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| Stores along Main Street bridge. |
When I came to Rochester 41 long years ago in the Fall of 1966, things were somewhat different than they are now — not vastly different, but
different.-I suppose the main difference was that the Main Street bridge over the Genesee River was lined with stores; i.e. stores built right out over the river.
It was as if Rochester wasn’t admitting a river flowed through it.
Thankfully those rickety stores were all torn down within a few years, opening up the Main Street bridge to the mighty Genesee, which had once been harnessed to mill flour from the vast Genesee Valley to the south, which was then shipped east on the Erie Canal — thus giving Rochester the moniker “flour city” (now “flower city”).
Downtown Rochester was once a thriving metropolis, but it’s been dying ever since.
When I came here a downtown mall, Midtown Plaza, bridged two anchor-stores, and was really groovy.
Both anchor-stores have since closed, and shopping moved out to outlying suburban malls; leaving Midtown a withering shell, even though it had a large underground parking-garage.
Sibley’s, across from (and thereby cut off from) the mall, the equivalent of a Macy’s or Wanamaker’s, tanked a while ago, another victim of shopping moving away from downtown Rochester.
The Sibley’s anchor-stores in outlying malls were bought by Kaufmann’s — and even
they may have changed hands.
With the departure of Sibley’s a mighty icon of downtown Rochester disappeared. Now there is talk of converting the still-standing hulk into a glittering casino bathed in flashing red laser-light.
UGH! |
| Xerox Tower. |
When I moved here, the Xerox Tower was being built. Unset concrete was craned to the top, and then poured (set, placed;
WHATEVER) into forms that kept moving up.
I still think Xerox Tower is the most appealing skyscraper in Rochester
(HERE WE GO.......). It still stands, but Xerox doesn’t own it any more — their headquarters moved to Stamford, Connecticut; and Xerox is on shaky ground.
At 30 floors it’s the highest building in Rochester.
-The other major change is the departure of railroading as a way of getting freight into Rochester.
The Erie Canal was moved too; but that was long ago. Used to be the Erie Canal went right through Rochester, but it was relocated
south when the massive State Barge Canal was built. That’s about 1918.
The old right-of-way of the Erie Canal through Rochester was converted into a railbed; the infamous Subway that tanked in 1956.
But it wasn’t a subway like the New York City subways. A lot of it was above-ground, and it operated glorified trolley-cars — usually only one car per train.
The underground part was through downtown Rochester — the Erie Canal ditch was never filled in; just covered over.
The old aqueduct over the Genesee had a second bridge built on top, which carries Broad Street. The aqueduct itself became part of the Subway roadbed.
All that was gone before I moved here — and an expressway had been built out over the eastern half of the subway roadbed; which was previously the Erie-Canal right-of-way.
In fact, you can still find remains of an old stone Erie-Canal lock along the expressway.
Tracks in the underground part of the subway weren’t removed, so a railroad could service downtown shippers — in the end it was only delivery of newsprint in boxcars to the Rochester newspaper; and they put up a fuss when the railroad wanted to abandon service — I wrote a letter-to-the-editor defending the railroad: something about the newspaper getting a free ride (i.e. they were on corporate welfare; not paying the actual cost for shipping).
The tracks extended clear out past downtown east along the expressway, but I never saw any trains. I don’t think I even saw any boxcars parked on sidings. Those tracks are long-gone.
Three railroads operated into Rochester from the south, and all are gone.
-1)
Pennsy had a branch that operated from Olean to Rochester mostly along the old towpath of the Genesee Valley Canal (a feeder to the Erie). That railroad had been built by another, but then Pennsy got it. The Pennsy branch tanked while I was at Houghton. It also passed Houghton, and tanked about 1963. (I once saw a Pennsy RS3 on it.)
It was rather difficult to operate; it twisted this way and that. It also navigated a part of Letchworth Gorge, and washed out within a year of abandonment.
Nevertheless, the people at Houghton say why they weren’t flooded during Hurricane Agnes was because of that old railbed. It walled off the raging Genesee River.
-2) Another service was that of the
Lehigh Valley; which had a spur from its Buffalo-Extension south of Rochester into Rochester.
The LV spur went north along the east bank of the Genesee river, and stubbed at downtown Rochester. A small yard was along the east side of the river.
All that was still there when I arrived, and I once saw an LV switcher.
I never got a picture, and now the whole of Lehigh-Valley is abandoned — even its Buffalo Extension; perhaps the finest railroad to ever reach Buffalo
(HERE WE GO AGAIN!).So the old Lehigh-Valley spur is mostly torn up, although a short segment remains to service a lumberyard.
It no longer reaches Rochester, and the segment from the Extension to the lumberyard is gone.
The LV Buffalo Extension was
fabulous. Good for 60+ mph, arrow-straight, easy grades, no bottlenecks, and double-track. Boy-oh-boy, when a LV redball came through,
you waited.-3) The third service was that of the
Erie Railroad, which had a long branch up to Rochester from its mainline near Corning, N.Y. in the southern tier.
Much of it remains, operated by the Livonia, Avon & Lakeville shortline railroad, although east of Lakeville it’s abandoned — i.e. it no longer reaches Livonia. (It mainly services a corn-syrup processor in Lakeville — and Lakeville was a spur.)
South of Livonia the old Erie branch is long-gone.
When I arrived, that Erie branch was still extant, and Erie had a small yard on the west side of the Genesee north of where it crossed the river. That yard may have been gone when I arrived, since I don’t remember it.
Even north of the Rochester Bypass (the old West Shore), the Erie line is gone, and all that remains is that large steel bridge over the river. —Plus the trench next to the University of Rochester both the Erie and the Lehigh-Valley used.
The old Erie overpass over Elmwood Ave. near the UofR was converted to a pedestrian walkway or parking-lot access. The old LV overpass next to it still remains and has the opposite use of the Erie overpass. Farther south, the old Erie overpass over the State Barge Canal was converted to another use; the ex-LV overpass was torn out.
Further south the railroad reappears as the LA&L, south of the Rochester Bypass — to which it connects.
LA&L built a connector from its ex-Erie line to the ex-LV line so it could service the lumberyard.
Other railroads service Rochester; mainly New York Central’s Water-Level Route, plus the Baltimore & Ohio (ex Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh).
The B&O (ex BR&P) lines were sold to an operator affiliated with the Genesee & Wyoming, a short independent railroad that served area salt-mines south of Rochester.
The line south out of Rochester is the Rochester & Southern, still affiliated with the G&W. (So is the one out of Buffalo, although it's the Buffalo & Pittsburgh.)
B&O also built all the way up to the lake, but most of that was abandoned some years ago. I think some of that lake-line was still in use when I arrived, but now it’s gone. That B&O lake-line was a travesty; hills and difficult curves. Even the Lake Ave. overpass over the B&O lake-line was filled in. (NYC also had some lines to the lake, and I think one still exists [as CSX].)
NYC had a number of affiliated lines that served Rochester. The Auburn-Road, the first railroad into Rochester, was still extant, all the way from Auburn to Rochester. This includes through Canandaigua, Victor, Pittsford and Brighton.
The Auburn out of Rochester was torn up years ago, and all that remains is the line to Canandaigua, operated by Finger-Lakes Railway. The Auburn is extant from Auburn to Canandaigua, but north of Canandaigua it’s gone. (The Auburn switched into the Water-Level east of Rochester — and was once NYC’s bypass in case the Water-Level got blocked.)
Other NYC lines were the
Falls Road and the
Hojack.The Falls Road was a bypass for getting NYC trains directly to Niagara Falls. I once saw an NYC Alco F-unit switching onto it with a train. It wasn’t the original junction which was rather puny. A heavier-duty junction had been built farther west.
The Hojack was the ex-Fonda Johnstown & Gloversville, built long ago, and eventually taken over by NYC.
It ran more-or-less along the Lake Ontario shore, and skirted all the big cities.
Years ago I saw a Penn-Central RS3 as a local on it near Webster, and now nearly all of that is gone.
All that remains is a rotating truss across the Genesee River, that still stands, but is out of service. It needs to be removed, as it blocks the shipping-channel — although the onliest ships that use that channel anymore are freighters carrying concrete premix. And they can’t use it for the time being because the channel needs to be dredged.
West of the Genesee the Hojack is long-gone. East a short segment remains, operated by Ontario Midland, that accesses the old Pennsy Sodus-line to (Pennsy through) Newark.
Most of Ontario Midland is that old Pennsy line — although part of it south of Penn Yan is Finger Lakes. (Between Penn Yan and Newark is gone.)
None of the infamous Peanut remains, although when I arrived a short stub of it was serving an Agway in nearby Holcomb (since merged back into Bloomfield).
I once saw a PC RS3 switching that Agway.
That stub was abandoned about 1975; and now even the Agway is gone.
A lot of the Peanut right-of-way remains — I could follow it from a hot-air balloon ride I once took.
The Peanut is the original Canandaigua & Niagara Falls, built to transfer Erie coal north of Canandaigua to Niagara Falls and environs.
So it was originally built to Erie’s six-foot gauge; then gauged down to standard-gauge: 4-feet 8&1/2 inches.
Later NYC got it, and a Vanderbilt called it a “Peanut” compared to the mighty Water-Level. —Which it was; it never served much, so soon tanked. I don’t think it survived the ‘30s, except for that stub to Holcomb.
So all that remains of railroad service to Rochester is the Water-Level (now CSX), and the Rochester & Southern. The LA&L doesn’t access Rochester, and the old West Shore never did. (The onliest remaining segment of the West Shore, west of the Hudson and the Albany area, is what is now the CSX Rochester Bypass. Both grade-crossings in deepest, darkest Henrietta have been made into overpasses.)
When I arrived there were at least two other railroads, plus a slew of other NYC lines. And NYC was still extant when I arrived, although it soon merged with Pennsy in 1968, as Penn-Central.
“Linda” is my wife. She worked almost 35 years at Lawyers’ Co-operative Publishing (arrowed; lawbooks), later bought out by West Publishing and Thomson Publishing.
“Wanamaker’s” is the Philadelphia equivalent of Macy’s — also the first department-store in Philadelphia.
RE: “poured (set, placed; WHATEVER)......” My noisy blowhard brother-in-Boston, who was trained as an engineer, claims I’m not using the proper engineering-terminology for doing concrete — he noisily claims it’s “placed.”
RE: “(HERE WE GO.......).” I’m excoriated for having the awful temerity and unmitigated gall and horrific audacity to name a “greatest whatever of all time.” (I had labeled Luciano Pavarotti as the greatest tenor of all time.)
“Olean,” a small city, is in the southern tier of New York State.
“Pennsy” is the Pennsylvania Railroad, no longer in existence. It merged with New York Central Railroad in 1968 as Penn-Central, and that went bankrupt in about two years. “Pennsy” was once the largest railroad in the world.
“Houghton” is the college I graduated from in 1966.
“Letchworth Gorge” is a massive canyon in Western New York, carved eons ago by the Genesee River. It’s now a state park.
“Livonia, Avon & Lakeville” has been in existence since the ‘70s. It once ran steam passenger excursion-service, but no longer does.
“The West Shore” was a railroad financed by Pennsy in the late 1800s to compete with the New York Central Water-Level. Most of it was very near the Water-Level, but it went up the west shore of Hudson River — hence “West Shore.” NYC started a competing railroad in Pennsylvania to compete with Pennsy, but never got as far as laying track. The two lines changed hands after a conference on J.P. Morgan’s yacht in Long Island Sound. West Shore went to NYC, and the competing railroad in Pennsylvania (the South Pennsylvania Railroad) was never built. Quite a bit of its right-of-way, including its many tunnels, became the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
“Deepest, darkest Henrietta” is a rather effusive and obnoxious suburb south of Rochester. They were grade-crossings when I arrived.
We live in West “Bloomfield,” adjacent to the village of “Bloomfield.”
