Old Stone Warehouse - Rochester, NY
Posted by: 
sagefemme
N 43° 08.938 W 077° 36.410
18T E 288030 N 4780656
The Erie Canal originally curved past the building's NE Corner. This old stone warehouse at 1 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester, NY 14620 was a boarded up the first time I saw it in the 1980s. In the 1990s, it was restored to utility, now time as office space.
Waymark Code: WMDVPW
Location: New York, United States
Date Posted: 02/27/2012
Views: 7
Both the description and the history are short in the telling. This trapezoid shaped building was constructed of Medina sandstone to fit into an unusual shaped urban site in downtown Rochester, bounded on the south by Mt Hope Ave and on the east by South Ave. The Erie Canal originally curved past the building's northwest corner, and the northeast side of the warehouse waa bounded by a canal feeder, and so the warehouse was at one time almost surrounded by roads or canals.
The original building, 40 ft by 100 feet was built as four stories. The wood structural system of the 1822 section was designed to support heavy loads with closely spaced 12" by 12" wooden columns and low ceilings. This earlier part was six bays wide on Mt Hope Ave and five bays wide on South Ave. The roof over this section has a very slight pitch with no cornice on the South Ave facade and simple projecting cornice on the Mt Hope facade.
The later southwester addition is two bays wide on the Mount Hope side and appears to have been built in two stages. The first five stories are of stone and are terminated with a decorative bracketed cornice. "A simple one-story addition sits above this section looking very much like a twentieth century afterthought." (
visit link) This last part has since been removed. The addition was a metal structural system with 9" steel beams, 7" square cast iron columns at the stone walls and 8" diameter cast iron columns at the center.
The interior wood framing and stone walls were exposed, and the flooring is double in places due to the heavy load requirements. An elevator has replaced the original hoist.
"Built on speculation at the proposed juncture of the Erie Canal and a feeder carrying traffic from the Genessee River to the canal, the massive Old Stone Warehouse in downtown Rochester became an integral part of industrial, commercial, and transportational history of the city.
"The warehouse waa built in 1822 by Myron Holley and John Gilbert who cleverly secured its strategic location before the canal network around the site was completed. Myron Holley, for whom the Orleans County illage of Holley was named, was one of the key promoters of western New York during this period and helped to finance the Erie Canal. Gilbert and Holley had a boat basin builtin front of their warehouse for boats waiting to be loaded or to go East oer the nearby Broad Street Aqueduct.
"The warehouse is purely functional in design and construction. Its irregular was dictated by the planned canal routes, and its heavy stone walls, low ceilings and closely spaced thick wooden columns were needed for the heay loads to by housed in the building. At the time of construction it was the second warehouse in Rochester, a city which was to become a distributing center for all freight from the East.
"By 1838 William Cheney had converted the warehouse builign into a foundry where stoves and other iron products were cast. The original building measured 40' by 100', and in 1864 Samuel Oothourt was responsible for its enlargement to 74' by 150'. Throughout the late 19th and 20th century the building was phased out as a foundry, reverted to a warehouse for tile and pottery, was then used as a malt-house and brewery and once again went back to use as a warehouse." (
visit link)
Although not sill in use as a warehouse it is "a conspicuous visual element in the neighborhood, dominating the junction of Mt. Hope and South Avenues". (
visit link)