‘An Unusual Concentration of Great Books’
Greenwood Books, Rochester NY
On November 8, 1803, Col. Nathaniel Rochester (1752–1831), Maj. Charles Carroll, and Col. William Fitzhugh, Jr. (1761–1839), all of Hagerstown, Maryland, purchased a 100-acres of land from the state in Western New York along the Genesee River. They chose the site because of the potential that three cataracts on the Genesee offered for generating water power. Beginning in 1811 the three founders surveyed the land and laid out streets and tracts. In 1817, the Brown brothers and other landowners joined their lands with the Hundred Acre Tract to form the village of Rochesterville.
By 1823 Rochesterville, with 2,500 residents, was known as Rochester, the Erie Canal aqueduct over the Genesee River was completed, and the Canal east to the Hudson River was opened. Rochester was first known as "The Young Lion of the West", then as the "Flour City". By 1838 it was the largest flour-producing city in the United States. Having doubled its population in only ten years, Rochester was heralded as America’s first "boomtown".
By the mid-19th century, as the wheat-processing industry moved west, the nursery business took hold, resulting in the city’s second nickname, the "Flower City." Large and small nurseries ringed the city, the most famous of which was established in 1840 by George Ellwanger from Germany and Patrick Barry from Ireland.
Rochester is today one impressive ‘hotbed’ not of flowers, although there are many here, but of literary culture; this, in large part, thanks to rare book and special collections libraries found at the University of Rochester, the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), Eastman House, and the Strong Museum. The city is also home to a series of impressive literary activities at the Writers and Books and Genesee Centers, and a selection of well stocked used bookstores.
As the Rochester Booksellers website puts it: “The Rochester New York area has a rich cultural heritage that has resulted in an unusually high concentration of great books and diverse booksellers for a city of its size.”
Located an hour and a half’s drive east of Buffalo, “Rochester has been home to historic figures like Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, and George Eastman, and is still today a rich community that thrives with leading universities …and world class businesses such as Kodak, [ Bausch & Lomb] and Xerox. All of these things have kept a strong and steady supply of wonderful books flowing through the shelves of our shops.”
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