Browse Items (1394 total)

200-foot stone viaduct was constructed by the Rochester and Genesee Valley Railroad sometime around 1856-57, crossing the outlet of Conesus Lake not far from where that creek joins the Genesee River. By 1859 the planned rail line between Mt. Morris…

In 1873 work began on a water system for the city of Rochester--an earlier one had failed due to poor construction--that would draw from Hemlock Lake in Livingston County, nearly thirty miles distant. By this point the growing city of some 70,000…

South Park, later taking its current name of Genesee Valley Park, was one of the last designed by the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted prior to his retirement. Work began in 1888, and in 1893 he suggested keeping a flock of sheep on its west…

New York Department of Conservation

At nearly 100 feet in height, the "High Falls" were a determining factor in the location of Rochester. Mills took advantage of the drop and the Genesee River's water flow in the form of mills, beginning in 1807 and especially in the years following…

Following the success of George Eastman's introduction of affordable cameras, the company's manufacturing infrastructure expanded rapidly. Postcard announces Rochester company as the "largest industry of its kind in the world." At its height in the…

A mile and a half downstream from Rochester's Upper Falls (later, "High Falls"), its Middle Falls originally had a height of 25 feet and were featured in Thomas Davies' 1768 engraving of the area. Here, we see one of two masonry dams built at the…

Five miles downstream from here, the Genesee River empties into Lake Ontario at Charlotte, and the base of the falls has been a major spawning ground for salmon and lake trout until non-native fish like the alewife reduced their numbers. The…

Postcard shows township located in Potter County, formed in 1804 and so remote that as of the 1830s one gazetteer wrote: "So little indeed is the county known or visited, that its very representatives in the assembly have scarce traversed it"…

Hand-colored photograph shows "Old Main," built in 1871 to house the new Geneseo Normal and Training School. Since 1826 the town had been known for its highly regarded Temple Hill Academy, but a rift within the Presbyterian Church threatened its…