Category: Landmarks
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In our last edition of Gonechester, we touched upon the Warner Observatory, an astronomical observatory on East Avenue at Arnold Park which was funded in large part by Hulbert Harrington Warner. Warner, a quite wealthy man with great import in the Rochester business community, was initially a producer of safes, but later pivoted to a…
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Updated September 24th, 2026. Once upon an increasingly long time, Rochester was home to the largest and most advanced telescope in the United States of America, outside the Naval Observatory. This powerful astronomical instrument set Rochester apart as a star-gazing capital in the 1880s, and drew much admiration and attention from the astronomically-inclined set. Like…
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Updated September 19th, 2026 Every now and then, I come across names of streets which have long ceased to be. Sometimes those streets literally stopped existing; other times, they were devoured by larger, more traffic-heavy streets; sometimes, they were simply renamed. So it was when I was stumbled upon several entries in 1830s Rochester city…
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A small thing with which we are familiar, the “traffic island” was once a novelty. As automobile traffic became more and more prevalent, streets and intersections became increasingly hostile environments for pedestrians. Similar to the situation around the Traffic Towers, Rochester’s traffic specialists would have their eye on advancements in traffic management tried in other,…
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Updated September 18th, 2026. 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…
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The familiar present-day greenspace of Parcel 5 on East Main Street, between Cortland Street and Andrew Langston Way, was a commercial and recreational hotspot since the 1840s. While in living memory this space held McCurdy’s–and, notably, the Midtown Plaza of which McCurdy’s comprised a large part–that was but the most recent of the decades of…
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Way back in March, the Pittsford Community Library asked if I would like to put together a presentation about the history of the Pittsford Community Library, and its various sites throughout time. This was to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the present-day library building, built and opened twenty years ago in 2005. Of course, I…
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Before restaurants were really called “restaurants”, there were still places to have a sit-down and some refreshments. During the early-to-mid 19th century, a type of establishment known as a “Recess” was prevalent throughout Rochester. Son of the old tavern, father of the saloon, the recess was a cozy nook of decorative hardwood and brass, easily…