Rochester's 19th Ward portrays one of the city's largest residential neighborhoods. The initial settlement, predating Rochester itself, was called Castle Town. It emerged around 1800 along the Genesee River, where boatmen poled flat-bottomed boats along a stretch of turbulence in the river known as the Rapids. Out of this desolate community developed a streetcar suburb, an elegant and vibrant neighborhood, designed for the modern 20th-century family. Fine homes, churches, shops, schools, and industries arose between 1900 and 1930, and the 19th Ward quickly became a prestigious address for...

A full generation has passed since a New York Central emblem dashed across the countryside on a railroad car, but few could ever forget "the greatest railroad in the world." The New York Central System grew from an amalgamation of smaller lines stretching from Albany to Buffalo in the 1830s. Twenty years later, the lines were gathered into a single company. Its phenomenal success did not go unnoticed by Cornelius "the Commodore" Vanderbilt. In his late sixties, when most men retire, he methodically started acquiring railroads in the New York City and Hudson River region. He then acquired the...

Some twenty miles south of Rochester lies what was historically the "crossroads of western New York." Lima and its neighbors in the Genesee Valley are unique in many ways. An excellent network of trails had been developed by the Iroquois long before the area attracted its first permanent settler in 1788. As immigrants streamed westward, inns opened at this crossroads to serve them, and some of the travelers stayed to become farmers, tradesmen, and merchants. In the mid-1800s, Lima had several photography studios and a wealth of architectural gems, many of which still remain. Today, Lima has...