RochesterSubway.com : West Main Street. c1908?

West Main Street. c1908?

January 11th, 2013

Here’s one heck of a photo – Rochester’s Main Street around the turn of the last century. It was snapped from a fire escape at 102 W. Main, near the corner of N. Plymouth Avenue, looking east. Make sure you click on the image and zoom all the way in for all the incredible detail. Across the street you’ll notice some pretty major landmarks. The most obvious one being Hotel Rochester on the far right…

The Hotel Rochester was built on the site of the National Hotel in 1907. This is what leads me to believe this photo was taken soon after. That, and also the streetlights shown are of a style replaced at the end of 1913. Hotel Rochester was nine-stories tall and occupied the corner of Main Street West and S. Plymouth Ave. until December 1999 when it was imploded . Check out the cute little horse-drawn U.S. Mail wagon parked in the street.

Immediately to the left is the National Theatre (duh) with its wonderfully ornate marquee and signs. And to the left of it, was a building occupied by C.B. Woodworth; a perfumery business. According to this article , Woodworth was a big deal in the world of cosmetics. “By the end of the American Civil War, with branches in New York City, Chicago, Baltimore and New Orleans, the company was rated as one of America’s leading perfumers.” They were well known for their innovative vanity case designs which were both functional and beautiful – items women were proud to show off. That led to a big business which was eventually acquired by the French perfume house, Bourjois. Woodworth was the first American perfume company to ever “suffer” this fate.

I love the little building wedged between Woodworth’s and the big Rochester Savings Bank on the corner. It reminds me of the narrow houses lining the canals of Amsterdam. Wonderfully urban! They used every square inch of available real estate and they did so with pride. I also love the stray dog running loose in the street.

And then of course is the Rochester Savings Bank on the corner of Main and Fitzhugh. Built between 1853 and 1857, the original bank building (designed by Henry Searle) was three stories high and topped by a large dome-shaped roof. In 1875, the building was enlarged and fireproofed under the supervision of Henry Searle, Jr. Another story was added as well as a metal roof, with statues and a pair of giant clocks.

And here’s a lonely road worker filling the world’s largest pothole. SO many great things going on in this image!

Tags: C.B. Woodworth, Detroit Publishing Co., downtown Rochester, Henry Searle, history of Rochester, Hotel Rochester, Main Street, National Theater, old photos of Rochester, old photos of Rochester NY, Plymouth Theatre, Rochester, Rochester history, Rochester NY, Rochester Savings Bank

This entry was posted on Friday, January 11th, 2013 at 8:06 am and is filed under Rochester History, Rochester Images. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

17 Responses to “West Main Street. c1908?”

Sarah says:

January 11, 2013 at 8:26 am

that video from the imploding is heartwrenching!!!
Sarah says:

January 11, 2013 at 8:34 am

also, what is that building with the beautiful, what looks to be glass, top?
Sarah says:

January 11, 2013 at 8:42 am

oh, that must be the domed roof you were talking about!
Sarah says:

January 11, 2013 at 8:47 am

no, that doesnt seem right, that one looks to be more than 3 stories…sorry, i’m rabling! haha
Rick says:

January 11, 2013 at 10:35 am

Great find! I like the RocSubway watermark snuck in there… 🙂

I believe cut rate drugs are still available in that alley way… JJ, it’s a nice area.
Carl says:

January 11, 2013 at 10:37 am

Photo credit goes to Shorpy ( http://www.shorpy.com ) but RochesterSubway doesn’t want you to know that – that means less traffic to his site and less dollars in his pocket. ANOTHER stolen photo, fucked up with your watermark…
Rick says:

January 11, 2013 at 10:40 am

Anyone have any pics of the “Hotel Rochester” circa 1999? Just wondering how much of it’s original detail it lost before being destroyed, or what the story is as to why it was taken down, only to be turned into a gravel parking lot.
Sarah says:

January 11, 2013 at 10:44 am

i visit shorpy often and dont remember coming across this one in my rochester searches…strange!
RochesterSubway.com says:

January 11, 2013 at 10:55 am

@Carl, you need to stop and think before you accuse people of stealing. I ABSOLUTELY DID NOT take this photo from Shorpy. It’s taken straight from the Library of Congress online database. You can go download it yourself. I don’t know how else to convince you of this but I didn’t even see this photo on Shorpy let alone take it from there. Share the link to Shorpy’s photo maybe so we can compare them straight away. Shorpy is a wonderful blog… and we sometimes pull photos from the same source, but I am not stealing anything from him.
RochesterSubway.com says:

January 11, 2013 at 11:01 am

@Carl, is this the stolen photo you’re referring to?
http://www.shorpy.com/node/11288?size=_original

It’s not even the same shot. And Shorpy has clearly adjusted the color.

Visit http://www.loc.gov/pictures/ and knock yourself out. You’ll find all the same works (including these) in the PUBLIC DOMAIN.
twoeightnine says:

January 11, 2013 at 1:30 pm

How does one steal a photo in the public domain? More importantly how is a photo in the public domain someone’s property? Shorpy’s had an amazing life if he/she/it was able to take all of the photos on Shorpy.
Rick says:

January 11, 2013 at 2:17 pm

@carl,

1) It’s a public domain photo, so it’s not stealing.
2) I haven’t seen this one on Shorpy before. I’ve seen a bunch, but not this one.
3) Where do you think Shorpy gets their pics from: I’ve seen a lot are from the Library of Congress and National Archive.

So what if the people at rocsub get to put a little coin in their pockets for their efforts. Hosting, web developers, time scouring the web/library for new content. None of that is free ya know… In fact, I think you’ve convinced me to support the rocsub store.
RochesterSubway.com says:

January 11, 2013 at 2:35 pm

@twoeightnine, @Rick… thanks for backing me up. Something tells me Carl works for somebody that I may have offended in previous opinion pieces. Carl you don’t work for the City of Rochester do you?

And look at this… Shorpy just posted another image from Rochester today… http://www.shorpy.com/node/14414/

It’s Rochester’s Hotel Seneca – which I did a story on in September. Maybe he stole that story idea from RocSubway? What do you think Carl?

Also, for future reference, I always always credit my sources. Click on the image and read the captions.
Douglas A. Fisher says:

January 11, 2013 at 11:41 pm

You referenced C.B. Woodworth, a perfumery business, rated as one of America’s leading perfumers … eventually acquired by the French perfume house, Bourjois.”

Bourjois operated a Rochester perfume factory in a large six-story loft building behind what is now GeVa Theatre, parallel to Woodbury Boulevard, and backing up against the Inner Loop. I remember once walking through that large high-ceilinged building, whose floorboards exuded a faint whiff of the perfumes once manufactured there.

My immediate thought was: What a wonderful building for conversion to loft apartments!

That loft apartment concept was taking popular hold then in SoHo area of the New York City. Rochester developers of the day, however, showed no interest at all in loft conversions at the Bourjois site, despite its great adaptability and terrific location.

City Hall at the time could only see the cliché of more parking. The Bourjois loft structure was obtained by the City and, together with the neighboring former City Natatorium to the west, was demolished for a large parking lot.

The official rationale was the creation of a wonderful new festival site. That lasted for only a couple of years.

City Hall did, however, make great efforts then to save the Fannie Farmer candy factory just to the south of there, across the inner loop, and hemmed in by the network of limited-access expressways.

Those roadway paths were designed to spare and protect the Fannie Farmer building. Not long after the Inner Loop / I-490 construction was completed there, however, the Fanny Farmer factory burned.

The daughter of Boston’s Fannie Farmer lived in Rochester, and owned the copyright to her late mother’s famous cookbook. She was the wife of long-time University of Rochester history professor Dexter Perkins.

The Fannie Farmer Cookbook introduced the recipe concept of the “level spoonful,” thus doing away with the variations implicit in the prior concept of the “heaping spoonful.”
RochesterSubway.com says:

January 25, 2013 at 2:16 pm

@Carl…

WOW! Look at what Shorpy.com just posted yesterday:
http://www.shorpy.com/node/14513?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+shorpy+%28Shorpy+-+The+100-Year-Old+Photo+Blog%29

You better call the cops. Shorpy is stealing photos from RochesterSubway.com. But he probably doesn’t want us to know that because it means less money in his pocket. Right Carl?
Rich Rolwing says:

May 4, 2013 at 4:16 pm

Thought I would take a quick look at this amazing photo again and of course ended up spending a good half-hour soaking in its visual riches anew.
And Surprise!–something new caught my interest: namely, the sporty little vehicle casually parked at the curb in front of the skinny building alluded to in the article. It almost looks too modern for the date given for the photo. Any car buffs who might be able to clarify?
Sarah says:

November 10, 2021 at 2:03 pm

I love this photo. I have a print of it hanging in my kitchen, and the more I look at it and the details of what’s happening, the more I appreciate it!

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West Main Street. c1908?

17 Responses to “West Main Street. c1908?”

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