Rochester, the canal boomtown that went from flour to flowers to film
Rochester, New York, has reinvented itself several times. The Erie Canal turned a village by the Genesee River's waterfalls into America's first boomtown, and by 1838 it produced more flour than any other US city. Later came nurseries, then Kodak, Xerox and Bausch & Lomb, earning it the title World's Image Center.
The site was Seneca hunting ground before the American Revolution. In 1803 three Maryland men, among them Colonel Nathaniel Rochester, bought a 100 acre plot beside the river, drawn by the power of its three cataracts. The village first carried the clumsy name Rochesterville, trimmed in 1822. When the canal aqueduct over the Genesee opened in 1823, trade poured in, and the population reached 9,200 by 1830.
As wheat milling drifted west, nurseries ringed the city, so the Flour City became the Flower City. The town also drew reformers. Frederick Douglass founded his abolitionist paper The North Star there in 1847, and Susan B. Anthony made her home there. The 1920 amendment guaranteeing women the vote carried her name, though she did not live to see it.
Industry followed. Bausch & Lomb began in 1861, George Eastman founded Kodak in 1892, and Xerox started in 1906 as the Haloid Company. The city even ran a small subway in the old canal bed from 1927 to 1956. In 1946 it staged one of America's rare successful general strikes, with around 50,000 workers backing fired city employees.
Decline arrived with deindustrialisation. In 1997 Kodak announced 10,000 layoffs worldwide, at the time the largest US job cut announcement, and the company went bankrupt in 2012. The George Eastman Museum still holds the world's oldest photography collection, and the Eastman School of Music remains one of the leading conservatories.
Source: Rochester, New York
