeper’s residence was constructed on Reservoir Avenue in 1894, into which MacElwee would move. The vacated home on Highland Avenue was repurposed as the house for the foreman of Highland Park, John Dunbar. It was repaired and painted and, in 1894, a new waterline installed.

Though the below excerpt claims September 29th, 1891 as the date for the dedication of the Children’s Pavilion, it was in fact in 1890, as it was published about in the newspapers. It’s odd, as this is a publication directly from the Parks Commission, and unfortunate as other publications seem to have taken the incorrect date and run with it, but what can one do? I just lay out the facts as I find them, and then write frustrated sentences that really don’t need to be written.

The very first foreman to live in the newly-refurbished house was one of the founding fathers of Highland Park, the green-thumbed John Dunbar.

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John Dunbar

The name of John Dunbar is a beloved and revered one amongst those to whom Highland Park’s extensive lilac collection is dear. Through his personal connections–particularly with Charles S. Sargent, director of the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard–Dunbar was able to fill Highland Park with a veritable flood of syringa, catapulting the park into fame and forming the basis of today’s Lilac Festival.

Not exactly a great photo, but the below image from the 1894 Times-Union shows the east-facing side of John Dunbar’s home, looking north towards the sloping hill leading up to the Children’s Pavilion.

Another oddity is that the address of the foreman’s house would vacillate regularly between No. 150 and No. 200 Highland Avenue depending on the directory. Both refer–by process of elimination–to this house, but I enjoy the extra complication. Just enough to gaslight me into thinking I’ve made a major error.

A beautiful spiraea plant grew alongside the house:

John Dunbar would die June 13th, 1927:

The next residents of the foreman’s house on Highland Ave. were–each in their turn–Bernard and Patrick Slavin, horticulturally-inclined brothers.

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Bernard & Patrick Slavin

The Slavin brothers were heavily involved in Rochester’s parks. Bernard Slavin began work in the parks in 1890 as a laborer, and became foreman of Highland Park in 1895. Patrick Slavin began as a water boy for the parks in 1892, and in 1903 replaced Bernard Slavin as Highland Park foreman when Bernard began his new posting as foreman of Seneca Park.

Below, the 1904 directory showing Bernard Slavin at No. 150 Highland:

And 1905’s directory, when Patrick Slavin took on the Highland Park position and, with it, the house at No. 150 Highland Avenue:

It is around this time that a strange visitation was made at the Foreman’s house:

When Bernard Slavin took up the Seneca Park foreman position, he would move into a home at No. 2001 St. Paul Street, a house that was later demolished to make way for the approach to a new bridge:

Patrick Slavin died May 26th, 1950:

Bernard Slavin died March 29th, 1959:

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Richard E. Horsey

Richard Edgar Horsey started working in a commercial greenhouse belonging to James Bishop, whose Invicta Greenhouse on St. Paul Street was a major producer of showy chrysanthemums; in fact, the greenhouse would be the site of a chrysanthemum show in the 1890s.

Bishop was in charge of the Highland Park Herbarium, initiated by Dunbar, and Horsey would join him in curating the collection of dried and bottled plant specimens. In 1908 Horsey was appointed to the role of foreman of Highland park, and the house became his.

And the house would remain his. Throughout the rest of Horsey’s career, he would live in the small house on the north side of Highland Avenue, watching over his beloved park–trimming bushes, counting birds, and napping on the front porch.

Thus, any image from here on out is of Horsey’s house, such as the 1923 photographs below:

One of Horsey’s pursuits was the counting and tracking of birds throughout the bird-feedings stations in the park, in which he was joined by botanist and herbarium worker William Lloyd Garrison Edson.

You can actually see the foreman’s house from far above in this aerial shot from the 1930s, marked out by a red square:

You can compare some of the roof structures between this photo and the photo of the “Gardener’s Cottage” from the May Bradgdon journal; this, to me, is final confirmation that these are the same structure, as they are literally the same shape.

Richard E. Horsey’s son, Irving E. Horsey, would be born and raised in the house at Highland Park. Irving would go on to attend West High:

Another son of Richard E. Horsey, Richard Mountstephen Horsey, served overseas in World War II. Richard had been born 1919 and raised in the Highland Park house, and is here pictured with his father amidst flowering bushes in Highland Park. In this article, he writes of his experience aboard a troop transport vessel, noting the living quarters, cafeteria, library, and picture show.

Below, Richard Horsey taking a nap on his porch during the Fourth of July:

Horsey would retire in 1949 after 45 years with Rochester parks.

The house on Highland Avenue was supposedly pulled down not long after Horsey vacated his position; however, it is still present as of 1950’s Sanborn Map:

The below 1956 article about the Horseys’ 50th wedding anniversary note that “the house “on Mr. Horsey’s retirement, the house they occupied at 440 Highland Ave., was torn down.” Clearly, it was not an immediate tear-down, but must have taken place sometime between 1950 and 1952, when the Brighton Pittsford Post noted that the house had “since been torn down.” Unfortunately, I was unable to find any mention of its demolition in the paper.

The Horseys would move to No. 320 Eaglehead Road, where Richard Horsey would keep his own private herbarium.

Horsey would give his private herbarium to the State University College at Geneseo’s Department of Biology:

Richard Horsey died December 7th, 1972, at the age of 89. His remains were interred at White Haven Memorial Park.

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Goodbye, Highland House

And so, after serving many decades as the home of city employees, the small house on Highland Avenue was unceremoniously pulled down in that unspecified window between 1950 and 1952. If it made the papers, I didn’t see a hair of it. If anyone cared beyond Horsey and a handful of Highland Park employees, no murmur made it to me.

Tune in next time for another installment of “Lost in Highland Park”, where we will go into two other long-demolished houses that stood along the north side of Highland Avenue.

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