This week’s Fun Foto Friday is a snapshot from 1893. That’s Nick Brayer, an engineering contractor working on a new sewer beneath Front Street in downtown Rochester. In his hands is a tin box. It’s not a sewer pipe. It’s actually a time capsule and he’s preparing to lay it at the project site to be buried. Looks like quite the event; a crowd of neighborhood kids have formed behind him to get in on the photo op.
Fast forward to 2015 and the burning question for readers of this blog will undoubtedly be: Where is this capsule now? And what’s inside…
Uh… well… we have no idea. Not a clue. As far as we can find, this capsule was never retrieved. And as you know, most of Front Street is now itself history – entombed beneath Genesee Crossroads Parking Garage (and park). I guess that’s what we get for hiding our valuables in the sewer.
While we may never know what was in that particular box, a similar capsule from 1873 was removed from old City Hall and opened in 1999.
That 1’x1’x1′ copper box was filled with a treasure trove of books, pamphlets, newspapers, maps, handwritten documents, photos, coins and other forms of currency.
Oh yes, and a hundred year-old condom . That’s right. A sheep intestine condom, left in an envelope and tucked into one of the books as a prank. The envelope was addressed to “The person who opens the box.” Score!
Tags: Front Street, Fun Foto Friday, Nick Brayer, Rochester, Rochester NY, sewer, time capsule
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on Friday, February 13th, 2015 at 12:51 am and is filed under Rochester History, Rochester Images, Transit + Infrastructure, Urban Development.
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Mike I dug up some information on your quest.
A 1892 Democrat and Chronicle article details the proceedings of the City of Rochester acquiring easements for the new sewer line on Front Street. They describe “extending and improvement of Front Street outlet sewer from Center Street to the fall race at the Edison Illuminating Company’s building.”
The Edison Illuminating Company was one of Rochester’s early electricity providers that did not combine with Rochester Gas and Electric in the 1880s-1890s. They provided power for street lights throughout the city. Their office was on Edison Street at the southwest corner of the Erie Canal and Fitzhugh-Carroll mill race (approximately the northwest corner of Blue Cross Arena now. They had two power stations one powered by steam and one powered by water. Their hydroelectric Station #2 was located on Brown’s Race in the vicinity of Triphammer Forge at Brown’s Race and Furnace Street. This station would subsequently become RG&E Station #2 which was lost in a fire years later.
So in conclusion this sewer line expansion project spanned from what is now Front Street and the Innerloop north to Brown’s Race and Furnace Street. Looking at the photograph with the wall of stacked stone to the Nick Brayer’s left in the photograph I would guess that this box was located at the foot of the train embankment in line with Front Street. As further evidence of this you can reference the 1900 plat map of this vicinity which shows a sewer line extending north from Front and Center to the river gorge.