This photograph, which appeared in the Democrat & Chronicle in July 1929, captures the gateway and peristyle of Edgerton Park, situated off of Backus Street on the western side of the city. A memorial plaque commemorating the park’s namesake, former Rochester Mayor Hiram Edgerton, is visible in the center of the frame.
Although all of Rochester’s parks can boast interesting histories, perhaps none other has quite so diverse a past. At various times since the mid-nineteenth century, Edgerton’s 42-acre grounds have served as a juvenile detention center, state industrial school, military training facility, convention hall, library, museum, school, dormitory, professional sports complex, and, not least, public park.
It is in this last capacity that Edgerton Park is most commonly known today. The land’s many previous incarnations have faded from historical memory, obscured by the fact that many of the buildings erected for prior purposes— including a hospital, workshop, green house, and cafeteria— were demolished in the 1940s and cleared into open fields.
And yet, from 1846 until 1907, the site was home to the grim Western House of Refuge, an institution for male and female juvenile delinquents. Throughout this period, those unfortunate enough to become wards were subjected to guarded confinement, grueling contract labor, corporal punishment, and only loosely organized education. In the 1880s, popular demands for reform gradually transformed the space from a “child’s prison” to the State Industrial School, effectively a mandatory trade school for troubled youths.
Despite the construction of an extensive campus, the Industrial School abandoned the property in 1907. Under the direction of Mayor Edgerton, Rochester acquired the site in 1911 and rechristened it “Exposition Park.”
While adding a few new buildings to the park, such as a grandstand and midway, the city mostly repurposed the old campus. By 1912, for instance, the girl’s dormitory had become the central branch of the Rochester Library, as well as the Municipal Museum. The chapel was turned into an assembly hall, the drill hall into an exhibition building, and another building into an indoor winter zoo.
True to its name, Exposition Park was principally used as a venue for large events. It hosted an annual Industrial Exposition as well as regular baby, animal, and automobile shows. The conversion of a hall into a 4,200-seat arena attracted a number of amateur and professional sports teams, most notably the Rochester Royals of the early NBA.
When Mayor Edgerton died in 1922, Exposition Park was renamed in his honor. Prominent citizens like George Eastman and Rush Rhees worked together to raise private funds for the plaque and memorial gateway for Edgerton Park.
Over the subsequent decades, as Rochester and public tastes shifted, so too did Edgerton Park. It increasingly became less a space for large gatherings and public buildings and more one for personal recreational use. As building after building fell into disrepair, they were dismantled rather than renovated. The last surviving relic from the Industrial School campus is now the Edgerton Community Center.
Even as times have changed Edgerton Park, it maintains a commitment to diverse recreation that mirrors the diversity of its history. Modern visitors can enjoy playgrounds and athletic fields, a summertime water spray park, the Stardust Ballroom, the Edgerton Model Railroad Room, and much more besides. On the heels of its 100th anniversary, Edgerton Park remains a true Rochester treasure.
The sound of kids laughing and playing now echoes over the very grounds where Rochester children once knew joyless drudgery. One suspects that Mayor Edgerton— a leader who took great pride in having “increased human happiness and enriched the lives of all our people”— would approve.