Rochester

Rochester is a city in western New York, United States, on the Genesee River near the southern shore of Lake Ontario. Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass both made their homes here, and George Eastman built his Kodak company in the city.

Nathaniel Rochester and his partners bought land at the falls of the Genesee in 1803, and the village that grew there took his name. The Erie Canal crossed the river on a stone aqueduct in the 1820s, and the mills at the falls ground so much wheat that Rochester was called the Flour City; later its plant nurseries made it the Flower City. Rochester became a city in 1834. Frederick Douglass printed his newspaper The North Star there, and Susan B. Anthony was arrested after voting in a Rochester election in the 1870s.

Eastman Kodak keeps its head office in Rochester, where George Eastman sold the first cameras loaded with roll film and developed the pictures for his customers. Xerox grew out of the Haloid Company of Rochester, which developed the dry copying process invented by Chester Carlson. Bausch & Lomb began as a small optical shop in the city and became a maker of eyeglass lenses and contact lenses.

The George Eastman Museum, set in his Colonial Revival mansion, is one of the oldest museums of photography. The Strong National Museum of Play holds the National Toy Hall of Fame and a large collection of video games. Each May the Lilac Festival fills Highland Park, laid out by Frederick Law Olmsted, with many varieties of lilac in bloom. The garbage plate, a heap of meat, potatoes and macaroni salad with hot sauce, began at the diner Nick Tahou Hots.