So one block west of the house-to-be is Clarissa St. Once the nexus for Black culture in Rochester, it was ‘urban-renewaled’ out of existence not long after the rather famous riot in 1964. One of the saddest parts of this is not just that a once great commercial street was removed (as you’ll see), but also that the only readily-available archival photos of the street come from the riots themselves. This paints a dark picture of a street that was lively and urbane before hand. In any event, the change is stark, as you can see from the few before and after pictures I was able to line up below. More about the neighborhood, and the wide-scale destruction that was wrought on it over the course of building the highway, civic center, and reducing Black culture in Rochester to rubble can be found in the excellent book (Amazon link) about the neighborhood published by Images of America.

Clarissa St. 1
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Clarissa St. 2
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Clarissa St. 3

Clarissa St. 4