Reviews for Rochester, NY: Panoramic History - Blake McKelvey - Hardcover

The average rating for Rochester, NY: Panoramic History - Blake McKelvey - Hardcover based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-06-05 00:00:00 Clinton Smith Blake McKelvey was the Rochester city historian for many decades and left a strong legacy of scholarship and preservation. Still, this book is really not a comprehensive history of Monroe County. At the time of its writing, social history was still a nascent field; plus, the book was commissioned by the Rochester Chamber of Commerce. The result is a very top-down and rather dry approach concerned primarily with mayors and industrialists. Immigrants, African-Americans, suffragettes, and the working class are certainly present but their inclusion is shallow compared to the detailed discussions of Rochester politics. The Senecas in particular are only covered as a brief formality and then firmly gotten out of the way. Part of the problem I think was space - in a nod to the sponsors, fully 50+ pages at the end are nothing but biographies of various local businesses and manufacturers that would have been better off in a book specifically devoted to the economic history. The extensive use of old photographs and other illustrations was great, though. Interestingly, the image on the front cover depicts the Sister Cities Pedestrian Bridge and Genesee Crossroads Park, which were apparently a big deal in the 1970s but are today nothing but eyesore relics of that unfortunate epoch in architectural history aptly known as "brutalism." ("This place is like an abandoned park from the future. Something like Charlton Heston would find in Planet of the Apes and start screaming about.")

Review # 2 was written on 2019-05-03 00:00:00 Luanda Reese This was a good introduction to Plymouth Colony in preparation for our visit!