Confessions of an Urban Explorer: "Damn Conscience"

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 October 09, 2013 and can be found here.

     The following story and photos were submitted by       Matt Rieck      .
      Submit your story today      .

I stopped by Iola on Sunday to check on what's left, and I snapped these pics. In front of the main building there was once a circle with concrete benches and lamp posts. To be perfectly honest I coveted the abandoned lamp posts and thought of ways I could possibly "reclaim" them, but my conscience always prevented me from doing so. Well, I should have because the picture above shows the careful attention the deconstruction crew is taking to features that could be re-used. That's the base and the flattened steel post is above it. I think my reclamation would have been better than this treatment. Damn conscience.

   The lamp post in this picture is what the crushed one looked like.

   Here are the circular concrete benches. They appear to have been removed carefully. I hope for re-use on the CityGate site.

   The Dumpster sits on the circle that once was home to the concrete benches and four lamp posts.

   Here the wrecking ball rests on a tire while waiting its job of destroying the Iola main building once the asbestos abatement is complete.

   Here's a view of the former Children's Building of the Iola Sanatorium (August 1966). The seating area and lamp posts can be seen on the right.

It was built in 1927, and at the time was the largest sanatorium in the state. By the time it closed in 1963 it had only a handful of patients. It later became part of Monroe County's Iola complex and was referred to as building No. 5. It housed various county offices until 1999. The Iola campus is slated to be replaced with     CityGate    .

* * *

About Matt Rieck:

Matt Rieck is a Rochester transplant who loves his adopted hometown's rich heritage. He's explored all the buildings on the old Iola campus (prior to demolition).