Rochester, NY Summary

photo by gusto

The third-largest city in the state, Rochester has a population of approximately 224,800 people and is located in the western part of New York. It is a deepwater port on the Genesee River and includes land on both sides of the river. It is well known for several waterfalls and all of them are found along the river within the city limits. The vast Lake Ontario, one of the Great Lakes, is an easy drive just 8 miles north of downtown.

In 1779 the Seneca people sold the swampland to European settlers. They began erecting gristmills powered by the High Falls along the riverbanks. In 1789 Ebenezer Allen erected a mill, but it failed. It was in 1803 that he sold his land to Colonel Nathaniel Rochester, who built several successful mills.

In 1811 Rochester laid out the community and named it after himself, and in 1812 it was permanently settled. The 1825 completion of the Erie Canal brought prosperity to the area, and it was dubbed the “Flour Capital.” By the 1850s, horticulture was the city’s focus and the nickname had changed to “Flower City.” The town is home to the world’s largest collection of lilacs, and the locals still celebrate the delightful scent of these spring blooms with the Lilac Festival held every May.

By the mid-nineteenth century the city was a political hotbed and home to abolitionists and women’s rights activists, including Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony.

In 1888, George Eastman began to manufacture cameras. Around this time John Jacob Bausch and Henry Lomb opened an optical shop, and the Haloid Company, now known as the Xerox Corporation, opened in 1906. By the 1960s, Rochester suffered as factories closed and racial tensions peaked. Fortunately, Eastman Kodak, Xerox, and Bausch & Lomb set up here and they helped stabilize and maintain the town’s economy. While processing and distribution of fruit is still quite an important industry, it is high-tech manufacturing and research that is the core of today’s economy.

The current nickname, “Image Center of the World,” refers to its many imaging and optics firms, noted laser research center, the University of Rochester’s Institute of Optics, and the Rochester Institute of Technology’s College of Imaging Arts and Sciences. Eastman Kodak is still the region’s largest manufacturing employer.

The George Eastman House is now the site of the International Museum of Photography and Film, the world’s largest photographic art and technology museum. Another museum, the Strong Museum, has on display around 300,000 objects collected by Margaret Woodbury Strong and includes the largest doll collection held in a museum—it has about 25,000 dolls. Another place of historical interest is the Susan B. Anthony House, the women’s rights activist’s former residence. It is here that she wrote the book, The History of Woman Suffrage.

Highland Park is home to the world’s largest collection of lilacs and the annual Lilac Festival. The center at High Falls offers actual ruins of flour mills and the waterfalls that powered them. The Seneca Park and Zoo, Charlotte-Genesee Lighthouse, and Ontario Beach Park are just north of downtown.

Budget lodgings are clustered to the south, and many top restaurants are in the outskirts of the city. Rochester is right in a snow belt and it is not at all unusual to have some extreme weather here, even in late spring and early autumn.

Greater Rochester International Airport, trains, and buses all serve the city of Rochester. It is located between Buffalo and Syracuse via I-90.