‘Where’ did you say?
I’m excited to tell you about a well-kept secret – Rochester, New York and the Finger Lakes Region.
We’re a metro area of 750,000, offering visitors and residents a small-town quality of life, four distinct seasons, and a lion’s share of lakes, rivers, farmlands, vineyards, and golf courses. The city’s nightlife, businesses, cultural and educational institutions are influenced by our rich history and a steady stream of technically and scientifically-driven research and entrepreneurialism.
The southern shore of Lake Ontario represents a huge footprint in American history. Before English colonists reached Virginia or Plymouth, French explorers arrived here at the mouth of the Genesee River in the 1500s in search of the inland water route to the Pacific. They clashed with the Iroquois Indians, who drove them back into Canada, profoundly influencing the direction European culture would take in the New World.
The area was first settled by white men in the late 1700s. In the early 1800s Rochester became a boomtown on the Erie Canal, and later an important segment of the Underground Railroad. Many slaves escaped to freedom through Rochester, then the home of human rights giants, Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass.
In 1888 a young bookkeeper named George Eastman filed a patent for a camera that used roll film instead of glass plate negatives and – Smile! – Eastman Kodak was born. That enterprise gave birth to a flood of manufacturing, technology and philanthropy that now spans three centuries. The influx of wealth is evident even to the casual observer in the miles and miles of city streets lined with stately late-19th and early-20th-century homes with storybook architectural detail, including pillars, porches, stained glass windows, sliding pocket doors and marble fireplaces.
Rochester is the imaging capital of the world. The now-digitized Kodak and the often-copied-never-equaled Xerox – along with aerial imaging innovator Pictometry, the University of Rochester’s Institute of Optics, and Rochester Institute of Technology with its Imaging Science program – all call Rochester home.
Constellation Brands, the largest wine company in the world is based here, as are three of Forbes Top 100 Companies in America to work for. In this new century the University of Rochester-Medical Center-Strong Memorial Hospital – a multi-billion dollar family of educational, research and healthcare enterprises – has emerged as the region’s largest employer.
Twenty colleges and universities are within commuting distance of midtown and several suburban public schools are nationally ranked by Time Magazine.
Underscoring the quality of life are the people themselves. We have a disproportionately large number of regional folks whose impact has been felt beyond the Atlantic and the Pacific. A short list includes: Oscar-winning actor, Phillip Seymour Hoffman; Foreigner front man, Lou Gramm; the world’s top woman soccer player and Gold Medalist, Abby Wambach; Nobel-winning DNA researcher, Dr. Arthur Kornberg; Tony-winning producer of Broadway’s Lion King, Garth Fagan; Pulitzer-winning author, Richard Ben Cramer; Brigham Young, early leader of the Mormon Church; and Pledge of Allegiance author, Francis Bellamy.
And of course there’s the people you’ll meet every day. They are educated, creative, on the cutting edge, artistically and business-minded, serious and diverse. Some are rascals.
Come see us or, better yet, consider becoming one of us!
