I was born in 1964 and my family used to go to Sibley's at Christmas time. If I can recall, Sibley's had the clocks of the world. It was beautiful. My dad worked at Hallman Chevrolet for a while. Then I worked at a bank on the corner of Main and Exchange.

My grandfather was a Canadian immigrant. He moved to the states when he was a teenager. He got into Kodak not long afterwards. My mother was born as part of the booming "kodak family" generation. So she (and her sisters) became a first generation American. With his two hands he built his home, raised an entire family of 3 daughters, 10 grandchildren and 6 great grandchildren with his career at Kodak. He was with the company 40 years when they filed for bankruptcy and he was incentivized to retire. Both he and my mother are no longer with us. We buried him last summer just before my birthday. But, i greatly appreciate the sacrifice and contributions that man made to all of our lives. Rochester and Kodak have played a huge role in my family history.

I love my hometown. It’s heartbreaking to see it in such despair! I have been waiting my entire life for the city to return to its former glory, yet things only seem to be getting worse. I would move back in a heartbeat if the crime and economic conditions improved. I hope I don’t die before that day arrives… I miss it everyday.

Sibley's remained in business downtown until they were purchased by a chain, who sold the building to the Wilmots. Sibley's was founded by the family of Hiram Sibley, who founded Western Union

Thanks for sharing this video! Rochester has many beautiful buildings and huge cultural events. We are renowned for various festivals all summer long. The Lilac Festival in the Spring, Corn Hill and Clothesline Arts Festivals, Jazz Festival, and many. The University of Rochester's main Rush Rhees campus is in the south portion of the city, along the Genesee River. There was once a women's campus at University Avenue & Goodman St. area; it is now the Memorial Art Gallery and Rochester's neighborhood of the arts. Within downtown is the glorious Eastman Theatre, the jewel of the Eastman School of Music, part of the University of Rochester. Many institutes of higher learning have moved or were founded in the suburban areas: we have the Rochester Institute of Technology with the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, Nazareth University, St John Fisher University, Empire State College, Roberts Wesleyan University, Bryant and Stratton College, State University of New York College at Brockport and Monroe Community College, as well as Elim Bible Institute. Because of having three schools with large music programs (Eastman, Nazareth, Roberts) and dance (RIT and others), the city is home to many cultural events. There is rarely a night when you cannot see or hear a free concert or performance at one of the schools. Rochester was settled in 1812 and incorporated as the Village of Rochesterville in 1817. The completion of the Erie Canal in the 1820s had led to a boomtown atmosphere in the village, which would become incorporated as a full-fledged city of Rochester in 1834. I'm glad you spent some time at the Central Library of Rochester & Monroe County, which has an amazing local history collection. The water-feature on the North Terrace is shown in 0:13-0:17. Regarding the canal's further uses, it was a subway from 1927-1952. It closed as the route was needed for the increase in automobiles and the parts out of the downtown (center city) area became divided highways, or as we call them, expressways. In fact, the Rundel Memorial Building of the Central Library was actually constructed on top of the extant subway from 1934-1936. After the subway closed, it was never used as a pedestrian walkway. People were able to get in and out, but this was not an officially sanctioned walk. By the way, on of your favorites, LaSalle, did make a stop in this area. Just east of Rochester are the towns of Irondequoit and Webster. Separating them is a very large body of water, the Irondequoit Bay. At the bottom of this bay, LaSalle made landing in 1669. There is a LaSalle's Landing Park at the site now. The bay and Irondequoit Creek area was also visited by the Marquis de Denonville during his 1687 expedition. Because of its major optics industries like Bausch & Lomb, Xerox, and Kodak, Rochester has been known as the Imaging Capital of the World. Rochester is also known as the Lilac Capital of the world, with over 550 species in the Frederick Law Olmsted-designed Highland Park, with many new strains developed here. Other famous places here include one of the country's oldest municipal cemeteries, Mt. Hope, where orator Frederick Douglass and women's rights champion Susan B. Anthony are buried, both having lived in Rochester. George Eastman's home is the world's oldest photography museum. The Rochester Public Market is one of the oldest, operating since 1827. The Strong National Museum of Play is a world-class museum with interactive exhibits and is also home to the National Toy Hall of Fame, the International Center for the History of Electronic Games, the World Video Game Hall of Fame, and the Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play, and produces the American Journal of Play. Please come back for another visit, and treat yourself to a garbage plate as well!

I saw Sammy Hagar solo in 97 at the Eastman Theater. Lived in Fairport 97-02. Rochester is a beautiful city...but it certainly does have its "parts".

585 garbage plate gang 🕺 Also im a native so maybe im biased but I love the old architecture here. I used to walk around downtown at night stoned out of my mind just to look at the buildings ALSO, Hamlin Beach is the best beach here. No other beach is worth your time 🙊

You completely missed PARK AVENUE- Quaint gift shops - cafes - restaurants and tons of people. Downtown is more of a business district with attorneys - real estate and county services. Nothing to see. You we’re actually walking distance from Park avenue.

This was one of the 20 biggest cities in the nation by 1900 and also a city that had more people by 1920 than it does currently in 2020. That’s why there is such grand architecture. The city was pretty much built before cars. The Park Avenue neighborhood is now one of the largest national register historic districts anywhere. Beautiful city. My hometown.

If you’re familiar w who Susan b Anthony is, she is buried at my hope cemetery and women’s National rights convention qnd lots of that history is in a town not far from here. U did an excellent job though w history, w what you did show. 👍🏼

The subway was immaculate and the urban art moved in still beautifully decorated

If you like forgotten cities with interesting history, interesting buildings, and bizarrely few people on the streets, you must come to Hartford.

Really cool video. I liked the tongue in cheek humor. I was born and raised in Rochester and my dad worked at Kodak his whole career so we ended up with piles of super 8mm film all over the house. Back in college i used to run along the Genesee River from UofR up past the DinoBBQ and back which was like a mini tour of the city. I had no idea there Erie canal went over the river down town! It moved further south at some point apparently. Anyhow nice video thanks for taking the time.

That was an impressive narration. I counted at least three different accents in one voice 😁

Shoutout to my city 🙏🏾🙏🏾❤️

Lived there...in the suburbs from '86 - '21...work related...enjoyed it...affordable cost of living...good school system...great place to raise kids...

The view from kodak marketing/ education center made genesee river seem like a wilderness park

I visited Rochester and in the local news a while back a woman was in danger and cops did nothing . She was murdered by her ex husband. From what I understand these 2 cops were charged for not helping her. Not sure how common that is but that is not good.

Should have shown the Eastman theatre, if it’s still there, the place was beautiful.

We are famous for inventing a ground beef sauce that is served with a hamburger and two sides. You have a strange accent I guess this place is more interesting to foreigners than anyone who lives here , it kind of sucks

Coming from someone who lives in Rochester, this is a nice video

Once upon a time, Rochester had 320,000 souls thriving in it.

I'm currently living here right now as we speak been living in Rochester NY when I was born

The bar next door has been burglarized 4 times in the last month by the same guy. Rochester isn’t quite empty.

One interesting thing about the cities in upstate NY is they have some great architecture downtown, a legacy of their more prosperous days of yore.

This was quite entertaining, will have to check out more of ur vids…… learned somethings abt Rochester, been here since 1984 and didn’t know some of it. Cheerio! 👍🏼

It’s a lovey city. I’d move there in a minute and start fixing a house up in one of those neighborhoods. TheChurches are just beautiful. There’s a famous new German pipe organ there in one of those red sandstone gothic churches. That’s a wonderful thing for an American city to be known for.

The original Reynolds Arcade was torn down in 1932, the current building was built after that. The Paddock Arcade in Watertown, NY has been in continuous operation since 1850.

Lovely video

Excellent video.

Should've talked about Mount Hope, the Lilac Festival and Mount Hope Cemetery are both interesting bits of Rochester lore. I love Highland Park the most though, it's an phenomenal park/nature reserve/campground/flower garden (I love smoking weed by the water reserve, very peaceful.)

My parents watched this city slowly die, now they scold me for going there for restaurants and such because of safety and I dont blame them.

Sibleys depatment stores were purchased by may company in the 80s.

Born Rochester New York.Played in the house next to Eastman house. Look like George Ellwanger lived on Fintray place, Rocheser New York.

With the downsize in Kodak and Xerox its pretty much just a stop on the way to Buffalo

ROCHESTER CLOSED MIDTOWN AND THEN PUT BUSES IN THE TRANSIT CENTER AMD CLOSED ALL STORE'S DOWNTOWN AND NOW YOU BARELY SEE ANYONE AND PEOPLE ARE MOVING TO OTHER CITIES BECAUSE THERE IS NOTHING HERE . THIS IS A SHAME.

12:08 111 East Avenue! I lived there from 1990-1994 for $285/month.

So many communities fading away more or less…

In the past week, 2 US Postal workers who were delivering mail were robbed in Rochester. These happened in the middle of the day. Numerous cars are either broken into or stolen daily. A stolen car is used as a battering ram to knock down a storefront and then a second stolen car is used to haul the stolen goods away. Rochester is a horror show of a city and that is why you saw few people walking around. You were lucky you made it out of there without an incident.

I used to work in the wilder building 2019-2022

Looking for reasons to be thankful to be from here because I've never been and when I traveled to other states I usually told people I was from NYC.

Great video, thank you for details, i honestly enjoyed. But I also understood, that basically nothing really to do there with kids.

Except it wasn't! Great closing line!

Lived in Rochester most my whole life and it's horrible here in 2020s ..Crime is horrible people dying daily and yea houses be shot up

Only things keeping afloat are RIT and U Roch

Rochester was so well known.

Please come back sometime!

Rochester is also home to one of the most well known women’s rights activists, Susan B. Anthony! Her home has become a museum as well just like George Eastman. She is buried in one of the most beautiful cemeteries in the city, Mount Hope Cemetery. Not only is she buried there but so is Frederick Douglass and Myron Holley!

Once Kodak moved out, that was the end of Rochester!! We knew it was going down years before, the whole country has been going down since the end of WWII. Companies like bausch & lomb, Ganett tv and newspaper, xerox, taylor instruments, poloroid, and more! Kodak means "hand-held"!! It was a wonderful place to live,work and play all in the same day!! Dont feel bad, buffalo, syracuse, Albany, utica, rome, binghamton, olean, is all shot to ****!! Taxes are sky high- income and property both! It snows and food and utilities are way too expense!! Pollution is another problem! 😢

Thanks for this video! Be it ever so crappy, there's no place like home!

You didn’t see Rochester if you didn’t go to the Park Avenue neighborhood.

Btw, there’s like 7 major schools/ university type all here.

The city is full of ghosts, and former glory. A woman I once was fond of was murdered in the city by two black men, and then she was dumped like trash behind a house on Skuse street. Rochester is now an active war zone with murders nearly every night. I worked at Great Lakes Press, Case Hoyt, Weyerhaeuser paper co on Boxart street, and also Xerox. I owned a house on Mohawk street for 13 years and finally left for greener pastures in 2003. I moved to an entirely different county. Rochester, like so many other cities has lost its soul to political cancer, greed, incompetency, and to a culture which covets immorality, violence, and social decay. Edit: I couldn't care less who agrees with me or not. This is just how the city has reflected on my life. I remember standing on the 4th floor of Great Lakes Press in the morning before anyone else got there, and watching the trains going through while I sipped coffee. Buildings still stood on Central ave, and Wegmans was still in Midtown. It really was a different world in Rochester. People were different..richer. They wore more hats.

Once Kodak started outsourcing everything overseas in the 1990's Rochester died. We have been slowly decaying ever since. The local government spends money like we are thriving while the economy gets gutted by bad policy. The population grows while the jobs leave.

Sibley's lasted until 1990 BTW.

In the 1980's, Kodak employed 90% of working people in Monroe County,and 60% of the working people in the 3 ajoining counties !! Kodak never had a union, Why?? George Eastman tried his employees with class!! If you worked at Kodak, you were set for life!!

I will harangue to anyone that Rochester is a golden place to live and the idiots who live there don't even know it. Now, all these things I am going to mention existed when I left, and may not exist any more. But here: Rochester has a world-renowned music symphony and music school that runs free student concerts every weeknight all during the school year. Record stores include the nationally-famous Bop Shop, the nationally-famous House of Guitars, and the supermarket-sized Record Archive. There is a world-famous jazz festival, and in the Eighties there was a very active New Wave scene. (My brother totally ripped off the House of Guitars for his 1957 Precision Bass and I totally ripped them off for my 1960 Jazzmaster.) Rochester has two beautiful beaches that nobody goes to. They keep trying to fk up Charlotte, maybe they succeeded by now, I don't know. Rochester has not just an art movie theater but it is a triplex. Plus the Cinema theater (which closed). Plus the Dryden, that has shows that people fly in from all over the country to see. Rochester has a downtown baseball stadium, painfully cheaply constructed because the mayor at the time didn't want to support a white people's sport. Rochester has the University of Rochester and RIT, both top-of-the-list schools. Rochester has or had the largest number of pizza joints per capita in the country. And an Italian market and sub shop that has been continually operating since the mid-1940s, and knows how to make a meatball sub that nobody else knows how to do. Rochester used to have mind-blowing burger joints until Mediocreburger Industries bought them all. They have Kithno's, whose Friday Fish Fry is indescribable. Does Rochester still have all-night diners? They did when I was there. And Cobbs Hill Pizza, which made the only steak sandwich that is actually as delicious as people think their steak sandwiches are. And Pontillo's Hudson and Ridge, where the guy who ran it was actually named Guido and made a pie that had The Thing that distinguishes real pies from imposters. And probably lots of others that I can't remember. The last time I was up there I toured all the great food places I could hit in four days and didn't near get to all of them. And fairs and festivals all during the summer. And great flea markets within a reasonable Sunday drive. And great garage sales because people have lived in their homes for seventy years. Gigantic classic car shows. And a freakin' amusement park with rollercoasters and stuff. You think other cities have amusement parks? OTHER CITIES ANYWHERE NEAR THIS SIZE DON'T HAVE ANY OF THIS STUFF.

There's nothing left but crime and pot holes.

At Kodak, you could borrow photo equipment at no cost! And if u were full time, you could go to Kodak School for 8 hours every week to learn how to use Kodak products!! I knew a man who's job it was to get customers to use 1 more sheet per year of Kodak paper!! That is what his job was for years! George Eastman was never married, he awoke everday to the sound of organ music that his male organist played to tell him it was time to get up!! What a life!! George Eastman committed suicide! He had a gay old time of it!! And so did his organist!

Left 30 years ago. You can only keep painting things so many times. Who can afford the taxes?

It’s murder city now in glad you made it through our city . Stay away from the abc blocks if you come back..

Rochester NY in 2023 = High crime/No bail laws and high taxes. That is about it. City in very rapid decline, with no hope of rebound in sight. Same as most other cities run by Democrats for decades

YOU DONT REALLY HAVE A VOICE FOR VOICE OVERS

You used so many items from Rochester Museum and science center and gave no credit

I have read that Rochester was the Silicon valley of the 1950s, and early '60s, as in the center of that era's consumer tech innovations by Kodak, Xerox, BASF and (I learned from watching this) Bausch & Lomb. Rochester was listed as having the lowest unemployment rate of any metro area in the nation. Then, in the summer of 1964, the '50s/early '60s ended; Rochester had severe rioting by black residents after a killing of a black man in police custody. Blacks said these incidents happened too often and all leaders cared about was basking in their low unemployment rate and toasting the Eastmans, Bauschs and Lombs. The well off discovered black people and came face to face with the fact that the power structure in this nation had created ghettos. The old illusion was over.

The accent is just too hard to listen to. Couldn’t make it through the video. Are you a French, South African, Australian, Englishman?

You should have sobered up before you narrated this mess.

Lake Ontario did NOT freeze 1 year recently, its the 1st time in history not to!! Global warming!!

Sibley lasted until the 1990s

What kind of accent is this?

It’s boring… I’ve been there before they have a good hospital called strong hospital for treatment I was getting years ago. Nothing really to do except go to the mall, and to be honest with you I was bored 😑 They have a museum for kids think it was called the Strong museum

Wow 7 years later since I've moved away and they've polished the turd that is Rochester, these videos amaze me that Rochester and people from hang their hats on "ghosts of Rochester past" like Kodak, a subway system that was defunct in the 1950s" celebrities who are from the area, and famous city leaders like Fredrick Douglas, which btw speaking of which Fredrick Douglas would be disgusted that the city is a still redlined keeping minorities out of the "nice scenic areas" of downtown and east ave its no wonder the downtown is dead. If you plan on moving to Rochester please dont its a hollow city and people will hype it up to be cooler than it really is

One or my friends lived there, but him and his family got sick of it and moved to Milwaukee, with more industrialization

Trumplandia in upstate New York! Annoying AI narration?

I find it difficult to follow the accent of the narrator. I gave up watching after a few minutes. Sorry

2:50 for 9000 people??? Is that a joke? You can easily fit 250 thousand there. Wake up.

Godbless u. I was raped here in this beautiful city. I miss it