Whatever Happened To ... Front Street?

Front Street was one of the most colorful thoroughfares in Rochester's history, a downtown mainstay for more than a century known for its meat markets and bawdy atmosphere that led to it being called the city's Skid Row.

The street ran along the western shore of the Genesee River from Main Street to Central Avenue (about where Commercial Street is now). It was torn apart in the mid-1960s in the name of urban renewal and replaced, for the most part, by Genesee Crossroads Park and a slew of new buildings.

Only a sliver of the street still remains, and it's mainly empty now. It's a far cry from when colorful characters mingled with policemen and politicians, businessmen and bums to give Front Street its special ambience.

"In its years of bustling life, it was different from any other street in the city," wrote legendary local newsman Henry Clune in a 1993 story in Rochester History magazine. "Those of us who knew it in its prime … cherish the remembrance of its unique character."

Front Street was crammed with stores, bargain-priced restaurants, betting parlors, pawnshops and bars. There was a fruit market at the corner of Main, a shoe store, locksmiths and tinsmiths, and, as Dorothy Livadas wrote in a 1978 Democrat and Chronicle story, "real, old-fashioned hardware stores that smelled like a hardware store should smell."

Clune wrote about characters like Paddy Paddock, the "Mayor of Front Street" and Chicken Murray, a petty thief who committed petty crimes to get thrown in jail "where he was always in charge of the chickens, thus his sobriquet."

The meat markets had names like Jacobson's, Andrews, Katz Bros. and Burkhalter's. Front Street was where everyone got the best meats in towns, "freshly cut, off the hoof, one might say," Livadas wrote in the 1978 story. Shops also sold olive oil from barrels, olives out of huge kegs, imported cheeses, snails and exotic smoked fish.

"Smelly" poultry markets on the east side of the street, overlooking the river, sold live chickens that were butchered and prepared for customers.

"I know those proprietors used to throw the chicken entrails out the back window and into the river," Bill Beeney wrote in a 1979 Democrat and Chronicle column.

Front Street was among the oldest in the city, laid out in the 1820s. The river often overran its banks, and devastating floods hit Front Street on more than one occasion.

Always a bit rough around the edges, Front Street in its later years became perhaps even seedier. John Stewart labeled it "the toughest street between New York City and Chicago" in a 1977 Democrat and Chronicle article and quoted a cop who walked a beat on Front Street in the 1950s.

"At night, the flop-houses and bars kept it busy," he said, noting 12 or 13 bars in a two-block area that were always busy. "All the bars were well-known across the country and a lot of the drunks weren't from Rochester. They would get here and head to Front Street, spend their money like drunken sailors and be panhandling three days later."

Still, the crime wasn't much beyond "younger drunks mugging older ones," the police officer said.

By the time the 1960s arrived, cities were looking to clean themselves up. The $70 million urban renewal project for the Genesee Crossroads Park ripped up the old riverfront area north of Main Street. Front Street, as it was, was gone by 1965. New construction in the area included the IBM building, the federal building, a hotel and the mighty Genesee Crossroads Building at Main and State streets.

Front Street was not immediately mourned.

"There is a charm to antiquity and to architectural history," a September 1968 Democrat and Chronicle editorial stated. "But there wasn't any in the flea-bitten Front Street region. Not a tear was shed for the Front Street barrooms and flophouses" when the new IBM building was unveiled. "There were just grins as old Rochester walked a step toward a new day."

Nostalgia soon took hold for the scrappy region, however. Livadas, in the 1978 story, talked of the modern buildings and tranquil park that replaced Front Street but bemoaned what was lost.

"It was genuine," she wrote. "It was people who mattered, not the seedy buildings. No structure, no matter how magnificent, is a substitute for activity."

Morrell is a Rochester-based freelance writer.