Category: Buildings
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At the turn of the 20th century, a small streetcar station stood at the corner of East Main Street and Chamberlain Street, a little grassy corner that now stands in front of the RTS building. Though small, quaint, and unassuming, this little station was the portal leading from the city out to the pleasure resorts…
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This is the second part of my presentation, “Lost in Highland Park”, commissioned by the Highland Park Conservancy. I presented this at their annual meeting on April 29th, 2026, and have been posting the contents piecemeal via this blog. You may click the following link to access Lost in Highland Park Pt. 1: The Foreman’s…
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The crazy thing about time is that it can hide an entire building. A big old brick building on the corner, dwelling place of many and site of shops frequented by many more, can be utterly obscured by history’s shroud. How? All it takes is absence: no camera pointed that direction, no images kept in…
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The old and venerable Blossom Hotel stood on the north side of Main Street, near the corner of St. Paul Street. A respite for travelers along road or canal, the Blossom Hotel enjoyed a high profile reputation. Wamsley Brothers was comprised of Joseph, Thomas, and Edward Wamsley, milliners and silk merchants. The Wamsleys moved their…
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In honor of the self-selected birthday of Frederick Douglass, I spent an agonizing amount of time digging into the history of his briefly-held home on Alexander Street. Long now lying as a parking lot, this unremarkable site on the west side of Alexander Street had a long history–much of which is quite difficult to piece…
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Since last time we did the northeast corner of East Main Street and Culver, why not do the even more historic northwest corner, just across Culver Road. This started out as the very old and rustic farmstead of the Schanck family, a prominent pioneer family whose Brighton home was early gobbled up by Rochester’s eastward…