Tag Archives: Highland Park

Like Nature, but Better — Olmsted Parks, and Where to Find Some

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Sometimes one person leaves a mark on the landscape… a mark that, for good or ill, shapes the land, and society, for generations… even if the person, and the person’s name, are forgotten.

Frederick Law Olmsted was such a person.

Despite severe health problems he worked as a journalist, the operator of a large farm, a crewmember on a sailing ship to China. He made extensive tours of Britain, and of the slaveholding south, and wrote of them in depth. With a partner, he planned the design and development of Central Park in New York City, but left that off to form and lead the Sanitary Commission, which first created and then operated Union army hospitals in the Civil War. When he finally quit, exhausted, he was 41 years old.

When he returned to New York City, he threw himself into parks, becoming an early avatar of the landscape architect. Central Park was still taking shape, but he now designed a park system for Brooklyn (then a separate city)… and Buffalo… and Rochester… and Niagara Falls… besides having a hand in designing a campus for the new Cornell University, where he was a trustee.

Besides being a pioneer in the “nuts and bolts” – such as sinking the cross streets in Central Park, so as to preserve the long vistas and minimize accidents – Olmsted could be said to have created settings that looked like nature, only better. REAL nature means brambles, brush, and poison ivy. Olmsted’s nature is tree-shrouded, to be sure. But it’s also open and rolling, perfect for rambling or wandering. REAL nature leaves boulders wherever the glacier dumped them. Olmsted’s nature places boulders where they look the best, or where you need one to sit on.

Olmsted gives you not so much an illusion of nature as an idealized nature.

He (and his company) did private commissions, such as the Wadsworth estate in Geneseo. But the closest place to get a good experience of his work is in Rochester.

Here, in the 1890s, he created not just parks, but a SYSTEM of parks. Between them, Seneca Park and Genesee Valley Park preserved much of the shoreline of the Genesee River, gifting the city with long swaths of green. After his retirement his sons would design the University of Rochester campus, while Mount Hope Cemetery would evolve in line with Olmsted’s principles, expanding the green footprint based on the river.

The campus and the cemetery join Genesee Valley Park with Highland Park, which Olmsted planned not only as a park but as an arboretum, showcasing tree and shrub species in natural(-like) settings.

Look back at November’s entries in this space and you’ll read, “Streets and trails in Highland wend and wander. The ground heaves up and drops down. Practically every step creates a new space, a new vista, a new delight. In the days of flu and COVID, Highland is a fine spot for the kids to run around, or for the old folks to ramble.
Highland Park is forested, but it’s not the forest that our forebears cut down. It’s a curated forest, an arboretum, designed in part to delight the visitor.

Mission accomplished.” And thank you, Mr. Olmsted.

Old-Time Diners (and Where to Find Some) — Part 2!

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Over the past three weeks we’ve looked at some quirky, even goofy, forms of American architecture, and where we can drive to see some locally – octagon houses (2/8), Quonset huts and geodesic domes (2/15), and manufactured diners (2/22). This week, we find a few more diners!

As we mentioned last week, anyplace can call itself a diner. But we’re looking here specifically at long, low historic diners, built in a factory and delivered on wheels, and still showing enough of their original construction for us to spot them.

In Rochester you can double-dip for diners, starting with the Skyliner, which is actually an attraction AND an eating place at the Strong National Museum of Play. And why not? If a diner isn’t exactly play, it certainly falls under the category of fun! This is perhaps the largest historic “artifact” in the museum collection, and it was built in 1956 by Fodero, which emphasized modernistic chrome and stainless steel. By the way, it used to be that you could walk in, eat at the diner, and walk out. Nowadays you need to pay museum admission to get a seat.

A few miles away is the Highland Park Diner (960 South Clinton), still on its original 1948 spot but formerly called Dauphin’s Superior Diner. It’s the only survivor of a handful of diners made by the Orleans Company of Albion. Given its location, Highland Park Diner is proud of serving customers “from college students to mature couples.”

Hunter (or Hunter’s) Dinerant in Auburn was closed for a few months last year, but as far as I can tell it’s open again. It’s a 1951 chrome-and-steel diner and it was installed at 18 Genesee Street that same year, on a platform built out over the Owasco River. In addition to traditional diner fare, they’ve recently added the French Canadian poutine (french fries, gravy, and cheese curds).

Back in 1989 Connie Cartolozzo, a chef at Hobart, was having a coffee at Chick’s Diner in Waterloo and decided to make an offer for the place. Before long the 1960s diner hands and became Connie’s Diner. Patrons speak highly of the milkshakes!

Smokin’ Little Diner in DePew is a 1950s chrome-and-steel model, proud of its barbecue sauce. It’s not very big, but it’s DARNED popular.

We mentioned last week that this series is an architecture feature, so we can’t really make recommendations, let alone guarantees, about the food or menus at any given place. Also, of course, the pandemic has wreaked havoc with hours, menus, seating, and ambience. Still, if you’re touring around you might think about getting something “to go,” even if it’s only a cup of coffee (or a milkshake)… or, you could buy a bottle of barbecue sauce. The owners and workers will surely appreciate it.


As we wrap up our diner dive, let’s bare our heads for several local eateries that have passed from the scene. Avoca Diner, as we mentioned last week, fulfilled its destiny by being put on wheels and hauled away to Washington, D.C. The Post Diner in Painted Post was a diner of the spaceship, chrome-and-steel persuasion, plus a substantial expansion. It was ENTIRELY under water in the 1972 flood, and I imagine that that’s why we have it no more.

Randy’s Stanton Diner, on Bridge Street in Corning’s Northside, was in the “railway car” style. It too would have been flooded in 1972, which may be why it’s gone. In either case, the Post and the Stanton are each fondly remembered. Take a drive. Make some of your own memories.

My Heart’s in the Highland (Park)

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If you’ve been to the Lilac Festival, you’ve been to Rochester’s Highand Park.

And if you’ve been there, you’ve noticed that it brings a swath of nature right into the center of a great city – easy to drive to, easy to walk to, easy to take the bus or the bike to.

Frederick Law Olmsted, the 19th-century landscaping guru, created the space, just as he created Rochester’s Seneca Park, and Manhattan’s Central Park. Streets and trails in Highland wend and wander. The ground heaves up and drops down. Practically every step creates a new space, a new vista, a new delight.

In the days of flu and COVID, Highland is a fine spot for the kids to run around, or for the old folks to ramble.

Highland Park is forested, but it’s not the forest that our forebears cut down. It’s a curated forest, an arboretum, designed in part to delight the visitor.

Mission accomplished.

Highland started out on 20 acres donated in 1888 by Ellwanger and Barry, tree nursery entrepreneurs, and is now up to 150 acres, operated by Monroe County Parks. John Dunbar (“Johnny Lilacseed”) started the lilac collection in 1892.

Highland Park is famed for its statue of Frederick Douglass, who made his home (and an underground railroad station) nearby. With its many hidden folds, the park has become the site of numerous other monuments and memorials. On a recent 90-minute visit, I stumbled across two monuments that were new to me.

One was a small stone at the base of a very large tree, honoring members of the National Women’s Service Corps. Our older son told me that this was a female companion to the Civilian Conservation Corps, or C.C.C., during the New Deal. (The women’s installations got to be called She-She-She camps.)

A little later on my ramble I thought, “Ah! THIS is where the Rochester Vietnam Memorial is.” Flowing easily along the lay of the land, the centerpiece of the Memorial is a paved patio, with the national flag, the M.I.A./P.O.W. flag, and the flags of each service. A winding Walk of Honor is lined with 280 uprights, each bearing the name of a Rochester-area person killed in the conflict.

Some parts of the park, like the Sunken Garden and the Warner Castle, I’ve never explored. But I HAVE repeatedly spent pleasurable hours in the 1911 Lamberton Conservatory – definitely a shelter in the time of storm, for I’ve enjoyed its semi-tropical warmth even as the snow and sleet beat down upon the windows. I also like spotting other turn-of-the-century architecture, in bricks rather than glass, for some of the park’s installations.

In addition to the Greater Rochester Vietnam Memorial, Highland Park is home to the AIDS Memorial; the Victims Rights Memorial; and the Workers Rights Memorial. It also has sledding, ice skating, geo-caching, concerts, athletic fields, and Shakespeare in the Park. Highland fits every mood, and every season. And admission is free.

A Warm Spot in a Cold Blast — Lamberton Conservatory

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Where do you go when there’s an arctic cold line dropping down from Lake Ontario?

*Why, to Rochester’s Highland Park, of course.

*When we there a couple of weeks ago under just such circumstances, snow was falling onto Frederick Law Olmstead’s Upstate treasure. Kids were sledding and skateboarding down the steep slopes of a little dell or dingle, to their parents’ delight. As we made our way farther off, excited voices faded to a snowy hush. Here and there a squirrel skittered, and we said that all we needed was a lonely lamppost. And we found one.

*Our photographer son Josh was in his element, but one of a series of arctic waves came down on us and I’ll confess that after a while I pointed out that according to his own words, I had a debilitating disease (a WEIRD debilitating disease, he corrected me), and the new wave of cold was leaching me out, so while he went forging on, I went backtracking. As for Joyce her journey had been even shorter – from the car to the Lamberton Conservatory.

*Three cheers to Monroe County for maintaining not only the gorgeous park, but also, since 1911, the conservatory. It’s a never-ending battle to keep up such a site, and many operators fall by the wayside. Just short of the century mark, the Lamberton was taken down and then painstakingly reproduced on its original site – an undertaking at once valiant and heroic.

*You can guess that it was noticeably WARMER when we stepped inside, but we were not entering a sweltering ambiance. I only saw a couple of thermometers around the place, and they both read 62. Still, in an instant we were warm, even as we watched the snow (fallen and falling) through the glass-paneled walls.

*I did not set myself to acquire knowledge on the Conservatory’s prolific fauna… I just wandered and wended to grok the whole experience. Certainly I DID observe that one room was pretty much a desert environment (lots of cacti), and one was something of a tropical rain forest (more humid, but not aggressively so), while another was more like our own climate, albeit with an endless summer, or at least an endless late spring.

*Josh joined us eventually, and of course we all got a charge out of the FAUNA mixed in with the flora. A terrarium had four tortoises (I found ’em all) and three box turtles (found two). In one lovely artificial stream I counted seventeen turtles, most “sunning” themselves but some swimming, and in another room another six.

*Keep you eye peeled and you also spot quail zipping in and out of the undergrowth – little guys about five inches tall, I’d say. While we were there, many of them tended to congregate within a few yards of some pans of grain laid down for them, but keep at it long enough and you may find them anywhere in this large space, even across the stream, so I suppose that when the coast is clear they use the footbridge.

*That tropical dome space is the biggest in the conservatory, and it’s also the highest, making space for tall growth. Here there are three stories of growth – both here and in the adjoining room, orchids hang down within reach, along with epiphytes.

*Benches scatter here and there, and on one an elderly man sat reading. There’s a little lending library in the entry lobby, or you can bring a book of your own. It’s a lovely place to sit and read on a wintry icy day, enjoying your book and your warmth and your lovely lush surroundings, glancing up now and then to see the snowy world outside.

*Highland Park covers more than 150 acres, essentially straddling South Ave between Mount Hope and South Goodman, with Highland and Reservoir being the main east-west streets. Besides the glory of the setting itself, the space has been created as an arboretum. With a free brochure you can explore various kinds of plantings. It costs two bucks to enter the Conservatory. The park itself is free for all to wander, dream, explore, and snowboard.