Category: Landmarks
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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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It is as inspiring as it is slightly unnerving how the work of an artist’s hands can go on existing for so long after the artist has left us. The act of bringing sculptures and paintings into the world is one of planting seeds of trees under whose shade one may never sit. The artist,…
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When I was little, I was convinced skyways were the way of the future. I became five years old in 1990 and bridges stretched across the sky between tall buildings everywhere I looked, from science fiction to real life. I was convinced these interstructural walkways would grow in number and complexity until–at last–denizens of our…
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While conducting research on another white whale of a building, I was intrigued by the below article’s mention of six houses built in the earlier part of the 19th century for William W. Mumford by builder William Lawton, called “The Six Sisters”. The above article notes that, by 1877, “a number of these buildings, remodelled,…
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Updated August 1st, 2026 If the road we knew today as Atlantic Avenue were to wander back in time to the turn of the previous century, we would see it pick up its old sobriquet of University Avenue from the horizon line, dust it off, and cross the Central-Hudson railroad tracks with it. There at the…
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Updated September 5th, 2026. If you are a Rochesterian who drives along Culver Road regularly, this may be a scene that is familiar to you: An indentation in the east retaining wall, south of the railroad bridge underpass on Culver Road between Humboldt Street and University Avenue. This odd little nook is the result of…
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Murals, as we saw in the previous segment, could be a potent rallying point for a community. The once-bare walls could display figures, symbols and slogans uniquely reflecting the hopes, history and hardships of a neighborhood. More impactful to the community than the paintings themselves, however, was the act of their creation; the call to…