USA > New York > Monroe County > Rochester > Rochester and Monroe County: A history and guide > Part 8
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27
John T. Trowbridge (1827-1916), author of the well known Cudjo's Cave, was born in Ogden Township, Monroe County. He produced some 40 volumes, which appealed mainly to young people but also, largely by reason of his attractive style, interested adults. He closed his career with the publication of The Poetical Works of John Townsend
130
CULTURAL LIFE
Trowbridge, and an autobiography, My Own Story, both published in 1903 (see Spencerport).
Mary Jane Holmes (1825-1907) was born in Brookfield, Mass. Brockport, Monroe County, was for many years her home and here nearly all of her many books were written. She was a teacher at 13, and published her first article at 15. Her bent for telling stories of her own invention was early recognized by her young friends. Her first book to attract nation-wide attention was Tempest and Sunshine. Others of her books which have been enjoyed by millions of the present older generation are English Orphans, Lena Rivers, Gretchen and Marguerite, Darkness and Daylight, Cameron Pride, Edna Browning, Edith Lyle, and The Homestead on the Hillside.
Frank G. Patchin (1861-1925), born in Wayland, N. Y., was a graduate of the Albany Law School, and had a long journalistic career in Rochester as editor-in-chief of the Post-Express and later as night editor of the Democrat and Chronicle. During this active period he also produced over 200 books, most of them written for boys and girls. They were adventure books written usually in long series: The Pony Rider Boys, 18 volumes; The Circus Boys, 6 volumes; The Boys of Steel, 12 volumes; The Meadow Brook Girls, 6 volumes; Grace Harland Overland, 12 volumes; Little Boy Heroes of France; Little Daughters of France; and posthumously, Uncle Jim's Bible stories, 3 volumes.
Paul Horgan, born in Buffalo August 1, 1903, lived in Rochester from 1923 to 1926, the period of his brilliant work with the Rochester Opera Company in connection with the Eastman School of Music. He was projected into the liter- ary limelight when he received the Harper's Prize in 1933 for his Fault of Angels. The book satirizes the meretricious pursuit of the arts in a provincial city. There is some reason to suspect that the object of the satire is Rochester society.
I3I
ROCHESTER AND MONROE COUNTY
Other novels by Horgan are Men of Arms (1931), No Quarter Given (1935), Main Line West (1936), The Return of the Weed (1936). Mr. Horgan also contributes articles and fiction to magazines.
Marjorie Rawlings, born in 1896, spent her youth in Washington, D. C. In 1918 she was graduated from the University of Wisconsin. For the next ten years she was a journalist in Rochester and elsewhere. The publication of Jacob's Ladder won her instant recognition as a writer. Her story, Gal Young Un, won first prize in the O. Henry Mem- orial Prize awards in 1933. Her later novels, South Moon Under and Golden Apples increased her prestige. Her husband, Charles Rawlings, formerly on the staff of the Rochester Herald and later of the Times Union, is a well-known story writer; his The Inferior Jib, a yachting story, portrays situa- tions that closely parallel those in a recent Canada Cup Race between Rochester's Conewago and Toronto's Invader II.
Carl Lamson Carmer, one-time member of the faculty of the University of Rochester, has achieved a national reputa- tion for his engaging descriptions of folk life. He was born in Cortland, N. Y., October 16, 1893, was graduated from Hamilton College in 1914, and received the M.A. degree from Harvard in 1915. He left Rochester to become associate professor and later professor of English at the University of Alabama. From 1924 to 1927 he issued Some University of Alabama Poets; in 1927 he was a columnist for the New Orleans Morning Tribune; the next year he became assistant editor of Vanity Fair; and from 1929 to 1933 he was editor of the Theatre Arts Monthly.
He is not widely known as a poet, but during his residence in Rochester he served as first president of the Rochester Poetry Society and up to 1930 had published two volumes of verse, French-town and Deep South. In the latter, a narra-
132
CULTURAL LIFE
tive in verse, he gives evidence of a sense of dramatic values, but shows a lack of mastery of the lazy tunes of the folk speech.
In 1934 his Stars Fell on Alabama, in which he portrays the local folk life, won him national recognition. This was followed in 1936 by Listen for a Lonesome Drum, in which he endeavors to do for New York State what the earlier book did for Alabama. Both books are interesting reading and reveal the author as an imaginative reporter of country and people. The style is pleasantly colloquial. Listen for a Lonesome Drum, a series of sketches, lacks both the unity and comprehensiveness of the earlier volume.
As a journalist, author, and pageant producer, Edward Hungerford has been closely identified with the life of Rochester. He began his journalistic career in 1896 on the staff of the Rochester Herald. Since 1928 he has been assist- ant vice-president of the New York Central Lines. Mr. Hungerford is author as well as producer of The Fair of the Iron Horse, Wings of a Century, and Paths of Progress, the last being the pageant which he staged as part of the Rochester Centennial in 1934. His latest book, Pathway of Empire, is a travel book of substantial merit devoted to New York State, picturing the march of the state's progress, and tell- ing something of the legends of its early days. He is par- ticularly happy in his account of Rochester and its environs, alluding frequently to its old landmarks and the half- forgotten stories of its past.
Henry W. Clune, columnist and portrayer of American everyday life, is the author of two volumes entitled Seen and Heard. His recent novel, The Good Die Poor, published in 1937 in both America and Great Britain, is a swift- moving story of newspaper life and municipal politics. The motion picture rights were purchased by a Hollywood producer.
I33
ROCHESTER AND MONROE COUNTY
Lincoln J. Carter, creator of hundreds of melodramas that once thrilled the hearts of the country, was born in Roch- ester on April 14, 1865, the day that Lincoln was assassin- ated. Among his thrillers were The Fast Mail and The Heart of Chicago. Old timers will recall the faraway sound of the locomotive, the dim speck of light that grew ever more bright, the increasing roar of the oncoming train, the blinding flash of the headlight as the breaks screamed- and the "fast mail" arrived on the stage.
Three Rochester playwrights of today are frequently in the limelight: Philip Barry, George S. Brooks, and George F. Abbott. Barry is perhaps the best known. Born in Roch- ester, he was educated at Yale and Harvard, at the latter university receiving early discipline in Baker's "47 Work- shop." The Harvard prize play in 1922 was Barry's You and I, which established his reputation when it was pro- duced in New York. It was followed by The Youngest, In a Garden, White Wings, Paris Bound, Holiday, Hotel Universe, and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. His plays have been produced outside New York City more frequently than those of any other American with the exception of Eugene O'Neill.
George Abbott has been an actor and director as well as a playwright. He was graduated from the University of Rochester, and, like Barry, was trained in Baker's "47 Workshop" at Harvard. His The Man in the Manhole was produced by the Harvard Dramatic Club. His plays were almost all written in collaboration with another play- wright: The Terror with Maxwell Anderson, The Fall Guy with James Gleason, Broadway with Philip Dunning, and Coquette with Ann Bridges. His most recent successes were Three Men on a Horse and Room Service.
George S. Brooks was graduated from the University of Rochester and continued his education at the University of Poitiers, France. He is co-author of Spread Eagle with
I34
CULTURAL LIFE
Walter Lister, of Celebrity with Willard Keefe, and of The Whip Hand with Marjorie Case. His No Cause for Complaint was awarded first prize in the national social work play contest.
In history and politics five Rochester writers have made important contributions. For his work as a journalist and for his orations and articles on slavery, Frederick Douglass is entitled to a place in the literary history of the city of his adoption. He made his home in Rochester during one of the most active periods of his life. He is buried in Mount Hope Cemetery. In Rochester he published The North Star, an anti-slavery journal, its title suggestive of an old anti- slavery song of ante-bellum days in which a fugitive slave sings the refrain:
I kept my eye on the bright north star and thought of liberty.
Besides his orations and addresses, Douglass published an autobiography, a voluminous work, interesting and his- torically valuable. The Douglass Monument near the New York Central Station is said to be the first monument erected in the United States to one of the African race (see City Tour I).
Rossiter Johnson (1840-1931), born in Rochester, edu- cated at the University of Rochester, and later the recipient of a number of honorary degrees from other institutions, had a long journalistic career. From 1864 to 1868 he was associate editor of the Rochester Democrat, and from 1869 to 1872 of the Concord (N. H. ) Statesman. He then became successively associate editor of the Cyclopedia of American Biography, editor of the Authorized History of the Columbian Exposition, and editor-in-chief of the Universal Cyclopedia. In 1875 he originated and became editor of The Little Classics, which eventually became widely popular. Later he was
135
ROCHESTER AND MONROE COUNTY
associated with Charles A. Dana in the publication of Fifty Perfect Poems. In 1898 he was appointed president of the People's University Extension Society; in January 1931, on the day before his ninety-first birthday, he presided over a meeting of that society. He was a founder and first president of the Society of the Genesee. His best known books were on historical subjects, but he also wrote verse and literary essays. His Phaeton Rogers (1881) is a story of boy life in Rochester.
David Jayne Hill (1850-1932), educator, diplomatist, and author, was president of the University of Rochester from 1889 to 1896. He was graduated from the University of Lewisburg (later Bucknell University) in 1874; there he taught Latin, Greek, and rhetoric, and in 1879 became president of the university, in which capacity he served until his Rochester days.
His public career began in 1898 when President Mckinley appointed him Assistant Secretary of State. While in Wash- ington he was also professor of European Diplomacy in the School of Comparative Jurisprudence and Diplomacy. In 1903 he became Minister to Switzerland and two years later was transferred to Holland. In 1907 he was a delegate to the Second Peace Conference at the Hague, and from 1908 to 1911 was Ambassador to Germany. Later he became a member of the Permanent Administrative Council of the Hague Tribunal.
His published works-lectures, magazine articles, and books-cover a wide field of interest. His early books, from 1877 to 1893, reflected in the main his work as an educator and consisted of texts on rhetoric, logic, psychology, and philosophy. These were interspersed in 1897 by lives of Washington Irving and William Cullen Bryant, in 1885 by Principles and Fallacies of Socialism, and in 1888 by The Social Influence of Christianity.
136
CULTURAL LIFE
His later works are concerned almost exclusively with problems of government and the history of diplomacy. His magnum opus is The History of Diplomacy in the International Development of Europe, three volumes of which he completed. Though now outdated, it remains conspicuous for its com- prehensiveness.
In all his later work Hill expressed a deep sense of the value of law and an equally strong belief in the necessity of its progressive development to meet human needs. His style reveals an exceptional ability to assemble and organize material and to give it concise and forceful expression.
Dexter Perkins, city historian and head of the department of history and government in the University of Rochester, is author of The Monroe Doctrine, in 3 volumes, a fresh and broad treatment of the subject, embracing both the Amer- ican view and the European reactions to the historic American policy. He also contributes to learned journals.
Arthur Caswell Parker, director of the Rochester Museum of Arts and Sciences, is an authority on the ethnology, anthropology, and archaeology of New York State. Born on an Indian reservation, he has been honored with many medals and orders, one of which was given him as the most eminent man of Indian descent in America. His chief works are Myths and Folk Tales of the Senecas, Indian How Book, Rumbling Wings, Gustango Gold, Code of Handsome Lake, The Last Grand Sachem, Constitution of the Five Nations, and Archaeological History of New York State.
The most distinguished of Rochester's early writers was Lewis Henry Morgan, the "father of American anthropol- ogy." He was born near Aurora, N. Y., in 1818, graduated from Union College in 1840, and resided in Rochester from 1851 until his death in 1881. His League of the Iroquois, pub- lished in 1851, is still the standard work on the Iroquois
I37
ROCHESTER AND MONROE COUNTY
Nation. Among his other well-known books are The Amer- ican Beaver, Ancient Society, Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family.
Eminent both as an author and as an architect, Claude F. Bragdon is the author of a number of books both technical and popular. His studies in the theory of the fourth dimen- sion have attracted much attention. Representative are A Primer of Higher Space, Four Dimensional Vistas, Oracle, The New Image, and The Eternal Poles.
Herman LeRoy Fairchild, professor emeritus of geology in the university, is the author of more than 250 mono- graphs and articles on geology. His Geologic Story of the Genesee Valley and Western New York is authoritative for the region which it covers.
Under the pen-name of N. Hudson Moore, Mrs. Samuel P. Moore wrote books on antiques which have become almost as well known abroad as in the United States. In 1901 was published her Old China Book, now a standard reference work. Her later books deal with old furniture, lace, old clocks, Delftware, wedgewood, and old glass- the last considered one of the best on the subject. She also wrote books for children, notably Deeds of Daring Done by Girls and Flower Fables and Fancies.
Augustus H. Strong, D.D., born in Rochester in 1836 and for many years president of the Theological Seminary, pub- lished in 1886 his Systematic Theology, once recognized as the classic exposition of the fundamentalist view. In 1888 he published Philosophy and Religion and in 1897 The Great Poets and Their Theology.
Walter Rauschenbusch was born in Rochester, graduated from the university and seminary, and served as professor in the latter from 1897 until his death in 1918. He was one of the most influential figures in the United States in the
138
CULTURAL LIFE
development of what has come to be called the "social gospel," his writings in this field attracting international attention. In 1907 the publication of Christianity and the Social Crisis made him a national figure.
One of Rochester's most distinguished women, Helen Barrett Montgomery, a graduate of Wellesley, was a ver- satile and prolific lecturer and writer. Most of her books, some eight or more, like Island World of the Pacific, published in 1906, deal with missionary life and interests. Her out- standing work, however, was the translation of the entire New Testament from the Greek.
Conrad H. Moehlman, professor of church history at the Colgate-Rochester Divinity School, has published a dozen scholarly books, including The Story of Christianity, The Catholic-Protestant Mind, and The Christian-Jewish Tragedy.
ARCHITECTURE
In general, the architectural eras of Rochester have par- alleled those of other cities in New York State. The first frame dwellings which replaced the log cabins were noth- ing more than serviceable shelters from the weather, a mere matter of four corner posts joined at top and bottom by joists, to which plank walls were fastened with wooden pins or hand-forged spikes, and a gabled slab roof. The first chimneys were precarious affairs made of sticks chinked . with clay.
Throughout the Genesee Valley still stand many cobble- stone houses, as sturdy as when they were built in the first years of the nineteenth century. While a few cobblestone houses are found in northern Vermont and in eastern New York State, in no other part of the country are they so numerous as in western New York. There were two reasons: the plentiful supply of cobblestones, and the fact that through this region traveled a company of Scotch masons
139
ROCHESTER AND MONROE COUNTY
skilled in building this type of house. It was their custom to have several houses under construction at once, as the mortar in each tier of stones had to dry and set before the next tier could be laid. Cobblestones in unlimited quanti- ties, waterworn to a smooth roundness, were to be found in the ancient lake bed which formed the valley. The stones were graded by means of plank sieves pierced with holes of varying sizes. Frequently they were laid in simple pat- terns, a row of large cobbles alternating with a row of smaller size, or in the popular "herringbone" pattern, in which the ovoid stones were slanted in opposite directions in alternate rows. These cobblestone houses were the first concerted attempt in this region to combine utility and beauty in building, and may therefore be classed as the Genesee country's earliest and most original style in architecture.
Not until about 1820 did conventional architecture have its real beginning in Rochester. Before that, very few houses besides the cobblestones were built in the valley with a thought to design as well as service. Among those still standing in Rochester and vicinity are the Orringh Stone tavern, at 2370 East Avenue, immediately across the line in Brighton, which was built in 1790, and the Oliver Culver house, 70 East Boulevard, built in 1805.
ยท Beginning about 1820 and for a few years thereafter, the Georgian Colonial and post-Colonial eras, so far as Roch- ester was concerned, overlapped and gradually merged into the Greek Revival, which remained in vogue generally throughout the country until about 1850. One of the finest examples of Rochester's post-Colonial houses, erected dur- ing the first quarter of the nineteenth century, is the Norris house at 55 Winton Road S. Its well balanced proportions and harmonious lines show something of the influence brought here by architects of the Hudson River Valley. It is a
140
CULTURAL LIFE
corner-entrance house. On either side of the door are leaded side-lights and fluted pilasters supporting a full entabla- ture carved in geometric floral design.
For the awakening of Rochester's interest in architecture local historians give special credit to the work of two men: Capt. Daniel Loomis, a builder, who came to Rochester in 1820, and his son, Isaac Loomis, who in 1828 opened an office as Rochester's first architect. Together they designed and built many of the finest houses in the Third Ward, at that time the city's most aristocratic residential section. Largely under the influence of the Loomises, many Roch- ester houses built between 1820 and 1840 reflected the sim- plicity of the Greek Revival style. Doubtless, too, echoes of the Greek Revolution of 1822 found tangible form in the Classic architecture of that period.
Excellent examples of surviving houses built in the Greek Revival style are the Whittlesey house on Troup Street, the D. A. R. house on Livingston Park, and the Jonathan Child house (1837) on Washington Street. Of these, probably the last is the best. Its side doorway is set under a portico supported by four fluted columns of Ionic design.
In the early 1840's, the center of social Rochester began to swing from Livingston Park to East Avenue. Though the Greek Revival was then in its last decade, many of the impressive homes on East Avenue were built in that style. Of those which still lend an air of dignity to East Avenue is the Pitkin house, now the home of Mrs. Gilman Perkins, at 474 East Avenue. Built in 1840, it was originally Greek Revival. While the third story, added in 1906, varies some- what from the original style, the whole is in complete harmony.
The Silas O. Smith home, at the corner of Sibley Place and East Avenue, now the home of Mrs. Ernest R. Willard, was
14I
ROCHESTER AND MONROE COUNTY
D. A. R. Building
built in 1841, of red brick. It is an example of the Classic Revival style. A columned entrance porch, surmounted by a second story balcony, shelters the wide doorway with its double doors. The house is not open to the public, but its interior design merits description. From the front vestibule a hall 18 feet wide leads through the house to a rear sun porch. From this hall, through a stairwell reaching to the
I:42
CULTURAL LIFE
roof cupola, rises a circular stairway with newel post and balustrade of mahogany. Massive double doors open from the hall into high-ceilinged rooms finished in old ivory. A brass-hooded fireplace, hearthed and manteled with marble, balances each ground floor room by centering the wall opposite the door. The end walls of each room are broken by three narrow pilasters supporting on their acanthus capitals the ornamental plaster cornice. Candela- bra hang from central floral designs in the ceiling. The interior of the house has remained unaltered through a century.
The Greek Revival left traces of beauty which still linger along many of the city's older streets. In the early and middle 19th century, the Gothic Revival appeared. One of the first houses of that design, built in 1824, stands un- changed at the northwest corner of Spring and Washington Streets. Upon existing churches the Gothic Revival has left a clearer imprint than has any other style. Oldest among these is St. Luke's (1820) on South Fitzhugh Street. Architecturally it has been classified as Gothic and as Gothic-Colonial. Mr. Walter H. Cassebeer, Rochester archi- tect, asserts that in its coursing and sandstone quoined corners St. Luke's Church bears traces of the Georgian Colonial influence. The Gothic tower of St. Paul's Church rises above East Avenue at Vick Park B. St. Patrick's Cathe- dral, at the corner of Platt Street and Plymouth Avenue, and the Unitarian Church on Temple Street were also built in the Gothic Revival style. This latter is a particu- larly beautiful and well planned structure, designed by Richard A. Upjohn, the architect of Trinity Church in New York City.
Almost contemporary with the Gothic Revival came a revival of the Queen Anne style. Many of the old houses in
143
The Silas O. Smith House, 1838, now the Residence of Mrs. Ernest R. Willard
CULTURAL LIFE
this style may be found throughout the city, identified by their square cupolas centering wide-eaved roofs.
Rochester has the usual neo-classic buildings of the 1895-1900 period and representatives of the Beaux Arts style of 1900-1910, as well as other buildings showing the influence of such nationally known architects as McKim, Mead and White; Carrere and Hastings; Cram, Goodhue and Ferguson, and other American master architects who practiced in New York City and Boston and whose better known and more successful examples set the vogue for contemporary architecture.
Rochester itself has long been known for its able architects: Gordon and Kaelber, architects of the buildings on the River Campus, one of the finest college groups in America; Claude F. Bragdon, architect of the Chamber of Commerce Building and the New York Central railroad station; the late J. Foster Warner, the late James G. Cutler, G. Storrs Barrows, Walter H. Cassebeer, and others.
Each succeeding style and type of building has added its characteristics to the architectural composite which is pre- sent-day Rochester. Further architectural details will be found in the descriptions of points of interest in the city.
Conservative Rochester has taken less kindly to the in- novations of modernism in architecture than have larger cities like New York, Chicago, Detroit, and Buffalo. The Genesee Valley Trust Bldg. (see City Tour 3), erected 1929, is one of Rochester's architectural ventures in the modern- istic. At the northwest corner of Exchange and Broad Streets, where ran the old towpath of the Erie Canal, the building lifts its mass of granite and limestone. Severely straight and modern lines continue to a height of 12 stories, then converge in a tower 42 feet high, decorated with mullions and grilles. At the apex of this tower mod- ernism reaches skyward its startling "wings of progress."
145
ROCHESTER AND MONROE COUNTY
Entrance to the Chapin House, 110 South Fitzhugh Street Schiff
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.