Tasteful Friends, what do we think of Rochester NY?

I'd love to buy it.

Let me pull $550,000 out of my ass.

Isn't there a Wegmans there? If so, count me in!

Plus, Rochester was good enough for the gorgeous and snobby Louise Brooks, so it must be awfully nice!

It’s not as nice as Tuckahoe.

It tries. It's has a college town, it's about 2 hours from Buffalo, and shares many of the same types of people and culture. It's okay, but really nothing special. While I lived in the Buffalo area, there was never a burning (or even passing) desire to go visit Rottenchester (what people in Buffalo affectionately call it). And just like Buffalo, it's got its own "Scarytown" and areas where meth and other drugs are rampant.

Still a lot of actual countryside in so much of New York (and it's beautiful). Rochester is surrounded by it.

The dark wood has a creep factor.

I had friends who lived there in the 2010s and visited from NYC a few times a year.

Some cute neighborhoods (see the house at OP), surprisingly good restaurants, fun dive bars (if you like wings and hockey, you're all set), the Wegmans locations are palatial.

There are some colleges that attract some cute, smart twinks (especially RIT's art school) who leave immediately after graduation.

Not a ton of stuff to do compared to most college towns I know. And the snow was an absolute bitch.

OP--Rochester is a great place and I'm planning to move there eventually. Beautiful homes are relatively cheap. The neighborhood you are looking at is great. Park Avenue has plenty of restaurants and saloons. The houses right there are quite remarkable--many have a servants' entrance (though hopefully they're no longer used for that purpose).

The area, in general, is gay friendly. The area where you're looking, well, it's gay-positive. There's a rainbow crosswalk.

Rochester, as I understand it, is where Wegman's came from. There's a Wegman's almost walking distance from where that house is but if you end up there, I'd suggest the Wegman's a little farther east, towards Pittsford.

It's alright. But whoever staged that dining room set, should be fired. I could think of worse places to live, than Rochester. But the winters are obviously brutal.

I love it. It has character and good bones.

What's going on in the basement? Are they making a porno flick?

Rochester is a big college town. They preserve the old houses, don't tear them down to build McMansions. They have good restaurants, an Olmstead park, an amazing Wegman's in Pittsford and a perfectly preserved Frank Lloyd Wright house. You can drive down some streets and think it was 1955 except for the modern cars.

The downtown area is deserted on weekends. There is an area with renovated old buildings by a waterfall. In NYC it would be full of clubs and restaurants, here it is empty. A smart large corporation could headquarter here and revitalize the entire place. I'd live there in a minute.

I like the house, down to the ebonized woodwork throughout. The kitchen is ugly with that orange tabby cat woodwork and ill-planned but much if that could be reused, refaced, or painted with new appliances, countertops and fixtures for a calmer less 1980s look.

Good choices in furnishings and art and it would be a handsome, pleasant house. Rochester is a city with architecture and parks in it's favor -- all the more if you could disappear someplace more pleasant for two or three months each winter

It has plenty of charm. I think this house is a good example of how keeping ceramic tile is much better than going for the trendy (see the counter tops). Also we any updates/renovations, you really also should honor the lines of the home. That kitchen is a mess. They really did not think that true. I would love nice white tile over the counter tops. It would be brighter and cleaner.

While I agree with you on the look of the kitchen, r12, there's little I hate more from a functional standpoint than countertops with inlaid ceramic tiles. Grout belongs on the floor.

What do you do for the ten months that it's frozen and you're snowed in? Where does the dog shit when it's -20 and blizzard conditions with four feet of snow?

It's a hodge podge or renovations that were done over multiple years and likely several owners.

You don't get snowed in anymore. The snowplows are out plowing during the storm. The dogs shit where you shovel a little area in your backyard.

It's affordable for a reason. Generally not a very desired place to live unless you are a student or employee of the university.

[quote] Could we live there? It's quite conservative.

Rochester wasn't "quite conservative" in the 2020 election. Data shows it was VERY blue. Some of those precincts with darker shades of blue were over 90% for Biden. The medium blue in the 70% - 80%. range. The key is in the corner on the expanded image.

It looks like Syracuse with better residential architecture.

No thanks.

What would you call the style of this house? The listing says “Italian Renaissance Revival” but other than the tile roof, that seems wrong. It seems a bit craftsman in some details, but not really.

Is this just the 1915 version of a fairly generic house - a builders spec of elements that were currently in vogue but without an actual definable style?

I’ve seen other houses like it and it’s easier to say what it isn’t — not Spanish revival, not Victorian — than what it is. Sort of low budget Edwardian perhaps?

It'd be a dream come true to live there. It's beautiful.

I love it except I hate all the black.

[quote]What would you call the style of this house?

When in doubt in very late 19th and early 20thC styles, Eclecticism or Eclectic Revival is often the best umbrella term for the many houses that draw inspiration and design details from a variety of historical sources. The buildings are discernibly of their time while displaying detailing that draws (or improvised upon) historic sources.

College town? What university are we talking about?

Rochester has a monied history and is more white collar than Buffalo and Syracuse. It was the global headquarters for Kodak and Xerox (both Fortune 50 companies in their day). The people are highly educated, the suburban schools are good. They've got a world class public market right in the center of the town... Lake Ontario's beautiful shoreline is just north of town. It's a nice place to live if you can handle cold weather. From April to November it is really lovely. November and March are tough. December through February are difficult. But the city is designed well for the cold.

U of R, RIT, St. John Fisher, Nazareth College... there's lot's of college kids around, r24.

A dream r21? Hon Rochester has been losing population for decades and is relatively affordable. I assure you, you could make that dream come true very easily.

I grew up outside of Rochester and went to school at the U of R and love the ol' homestead. I like in NYC now and have since college graduation but I always enjoy my trips back up. It's changed a lot since I graduated, in some good ways and some bad, but I do think if I'm ever tired of NYC living I'll probably just head back on up. It's a nice city. And I love the snow, but who knows if they'll keep getting it as bad as they used to, with the changing climate

I thought many NYCers moved into these burbs. This acceraleted during the covid pandemic.

I went to middle school and high school there even though I lived 40 miles away at the time. I left three months into my senior year because getting up extra early and getting home extra late plus the long commute was finally getting to me. Plus I went to summer school every year from grades 7-11.

Wegmans isn't that great. Their prices are absurd, a ton of Karens shop there and Danny Wegmans is a total elderly creep who dresses bizarrely, constantly shows off his collection of red Ferraris and has a massive addiction to coke and hookers.

He used to get into trouble a lot back then due to (his decades long love for) coke but his dad (the founder of Wegmans) always managed to get it swept under the rug.

The local news stations are (still to this day) in the Wegmans family's pockets which is why they are always running puff pieces and gushing about what a bunch of philanthropic saints the family are.

Too bad some former owner fxxked up the original wooden millwork with paint.

Horrible finishes. Grasscloth wallpaper? Is this a Pier One? Atrocious. Bamboo and slate floors. All wrong. Everything looks cheap. The kitchen floor looks very 80's. Way too cutesy. Nearly every space needs drastic work, which means more money. Why is every room long and skinny? Bad/weird floorplan. Way too many different finishes. The dark wood cuts into each room, chopping them up, with too much emphasis in the wrong places. Nothing works. Terrible taste hangs in the air. At first glance it looks like it might work, but after a minute or two you realize you'll need to start from scratch.

Rich old lady story: Rochester, NY was the home of Margaret Woodbury Strong, an heiress, (large stocks in Kodak) she was worth at least seventy million dollars at the time of her death in the 1960's. Ms. Strong had vast collections of all kinds, she was best known for having what is believed to be the largest doll collection acquired by one person, somewhere between 20,000 to 50,00 doll & doll related objects (sources vary about the numbers). Her collection is now located in the Strong Museum Of Play, though, dolls are no longer the focus. Most of the dolls are locked away, unseen by the public, German bisque head dolls, circa 1860s-70's, from the Strong collection, in the link below.

Raaaachester.

Rochester is not a burb of NYC r29. It's on the opposite end of New York State about 5.5 hours from Manhattan.

Home of RuGirls Mrs Kasha Davis and Darienne Lake

[quote]The dark wood has a creep factor.

Agreed.

It should be nice but somehow it doesn't come together.

It's just kind of weird and creepy.

It's nice. Kinda cold. But it's huge on such a tiny lot.

I would like tofind the idiot that painted the woodwork ebony, and beat them about the head with a book on interior design and not destroying beautiful origional wood.

Convenient that the basement is already equipped to handle porn shoots.

Rochester always has a few good houses for sale.

2400 square feet at $425,000

And 2650 square feet and $329,000.

Kitchen and associated tile = gut it all

Everything else I can work with on the cheap.

I cannot believe these prices. I live in the Seattle area. The mid-500's would get you a studio condo in a declining neighborhood.

What's going on with 3 different kinds of sinks in this bathroom? One sink looks like it could be a baby bathing sink. But the one on the left looks unusable. What the hell?

If you re-did the flooring in the kitchen, it would look a lot better. The breakfast nook / booth looks too hard to get into and out of. I doubt anyone would ever use that space as it is and that's a waste.

Yeah, there's that one long, skinny room with the twin bed and a huge printer. Awkward space.

What is up with that built-in couch on the stairs landing? Why such an elaborate relaxing space on a stairs landing?

Too cold for me. But looks nice.

Looks like they have a porn studio in the basement? Yes?

R47 That's what I thought, too. R40.

As soon as I saw the basement, my first thought was also "are they shooting porn in there?"

So that's three of us so far.

The tile in the bathroom re: r45's pic looks like something you'd see in the restroom of a fast food restaurant. It's hideous!

Not a fan of the black painted wood trim and moldings, stair balusters etc. or angled counters in kitchen and baths. Kitchen needs update but overall a great house.

10 feet of snow in the Winter. You can keep it.

Four steps to get into the house. Not wheelchair friendly. I think not.

It's a nice city but the winters are brutal. At University of Rochester, there are underground tunnels that allow students to walk to class when it is subzero temperatures-- it's THAT cold!

For people who might consider a move from a more expensive city -- why not leave in the winter? At least for a couple of the worst months of it?

I don't imagine many people are moving to Rochester for the career opportunities. More likely they have some flexibility to work from home and that is what allows them to consider moving to Western New York. For me, taking a break of a couple months in the thick of winter would make it all feasible, and make what was left of the winter bearable. Rochester's first snow is usually in November and the season's last snowfall typically in April -- 6 months, which would do me in to stick it out but at big chunk out of the middle would give some perspective and break to the long winter. I could do that much, not ideal, but cheap. .

I’m curious what the taxes are? It doesn’t say. I bet it’s a mother fucker to heat. And all the nit pickers get over yourselves. For half a million it’s more than livable.

Wait I found it. Taxes are 12,000 per year. Wow what a steal.

If I lived in the north with ten feet of snow to look forward to, I would find a place that was a real refuge. It would haVE EVERY THING. So a beautiful kitchen and a family room living room with a fireplace. A gas generator . An indoor pool, a pool table, five or 6 bedrooms and 7 bathrooms and two half baths. I'd have a large pantry and freezers to put up stores for the long winter. My three car garage would have a small tractor and a snow plow along with my car. I'd have books and streaming TV and huge TV sets and sound systems. In summer a truck garden and maybe even a hen house (heated) for fresh eggs and chickens. I would be self sustaining.

JFC some of you sound really unfamiliar with a cold climate. Snowplows operate constantly during a snowstorm. Nobody gets snowed in for days like it's Little House On the Fucking Prairie. Here in New England if we get an overnight snowstorm the roads are thoroughly plowed and we're able to drive to work at 8:00 in the morning.

R59 How nice for ya.

It's not bad at all r60. I'd rather live in the Northeast where people are actually liberal and intelligent. Most of the US is a backwards shithole.

I was thinking the same thing r59 - snow is not that bad. It can be gorgeous -- I really miss the huge snowstorms of my youth. The way the world goes so quiet. It's peaceful. I guess I've just got thick skin from growing up in it but it really doesn't bother me. I hated this past winter in NYC without a single storm but I guess that's what we have to look forward to now

Some of us are unfamiliar with that kind of cold climate, R59. I wouldn't go any fucking where except a taxi to the airport if there were more than a light snow on the streets. Plowed or not, I don't like driving in snow and all my life it was easily avoided by staying on a day or two or four. Outside of replenishing groceries, I would have no reason to do.

For people not seasoned on New England winters it would be an adjustment.

Good for you r63

Places in the South are unlivable in the summer, so the comments about the Snow seems illy to me. You learn to cross-country ski or skate or enjoy sitting in front of a fire doing indoor stuff.

Everyone I know who has lived in Rochester has liked it. It's not huge but it is a great place for music (conservatory and all). The big businesses historically employed a lot of skilled people, so it's different from Buffalo or Pittsburgh. Wegman's, btw, is better than your typical Kroger Safeway, Giant Eagle, etc.

The house is nice, although a few things are hideous like kitchen floor and the black & white patterned tile in one of the bathrooms. I also could do without parquet floors.

I'd much rather live in Rochester than Buffalo or Albany.

R45 That one sink on the counter definitely looks like something to wash a baby in/on, but I'm thinking that thing in the corner might actually be some kind of custom-made "Japanese-style" soak tub to sit in (i.e. small and deep). The perspective of this two-dimensional photo might be skewed some making it appear to be narrower than it actually is. You can find some pretty narrow ones for sale, though. That step would be used to get into it, and there'd be a bench-seat inside to sit on while soaking.

Here's an example of one put inside the shower space.

Rochester and Buffalo are both places that get the "lake effect" snow that weathermen love to comment on. I visited Rochester in January one year (actually Brockport, but it's only about 15 miles away, home of the State University of New York, Brockport). When it started snowing, it was like a firehose of snow. We went into a classroom at 10 am. By one, the door that we came in was sealed up by snow (it had piled up 3 feet in the three hours we were inside). And the wind driving that snow was not to be believed. However, it's not nearly as cold as someplace like Minneapolis, so there is that....LOL

By most accounts, Buffalo and Rochester have much more pleasant summers than downstate NY. Lower high temperatures, much lower humidity, sunnier. Average highs upper 70s to about 80. Whether that makes up for the winters, I'm not sure....

you have to post these pics of the basement? What are you all talking about?

the other trend is NYCers are buying homes up-state for week-ends and summering. This is a current trend. is there home near water? A national park? I do not know the area well enough to comment about this.

Ha! My comforter is the same as the one in the first bedroom. I have a black bed frame.

Oops. I mean the second room.

I like the house overall, but I’d change a few things.

I get it mixed up with Ithaca.

R68, thanks so much! Yes, I think it is a deep, Japanese-style soaking tub. That's a pretty steep step to get up and down into it, though. At some point, you might bang your head on the ceiling, too. Kind of an awful-looking bathroom, all considered. Someone else said that the flooring looks like a public bathroom and I guess it does.

The chi of this poisoned-arrow and bad-placement place breaks Kwan Yin's heart.

R74 Rochester is large, sprawly, and flat. Ithaca is small and hilly. Homes in Ithaca also cost 3x as much as in Rochester.

R70 The basement photos are at OP's real estate listing link. They are numbers 38 and 39 in the photo stream.

Looks like a nice little setup or rental for people looking to shoot some porn in a real-life setting. My onetime landlord used to have a couple of rooms like that in his house, allowing him make some extra income on the side. This was before the advent of Air BnB.

I like the house. The dark trim could change but it's lovely. I can't handle the cold and snow after 13 year in Chicago. But a lot of people love winter and this seems like a good option. Wish the prices in my city were comparable to this one.

r71 - Lake Ontario is right there, a 20 minute drive from anywhere in Rochester basically. There are tons of parks - Letchworth State Park is an hour drive and it's unbelievably gorgeous - same goes for the Ithaca area with the caverns. Then there's Niagara f'ing Falls just another hour further west, The Finger Lakes are is full of beautiful scenic nature,

Thrre's a book called "Rochesternomics" that makes a compelling case that Rochester, NY is the very best place in the world to live.

The mirrored fireplace-easy to overlook in a photo but on the home tour I would hate it, along with the ebony trim.

“Welcome to my House; my kitchen island has a kitchen island.”

why are you calling this a porn house? you have to post pics of this.

Here are some pretty scenes from around Rochester, including waterfront scenes, if they will post

r84 it's already been explained that you look at the pics of the basement.

i did look at the pics. I do not get what you are saying.

Wow, it’s like DL read my mind or something.

I was born in Rochester. I didn’t grow up there though. I have lived most of my life in Wayne County. I grew up mostly in a small town and attended a rural school an hour away from Rochester. I went to school not too far from the town that inspired Bedford Falls, the town in “It’s A Wonderful Life.” I currently live in Canandaigua, NY year round though where I am just finishing my second associates degree in accounting at the two-year college there and hoping to eventually transfer to a 4-year school. I’m taking a gap year first after graduating later this week to look at schools and scholarships. Plus, I’m burnt out and I’m in need of a break from school.

I would eventually love to live in NYC (cliché, I know). But again, I am an aspiring actor with a previous associates degree in theatre arts and want to eventually go where the jobs are. I have acted in mostly short films, student films, and extra work in the area. I was even an extra for “Nightmare Alley” (2021) when they filmed some scenes in Buffalo back in February 2020. Plus, as a person with Aspergers and without a car and a license, I feel really stuck living in Upstate New York. However, due to the exorbitant rates of NYC rent, I would consider living in the outskirts such as Hoboken or Secaucus. What I would do to live close to the Big Apple!

Rochester has some nice areas and some nice houses in, say, Pittsford. I have a voice teacher that lives in Pittsford and I used to go to her house to take private voice lessons there. Going to the nicer parts of Rochester really feels like seeing how the other half lives especially for me. Unfortunately, there is a lot of crime and violence in Rochester too. You turn on the local evening news and it’s all about another shooting or another stabbing in Rochester. Rochester has to be one of the most violent cities in the East Coast. I’m sorry if I come off morbid all of a sudden.

My grandfather was born in Rochester in 1886!

I don't think I could deal with the long cold winters, heavy snow accumulation and hot, humid summers there.

R89 I hear you. Living in Upstate New York and dealing with the erratic weather is not for everyone. Some of us are stuck in it and have no choice. We’ve just learned to put up with it. I understand why there are those that leave New York State and there are those that desperately want to leave though. Fair enough!

R52 THAT is Buffalo.

The weather charts at Wiki show the average snowfall per year in Rochester is 102.0 inches and the average in Buffalo is 95.4 inches. This is for the period 1991-2020. .

Rochester still has a gay bathhouse, right?

R93 Apparently....

I went to college there for a year in 1990. I went to a few dozen house parties. Everyone’s house was identical regardless of the subdivision - even the bean-bag living room suites were the same.

I was bad because I usually had weed.

My friend moved from her native SoCal to Rochester when she married. She was looking forward to seeing snow haha. She hates the snow now. However, during the nice months it’s beautiful there and she said she has no regrets about raising her kids there instead of CA. Wegmans is Headquartered there I believe.

^One other thing about Rochester that my friend mentioned and the same with someone else I knew from there... they are super loyal to it. I noticed this pride with Pittsburgh people have too. Anyway, my friend said it’s hard making friends if you’re new there because all these people grew up together and stick together.

[quote] ... because all these people grew up together and stick together

Those type of cities tend tend to have a lot of people who go around acting like they're all still in high school.

Rochester is where all the smart people in Upstate New York live. Don't ever compare it to neighbors Buffalo or Syracuse, Rochester is its own little world up there.

Is it true that when it thaws in spring, all the dog shit that was frozen then ferments and the flies are horrible? I was told that by someone who grew up with the snow.

Yes the heat in the south is bad, but you can still go out almost every day of the year, and don't have to worry about fingers turning black and falling off.

r41, what a shithole

R100--they "go out" to move from their air-con house to their air-con car. I used to live in a couple places, no one other than poor people goes out in the summer.

I love it but can't imagine how expensive it would be to heat.

[quote]Rochester is where all the smart people in Upstate New York live. Don't ever compare it to neighbors Buffalo or Syracuse, Rochester is its own little world up there.

Buffalo will always be that place where the rich kid was convicted of raping four girls and was given probation from the judge (who was retiring). Backwater bullshit.

I'd love to find a cute MCM ranch and live in Rochester from, oh, May to October.

[quote] it’s hard making friends if you’re new there because all these people grew up together and stick together.

Honestly this describes most midsized towns and cities that don't get a lot of people moving in or out. Madison, WI was the same.....a university town described as friendly, progressive and smart, but at the end of the day, if you didn't go to HS with Hans Hoopenlooper in 1973 they just couldn't be bothered to talk to you.

Rochester looked pretty good on TV this weekend with the PGA Championships at Oak Hill... really beautiful.

I would rather sleep in my car than sleep in an uncarpeted bedroom