A Tower for Rochester

This article was scraped from Rochester Subway. This is a blog about Rochester history and urbanism has not been published since 2017. The current owners are now publishing link spam which made me want to preserve this history.. The original article was published December 03, 2014 and can be found here.

     By       Matthew Denker

Rochester has a nice skyline, although it's not notably more impressive than some comparable cities like Des Moines, IA where the tallest tower is 801 Grand at 630 ft. or Birmingham, AL where the tallest tower is the Wells Fargo Tower at 454 ft. tall.

    Des Moines, IA

    Birmingham, AL

Notably, the tallest tower in Rochester is only 442 feet (and yes, it's Xerox). Even more pressing, the most recent tower to be built here is the newly-renamed Legacy Tower (nee Bausch & Lomb Place). Since the Legacy Tower was built in 1995,     approximately 650 towers    have been built worldwide that are taller than 650 ft.

   As you might have gleaned, not a single one of them has been built in Rochester. I think it's time for that to change, and to get an idea for what the Rochester skyline might look like, I've generated some images with a new tower. There are also some pictures of contemporary buildings around 650 ft. that I am partial to, but the view on the skyline will be of a simple massing 650 ft. in height and 120 ft. square. I've chosen 3 prime sites downtown for our hypothetical tower. Please note that at any of these sites there should be a podium that fills the site to the block with the tower rising above. Said podium doesn't factor into the skyline impact, though, and is not shown here.

   For each of the three sites, I've generated 3 views from various angles showing the impact on the skyline. My personal favorite is Site 3, but I think any of these locations would add positively to the Rochester skyline.    * * *

Site 1

(     84 Andrews Street

)

* * *

Site 2

275 East Main Street

)

* * *

Site 3

(     119 West Main Street

)

Finally, as promised, here are a few towers built in the last 10 years that I like. I think any of these would be a huge change from the current tower architecture in Rochester.

    Murano, Philadelphia (475 ft. - This is a little short, but one of my favorite condo towers ever.)

    388 Bridge St, Brooklyn (590 ft.)

    One Rincon Hill, San Francisco (641 ft.)

    Queen City Square, Cincinnati (665 ft.)

    Aqua, Chicago (859 ft. - This is a little tall, but also an incredible building.)