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Writer's pictureJesse Ward

The Noose Around Rochester

A feeling has always been in the back of my mind that my hometown of Rochester, New York is split between two separate spheres.


Even in elementary school, I could recognize that one realm consisted of visits to playgrounds, campfires, All-County orchestras, and pool parties. The suburbs of Monroe County were where I was comfortable: they were nothing special, which in a way is what made them homey. My cozy ring of suburbs surrounded the other region, which to a child seemed like a foreign mass of decaying houses right next to each other. “The city,” as everyone referred to it, was a growth of never-ending concrete and abandoned Kodak buildings. It was often reduced to just a place we would pass on the highway on the way to somewhere else. For many fellow suburb-dwellers, it continues to be a destination only for museums, baseball games, or a 9 to 5.


Still, nighttime drives home over the Susan B. Anthony Bridge were always enchanting – I would somehow jolt awake and look out the window at all the rainbow lights shining on the dark water. How can people build buildings that tall? I would wonder at a young age, back when New York City was still just an image in an atlas. I loved my city, even if I lived outside of it. Trips to the art gallery or the Strong Museum of Play were some of the most exciting outings conceivable. Although they were in the midst of a foreign environment with parking garages and empty front yards, I didn’t understand why there was such a rift.



Susan B. Anthony - Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge


Rochester has a rich history — Mount Hope Cemetery contains the graves of Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony, and the George Eastman House is a popular tourist attraction. Somehow, though, Rochester has still managed to become mostly uninteresting, or at least undesirable, to the vast majority of people. The population of the city has been decreasing for as long as I can remember, while the suburbs are ever-so-stable. [1] And as a young kid, I began to wonder why.


As years went by, one can imagine my eventual disappointment with the condition of my county. Shockingly, the disappointment wasn’t in “the city," but rather the suburban environment I had grown up in. It was almost like experiencing a betrayal. Over time, I gathered facts and experiences that challenged my view of suburbs as benign backyards and colorful houses. I learned about the Great Migration, and how the suburb of Brighton was created just far enough outside “the city” for white commuters. In the summer of 2020, I sat bored on my front porch in a pandemic, wishing I could walk somewhere, anywhere, without cars whizzing past at 50 miles per hour. I heard the countless condescending comments from classmates and neighbors for over a decade about how “dangerous” public city schools were, or how they couldn’t believe the city had gotten to its current state. They spoke about how they didn’t even dare to walk its streets. In moments like these, I sometimes felt more frustration than disappointment.


Sure, a lot of the decline that scholars and cynics comment on can be attributed to a typical Rust Belt city's trajectory. Many of my relatives used to work at the Kodak factories in the city, before the film became outdated and the gates were closed. But I would argue that the damage wouldn't be so bad if the city had been invested in, or even acknowledged. Instead, suburban residents abandoned downtown just like Kodak and Bausch & Lomb, looking for a quick, selfish escape, a new market, a new neighborhood. My suburbs that only exist thanks to the city have created their own networks and school sports divisions. I see now that the ring around the city is what strangles it.


It's sappy, but sometimes I miss the days when I had the capacity to be in awe of what I saw in childhood, back when I couldn’t grasp the reasons for the divided world around me. I still hope for a better future for my city and Monroe County: some events like the Lilac Festival can still draw attention and visitors to urban parts of Rochester, at least. I love my city, and I am always happy to come home. It’s a good size, and I still find that view from the bridge charming. There is so much more to Rochester than its rocky past and rockier present, but there is, without a doubt, a long way to go before its two worlds are ever stitched together seamlessly.


A city street in Rochester in 2012. This would be an example of city housing blocked by walls on the highway.


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