- Gonechester: A History
- Landmark Society Special Commendation
- Presentations
- Research & Resources
- The Zeiner Story
- Zinkers
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Content warning: this entry contains references to killing birds. If it helps, nobody manages it very effectively. It was the spring of the year 1900, and a strange new bird had been spotted flitting around the streets of Rochester. The unfamiliar avian was black and shiny, whistling a merry tune, and perching atop streetcar wires.…
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The first public timepiece in Rochester, NY was a sun-dial which stood in the yard between the Presbyterian church and the first court house, on the east side of Fitzhugh Street. A wooden upright in the shape of a Latin cross, it was affixed at a forty-five degree angle to a base made from an…
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Sign of the STEAMING tea-kettle. The word caught my eye. “Steaming”. Did the tea kettle actually steam? I had to know more. Why, you ask? If you’re a regular reader, I admonish you; you should know better than to ask me why I need to know more. That’s what this is all about. If this…
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There are views of Rochester NY that our ancestors took for granted. Peering from atop some long-lost building or since-dismantled bridge. The balcony of the Elwood building, the catwalk structures clinging to the sides of the Main Street Bridge, places where now only a talented drone-pilot could take a shot. Imagine yourself on an iron…
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Content Warning: This post regards manslaughter; historical sources are shared that get somewhat grisly in places. It’s Halloween, what can I say? Read at your own discretion. Our scene opens on the dusty urban corner of Market and Front Streets, in the 1870s. In a squat brick building, a small hotel and saloon is being…
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Updated August 21st, 2026. Time moves ever forward at an inexorable pace. Long before the internet, long before the atomic clock and even a bit before the quartz clock, these mechanical marvels ticked away the seconds through the sheer wizardry of cogs and sprockets. Standing proudly on pedestals beside the street, or clinging to the…
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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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Updated August 16th, 2026 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…
