A city's rich transportation history comes alive in Rochester's Transportation Heritage. Here, the evolution of transportation in Rochester is documented in vintage images from the 1890s through the 1950s. Included are photographs of Charles Lindbergh's visit to Rochester; images of the earliest locomotives and grand railroad stations; a picture of a trotting mare racing a lady bicyclist at the old Driving Park racetrack; views of boats on the Erie Canal; and shots of the city's first airplanes. Rochester's Transportation Heritage revives the horse-drawn trolley car days and the lost subway era. Rare images of the Regas auto and the cars that were destroyed by Rochester's 1932 tornado complete the story.

James Preston explores the transport heritage of Kent.

Webster, located in south central Massachusetts, is home to the glacially created Webster Lake. The lake, famously known as Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg, was responsible for sustaining a significant Native American population. Its waterpower potential attracted Samuel Slater, "the father of American manufacturers," to locate his textile mills here, and in 1832, at Slater's behest, the towns of Oxford and Dudley reluctantly granted the land for Webster's formation. Many immigrants were attracted to the town because of mill employment and the pleasant living conditions near the lake. Through vintage photographs, Webster highlights this town's mill life and the lake's impact on its development.

A gripping and inspiring book, Civic Passions examines innovative leadership in periods of crisis in American history. Starting from the late nineteenth century, when respected voices warned that America was on the brink of collapse, Cecelia Tichi explores the wisdom of practical visionaries who were confronted with a series of social, political...

Find hundreds of easy day trips within two hours of Rochester. Explore the beauty and hidden gems of the Rochester, New York, area with local travel expert Debi Bower. As the founder of the website daytrippingroc, Bower offers detailed guides and suggested activities, highlighting the best places to visit in the city of Rochester and the surrounding Finger Lakes region, plus several destinations in Central New York, Western New York, and the Southern Tier. Day Trips Around Rochester, New York is the ultimate guide for residents and guests looking to explore the region and experience all that it offers.

In The Roots of Flower City, Camden Burd explores the economic and ecological significance of Rochester plant nurserymen over the course of the nineteenth century. As the first boomtown in the United States, Rochester was an embodiment of nineteenth-century market economies and social reform movements. Connected to the eastern seaboard by the Erie Canal, the city's unique economic, cultural, and environmental conditions fostered and sustained a vast and influential commercial plant nursery industry that attracted the nation's most prominent horticulturists and nurserymen. Rochester-area nurserymen built parks and rural cemeteries, landscaped homes and schools, and promoted horticultural pursuits regionally and nationally. As their influence grew, many of these horticultural entrepreneurs developed into the city's elite and played a leading role in shaping Rochester's economic, social, and physical landscape. Most significantly, nurserymen enthusiastically participated in the American imperial project, selling and distributing fruit, shade, and ornamental trees, shrubs, and flowers across the continent, transforming landscapes and ecologies far beyond New York. The Roots of Flower City tells the remarkable history of Rochester's outsized influence on the homes, estates, towns, and cities of nineteenth-century America as it weathered economic downturns and competition from other regions. One threat, however, proved to be too much to overcome. As Burd details, the spread of the destructive San Jose scale through the transcontinental plant trade prompted federal legislation that would lead to the decline of the Rochester plant nursery industry in the last decade of the nineteenth century, ending a sustained era of success and ecological impact.

Rochester may be better known for its rolling hills and lilac fields than for its architecture, but look closely and the city's hidden gems reveal themselves. In this survey of Rochester's historic architectural elements and styles, city planner Michael Behrendt encourages you to "slow down, look round--check out the fancy cornices on North Main Street and admire the brickwork on the few remaining mill structures." Impress your neighbors by pointing out the Italianate, Queen Anne, Georgian or Federal styles of their houses and identifying the mansard roofs, oriel windows and porticos around town. Drawing from his series of articles written for the Rochester Times, Behrendt examines everything from barns, churches and schoolhouses to the prominent Rochester Opera House. Discover Rochester's history as written in brick and stone, marble and mortar.