The Personality of American Cities

by Edward Hungerford

To our own minds the real Buffalo is to be found in her typical citizen. If he is really typical of the city at the west gate of the Empire state, you will find him optimistic and energetic to a singular degree, and he needs all his optimism and his energy to combat the problems that come to a town of exceeding growth, just crossing the threshold of metropolitanism. Those problems demand cool heads and stout hearts. Buffalo is just beginning to appreciate that. It is becoming less difficult than of old for them to pull together, to dig deep into their purses if need be, and to plan their city of tomorrow in a generous spirit of coöperation.

Rochester is a city of charming homes

The Buffalonians have a full measure of enjoyment in their city. They are intensely proud of it and rightfully—do not forget the man who once told you of the number of railroad trains within twenty-four hours—and they are thoroughly happy in and around it. Niagara Falls and a half-dozen of lake beaches on Erie and Ontario are within easy reach, while nearer still is the lovely park of the town—which a goodly corner of America remembers as the site of the Pan-American Exposition, in 1901. The Buffalonians live much of the time outdoors, and that holds true whether they are able to patronize their country clubs or the less pretentious suburban resorts. They play at golf, at baseball, at football, and in the long hard winter months at basketball and hockey and bowling. They organize teams in all these sports—and some others—and then go down to Rochester and enter into amiable contests with the folks who live by the Genesee. Syracuse, too, comes into the fray and these three cities of the western end of the state of New York fight out their natural and healthy rivalry in series upon series of sturdy athletic championships. The bond between them is really very close indeed.

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Rochester stands halfway between Syracuse and Buffalo and as we have already said, is different from both of them. One difference is apparent even to the man who does not alight from his through train. For no railroad has dared to thrust itself down a main business street in Rochester; in fact she was one of the very first cities in America to remove the deadly grade crossings from her avenues, and incalculable fatalities and near fatalities have been prevented by her wisdom. Many years ago she placed the main line of the New York Central railroad, which crosses close to her heart, upon a great viaduct. When that viaduct was built, a great change came upon the town. The old depot, with its vaulted wooden roof clearing both tracks and street and anchored in the walls of the historic Brackett House; with its ancient white horse switching the cars of earlier days (as it is years and years and years since that white horse went to graze in heavenly meadows) vanished from sight, and a great stone-lined embankment—high enough and thick enough to be a city wall—appeared, as if by magic, while Rochester reveled in a vast new station, big enough and fine enough for all time. At least that was the way the station seemed when it was first built in 1882. But alas, for restless America! They have begun to tear the old station down as this is being written—a larger and still finer structure replaces it. And the folk who pray for the conservatism of our feverish American energy are praying that it will last more than thirty-one years!

But in just this way Rochester has grown apace and quite ahead of the facilities which her earlier generations thought would be abundant for all time. The high civic standard that forced the great railroad improvement in the earlier days when most American towns, like Topsy, were "jus' growin'" and giving little thought for the morrow, made Rochester different. It made her seek to better her water supply and in this she succeeded, tapping a spring pure lake forty miles back in the high hills and bringing its contents to her by a far-reaching aqueduct. It was a large undertaking for a small city of the earlier days, but the small city was plucky and it today possesses a water supply that is second to none. That same early placed high civic standard made fireproof buildings an actuality in Rochester, years in advance of other towns of the same size.

That civic standard has worked wonders for the town by the falls of the Genesee. For one thing it has made her prolific in propaganda of one sort or another. Strange religious sects have come to light within her boundaries. Spiritualism was one of these, for it was in Rochester that the famed Fox sisters heard the mysterious rappings, and it was only a little way outside the town where Joseph Smith asserted that he found the Book of Mormon and so brought a new church into existence. And the ladies who are conducting the "Votes for Women" campaign with such ardor should not forget that it was in Rochester that Susan B. Anthony lived for long years of her life, working not alone for the cause that was close to her heart, but in every way for the good of the town that meant so much to her.

Perhaps the most interesting phases of the Rochester civic standard are those that have worked inwardly. She has a new city plan—of course. What modern city has not dreamed these glowing things, of transforming ugly squares into plazas of European magnificence, of making dingy Main and State streets into boulevards? And who shall say that such dreams are idly dreamed? Rochester is not dreaming idly. She has already conceived a wonderful new City Hall, to spring upwards from her Main street, but what is perhaps more interesting to her casual visitors in her new plan is the architectural recognition that it gives to the Genesee. The Genesee is a splendid river—in many ways not unlike the more famous Niagara. You have already known the part it has played in the making of Rochester. Yet the city has seen fit, apparently, to all but ignore it. Main street—for Rochester is a famous one-street town—crosses it on a solid stone bridge but that bridge is lined with buildings, like the prints you used to see of old London bridge. None of the folk who walk that famous thoroughfare ever see the river. In the new scheme the old rookeries that hang upon the edge of Main street bridge are to be torn away and the river is to come into its own. And Rochester folk feel that that day can come none too soon.

But the Rochester civic standard has worked no better for her than in social reforms. The phases of these are far too many to be enumerated here, but one of them stands forth too sharply to be ignored. A few years ago some Rochesterian conceived the idea of making the schools work nights as well as day. He had studied the work of the settlement houses in the larger cities, and while Rochester had no such slums as called for settlement houses it did have a large population that demanded some interest and attention. For instance, within the past few years a large number of Italians have come there, and although they present no such difficult fusing problem as the Jews of New York, the Polocks of Buffalo or the Huns of Pittsburgh, it is not the Rochester way to ignore in the larger social sense any of the folk who come to her.