Filling in: Parks and Reparation

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 April 04, 2013 and can be found here.

     The following is a guest post submitted by       Matthew Denker      .
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Dear readers, let's take a short break from redeveloping Rochester. Instead, can we take a moment to consider that which we've lost? That which we can still repair?

This week, let's talk about parks. Specifically, let's talk about Lomb Memorial Park, and Schiller Park. But first, take a look at Columbus Circle in New York City (above). Oh man! Look at poor Christopher Columbus hanging out there all alone in the middle of traffic. At least he has a convenient parking spot for his car. Wait, what? You say that Columbus Circle doesn't look anything like that? Well, I guess it doesn't, now...

   What a difference a few (less) roads make. And with that, we arrive at the subject of this week's Filling In.

Lomb Memorial Park

    Here is Lomb Memorial Park and Mr. Lomb's monument

all sliced up by Upper Falls Blvd. Boy, I can't wait to see the "after" version of this shot. Wait, there     is    no after? It looks just like this now? Well that's a real let down.

   It's a shame Henry Lomb isn't as famous as Christopher Columbus. In any event, let's imagine that we were to rearrange the street grid here just a little bit...

   Bam! Now we have a working park again. Thank you Henry Lomb.

Schiller Park

   If you thought Henry Lomb was less-than-famous, imagine how Freidrich von Schiller feels. This poor guy was a German-American poet over 200 years ago. Fittingly, Mr. Schiller wrote a poem entitled Hope. Here's an excerpt:    It is no empty, fawning deceit,
   Begot in the brain of a jester,
   Proclaimed aloud in the heart it is:
   We are born for that which is better!
   And what the innermost voice conveys,
   The hoping spirit ne'er that betrays.

Unfittingly,     here's

where Mr. Schiller's monument lives today...

   Schiller Monument was originally located at East Main and University Avenue. The monument was moved to Schiller Park (previously known as Franklin Square) at Andrews and Franklin Streets during the construction of the Inner Loop. The new Inner Loop also sliced Schiller Park in half.

I guess Mr. Schiller is left "hoping" that one of the 18,000 cars that drive by on the inner loop each day somehow notice his bust on the embankment. I'd love to draw some fancy rendering of what could be done to Schiller Park to restore it to its former glory. I'd love to wax eloquently on what it could be, but we already know...

As Damon Albarn once said, "Put it back together." Let's do this Rochester. We know we can.

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About Matthew Denker:

Matthew Denker is a Project Director by day and a fantasy real estate tycoon by night. He has a deep interest in Rochester, NY, as well as the subjects of new urbanism, walkability, mass transit, and land use. Going forward he hopes to combine all of those things to make Rochester a city competitive not only with other small, successful cities, such as Portland and Minneapolis, but even better by leveraging its easy access to the world-class cities of Toronto and New York.