A Drive through Downtown Rochester, NY (Chili Ave. & Main St.)
Rochester, NY is an industrial city and since 1821 the seat of Monroe County. Rochester is a St. Lawrence Seaway port via the Genesee River at its outlet into Lake Ontario. The original settlement was in 1789 at the falls of the Genesee. The falls powered a grist-mill built by Ebenezer Allen on a 100-acre tract granted on condition that he would serve the needs of the Seneca Indians. Allen’s venture was a failure, and was acquired by Colonel Nathaniel Rochester, Colonel William Fitzhugh, and Major Charles Carroll (all from Maryland).[1]
N. Rochester offered his lots for sale in 1811, and in 1817 the village was incorporated as Rochesterville, shortened in 1822 and incorporated as a city in 1834. The Erie Canal came through 1825 and Rochester’s abundant waterpower and railway linkages in 1839 made it, by the 1850s, one of the early boom towns of the “West” with a population of 10,000. Rochester had a prosperous flour-milling industry based on the wheat production of the Genesee River valley. The clothing and shoe industries of the 1860s, were stimulated by demands of the American Civil War, and mass production techniques were quickly developed. After its flour millers moved west to Minnesota, the city turned to nursery enterprises and became a pioneer in the mail-order sale of seeds and shrubs.[2]
Downtown Rochester holds the seats of the City and Monroe County government along with state and federal courts and agencies. Because Rochester is located on the banks of the Genesee River, it has become the commercial and cultural hub of a five-county metropolitan statistical area with a population of more than one million people. The Center City is home to more than 3,000 residents and the workday destination of more than 50,000 employees and their clients.[3]
Downtown landmarks include the worldwide celebrated Eastman School of Music, the Eastman Theatre, the Strong National Museum of Play and the world headquarters of the Eastman Kodak Co. The Rochester Red Wings Triple A baseball team and the Rochester Americans, our American Hockey League team, draw thousands of visitors to downtown Rochester each year. [4]
One of the landmarks we travel by was Bull’s Head. A 19th century memoirs of Rochester resident George W. Fisher, “In the early settlement of the country before Rochester was a village, an old wood building stood at the intersection of Genesee Street and Buffalo Road, kept as a country tavern. Suspended from a post on the roadside hung the ponderous tavern sign, lettered on both sides ‘Bull’s Head Tavern.’” [5]
“The tavern’s founding date was sometime between 1808 and 1813, when Buffalo Street (now West Main Street) was a crude, forest-enveloped stage road leading westward to Batavia and points beyond. Genesee Street and Brown Street, also well-traveled thoroughfares at the time, provided passage to developing settlements to the north and south.” [6]
[1] Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Rochester". Encyclopedia Britannica, 18 Nov. 2021, [ Ссылка ]. Accessed 17 April 2022.
[2] City of Rochester, NY, Downtown, [ Ссылка ] , 2022
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Rochester Public Library, Down on the Corner: Taverns and Transformations In the Bull’s Head Neighborhood. [ Ссылка ], 2022.
[6] Ibid.
Hope you enjoy the drive and see places you haven’t seen before. . .
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