Main St near the Susan B. Anthony District is where you'll find the wonderfully named S.A. Doody's Reliable Shoe Store.
The full text appears to be:
S.A. DOODY'S
RELIABLE
SHOE STORE
BOOTS, SHOES
RUBBERS
and then the rest is obscured -- one of the words may be "hiring."
Pat Domaratz pointed me to this Geneva, NY, landmark. A quick search turned up this lovely little site on RootsWeb, which tells us:
"In 1847, John Williams Smith and S. S. Cobb opened a dry goods store
in Geneva NY under the name of Cobb & Smith. In 1849, Mr. Cobb
withdrew from the business and John Smith was joined with his brother,
Solomon E. Smith, in the operation of J. W. Smith & Co. This
store continued in operation til the mid-1900's." The site has a nice illustration of the store, too. 
Among the store's employees was Samuel D. Pierson of Pittsford, whose biography is available online. If you're willing to drive a bit to do your research, Hobart & William Smith College in Geneva has a five-page history of the store among the papers of George Maxwell Blackstock Hawley, who graduated from Hobart in 1892.
The Parazin Building is just down the street from the Phillips Process building. According to an article in City Newspaper, the building is one of the oldest structures in Rochester's High Falls district. It was built in 1826. There's a photo of the building on a Flickr site that says it was built to house the Louis Selye Fire Engine & Hose Company. The same site also says the building is being renovated. It has passed through a number of owners, including our local NPR affiliate, WXXI. The building was donated to WXXI in 1985. I was unable to turn up an information on Parazin Corp. If you have any ideas, contact me via the e-mail link to the left.
This sign for Phillips Process Co Inc is located in the High Falls District in Rochester, on the corner of Mill St. and Commercial St. Among other things, this building houses Entercom's Rochester broadcast studios. The sign is fairly easy to read:
PHILLIPS
PROCESS CO
Inc
MANUFACTURERS OF
NEV-R-KURL
TYPEWRITER RIBBONS
CLEAR PRINT
STAMP PADS
SPECIALTY INKS
EX-IT WATERLESS
HAND CLEANSER
Phillips Process Company still exists, but it's now on Magnolia St. in Rochester. At one time, though, it was at 192 Mill St., where these photos were taken. It's funny where you find documentation for things like that. In this case, I found the company's address listed on a very thrilling 1959 report titled: "PUBLICATIONS--Typewriter ribbons, carbon paper, pencils, and inks for use in typing and reviewing manuscripts" from the U.S. Department of the Interior. If you've been having trouble sleeping, read this report.
This unusual sign once belonged to Alhart's Hardware, located on Culver Road at the corner of Grand Avenue. If you look closely, you can still see the raised lettering advertising "Appliances.” American Sportsman, a gun shop which has since moved to East Rochester, took over a portion of the old Hardware store and top billing on the sign.
Text by Pat Domaratz / Pictures by Jason Crane
Jason says: In the close-up shot, you can see the GE and Maytag symbols at the top of the pole.
UPDATE: According to reader Dave Migliore, the hardware store was named Alharts, not Aberts, as was originally listed on SignWall.com. Dave said he thinks it was owned by the father of local news anchor Don Alhart.
One of the favorite Italian bakeries in Rochester’s northeast section was Calabrese's. Started in the 1920s, the successful bakery was owned by the Calabrese family until the 1980s. The Calabreses sold it to new owners, who continued to churn out bread, cookies and sweet breads (pumpkin and zucchini among the favorites) until the late 1990s, when a third set of owners took over. The bakery closed in 2001.
Text by Pat Domaratz / Pictures by Jason Crane
Valley Cadillac opened its doors in 1936. The dealership is now on Winton Road in Rochester, but it used to call East Ave. home.
Talk about your Rochester landmarks. Donuts Delite put a smile on the faces of tens of thousands of Rochesterians from 1948 until its closing in 2005. As a matter of fact, the shop isn't the only institution. The Malley family, which opened the place and ran it for its entire existence, is also responsible for others Rochester classics, from the Highland Park Diner to Mercury Posters.
From the Dan Delite character on the rooftop tower to the original formica counter inside, Donuts Delite was the kind of place they just don't make anymore. When it closed its doors in 2005, there were still customers who'd been going there since 1948. In these times, it's hard to even imagine that kind of loyalty.
The sign on the window said it all:
WE'RE NOT THE BEST DONUT SHOP BECAUSE WE'RE THE OLDEST...
WE'RE THE OLDEST DONUT SHOP BECAUSE WE'RE THE BEST!
Here's another multi-layered ad, this time from a building in Canandaigua, NY. The building is on the corner of Buffalo St. and Main St. You can easily see the Gold Medal Flour advertisement. I was baffled by the clearly visible word "Eventually" at the top of the Gold Medal ad. What could that mean? Try all the other flours, and then get around to Gold Medal? A little detective work turned up the explanation. The word was part of one of Gold Medal's most successful ad campaigns . According to the General Mills Web site:
"In 1907, Washburn, Crosby launched its long-running advertising slogan, 'Eventually-Why Not Now?' B.S. Bull, the company's advertising manager, is credited with the creation of the slogan. As the story goes, he was editing a wordy text about the superior quality of Gold Medal Flour and found, that when he was finished he had edited out all the words except 4: 'Eventually.' He then added, 'Why Not Now?' Having had this brilliant idea, he was struck with self-doubt and tossed the paper into the wastebasket. It was said to have been found by a young member of the firm, James Ford Bell, who later became the first president of General Mills, Inc. (The slogan was used on billboards, company trucks, train cars, flour bags and in the company's printed advertisements, appearing as late as the early 1950's. Other companies adopted the slogan as their own; it was seen in political cartoons; the slogan was the title for a Sunday sermon; and it even appeared as the front-page headline of the Cincinnati Times-Star with a small-print notation, 'With apologies to Gold Medal Flour.")" (If you get out the old magnifying class, you can see the words WASHBURN, CROSBY'S above the word GOLD.)
If you look closely at the sign, you'll see that another sign was painted on the same section of wall. Upon close inspection, that sign reads:
JUICE CANDIES
AND FRUIT
CIGARS AND TOBACCO
CASH PAID FOR
BUTTER AND EGGS
As our English friends would say: What's all this then?
I have the answer. I happened to take two photos of the front of the building, too. The first is a mundane shot, but the second solves the puzzle. The small inlaid stone at the top of the building reads:
W.S. McK
1886
A little digging turned up this obituary from the Ontario County Times of Wednesday, 6 August 1924:
"William S. McKechnie, a life long resident of Canandaigua and for many years a prominent merchant at the Four Corners in upper Main Street, died at his home Wednesday morning about 9 o'clock, following a long illness. Mr. McKechnie, who was a nephew of the late J. and A. McKechnie, the well known brewers, was born in Canandaigua in 1847, and was educated at the Academy here. After a course in a commercial college in Rochester, he engaged in the business in Main Street North, first as an employee in the J. and A. McKechnie grocery store at the Corners, then as a partner in the same store with William McCabe, then with John Browning, and finally on his own account. In 1886 he built the brick block in which he thereafter for eight years conducted the store, following which he sold out to the present proprietors, O. C. Frary and Son, and retired from active business. Mr. McKechnie was a member of Canandaigua Lodge, F and A. M. and Excelsior chapter, R A M, and had held high offices in these organizations. He leaves only his wife and a number of cousins. Funeral services were held from the home Friday, Rev. H. L. Gaylord of St. John's church officiating. Interment was in Woodlawn Cemetery."
So there you have it. Apparently, the store paid cash to farmers who brought in needed goods. I went to high school in Canandaigua, and I've probably passed that corner a thousand times. Now I know a little bit more about it.
It's amazing what you find when your eyes are opened to this world of vanishing history. I was driving up State St. in Rochester and noticed Upton Cold Storage looming up from behind some modern buildings. This was a cold storage facility back in the day when that meant ice trucked in by cart with no electric refrigeration. My research into Upton Cold Storage led to two fascinating Internet destinations.
The first is the Urban Exploration Resource, which is apparently a site dedicated to exploring the insides of abandoned buildings. There are some really breathtaking photos of the interior of Upton Cold Storage, and I strongly urge you to take a look.
The other thing I learned is that Upton Cold Storage burned in January 1920. The Rochester Herald was there, and Charles Zoller took some amazing photographs of the building covered with ice after the firemen had doused it with water on a cold January day. You can see Charles Zoller's photos at the Web site of the George Eastman House.
