Category: Businesses
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Before its annexation by the City of Rochester in 1904, the intersection of East Avenue and Winton Road [at that time known as North and South Avenues] was the center village of Brighton, the heartbeat of its folksy commercial and social life. With its close proximity to the old course of the Erie Canal, this…
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Very obviously, the Sagamore Hotel isn’t entirely gone; the building itself yet remains, albeit altered irrevocably through decades of residency, renames, renovations and resales. If one wants to be poetic and speak of the soul of a building, there’s a good argument that the Sagamore qua Sagamore died and its unspectacular corpse has been shambling…
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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…
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“What was Rochester’s first Chinese restaurant?” I figured that the answer was going to be fun and interesting. And the answer is, indeed, very interesting! The fun, however, is slightly tempered by one major, but familiar factor: racism. I shouldn’t have been surprised, really; the late 19th century and early 20th were a hotbed of…
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Odd things draw my eye for unusual reasons when I’m reading through historical newspapers. Sometimes it causes me to delve into a topic I otherwise would have overlooked. For example, this entry started when I came across a familiar name among newspaper ads–John Vanderslice. That happens to be the name of a favorite musician of…
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Once upon a time in Brighton, which was to become east Rochester, two ponds existed where now highways criss-cross one another. Much like the famed Willow Pond on Thomas Creek, these ponds were artificial, created by well-to-do families to ornament their extensive gardens. These two ponds existed on two properties, north of the East Avenue…
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I’m a big fan of tall and skinny little buildings. I wish our city were full of them, Amsterdam-style. Unfortunately, I don’t live in that Rochester; however our little city did have a handful of cute architectural gems during its long history. I’ve touched upon a pair of elegant, tall-and-narrow iron-fronted buildings that used to…
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One thing that never fails to intrigue me is the fact that our familiar streets and alleys are the result of decade after decade of decisions being made; decisions that could have–at many junctures–gone a way entirely different than what we are familiar with today. Some neighborhoods rich with decades of history almost never came…