Subdivision Stories: Twin Oaks

The Twin Oaks subdivision in the City of Rochester is bounded by Fourth, Third, Castell and Wilcox streets, with Wesley Avenue running right through the middle of it.  When the village of Rochester was first laid out by surveyors in 1826, this property was part of outlot 14 of the original plat of the village.  Over time, the village outlots were further subdivided and platted with the streets and alleys that we know today.

In 1925, this portion of outlot 14 was platted by owner Robert H. Bitters, who named the new subdivision Twin Oaks. Plat names often reflect the names of their developers, and sometimes the streets in the subdivision are named in honor of their family members. In the case of Twin Oaks, all of the streets in the plat are simply continuations of streets that had already been laid out in the older plats to the north and east.

As far as the name of the subdivision itself is concerned, no paper record exists to inform us of the reason for the name, but perhaps we need only to use our eyes.  These formidable twin oak trees stand just to the east of the intersection of Third and Wesley, like gatekeepers to the subdivision. It may well have been these trees that inspired Robert Bitters in naming his subdivision.

At Home in Rochester: The Van Hoosen - Case House

This historic house at 522 Oak Street, near the Rochester Municipal Building, is 126 years old this year, and is connected to one of the most prominent families in Rochester's history.

When John Van Hoosen built the house in 1888, his property stretched over 4 lots from Oak Street all the way to Pine Street, and fronted on Paint Creek.  In the days before it was re-routed, Paint Creek ran much closer to the foot of Oak Street than it does today, meaning that the lot on which this house stands was once highly-desirable riverfront property.

John Van Hoosen and his wife Mary built the house as their family home, but the couple divorced in 1894 and sold the property to Charles Wallace Case, a young man who was working as a clerk in his uncle Harvey Taylor's hardware store on Main Street.  C. W. Case bought out his uncle a few years later and established the C. W. Case Hardware store that was a landmark on Main Street for almost seven decades.

Meanwhile, the Case family occupied this house on Oak Street until Charles Case's death in 1944.  Case raised purebred poultry on the property, for which he won many awards and medals in poultry shows nationwide.  Several additions have been made to the house over the years and it has been remodeled as a multi-family dwelling, but many of the original exterior details of the house that are visible in an 1897 photo of the building can still be seen today, well over a century later.

The Van Hoosen - Case House is one of Rochester's historic gems.

UPDATE: This house was demolished in fall 2014.

Bygone Business: Nye Manufacturing Company

If you travel down Oak Street between Third and Fourth, you'll pass an ordinary-looking apartment house in the middle of the block on the west side of the street that doesn't give any outward sign of the history it harbors.  But if walls could talk, this building would definitely be a place for us to do some listening.

The Seventh Day Adventist Society of Rochester purchased this lot in 1881 from George W. Vandeventer.  Local oral history says that the Society then moved its meeting house from another location to this lot, so the actual date of construction of the building is not known.  The Adventist Society sold the property in 1893, when the congregation apparently dissolved, to a local carpenter named Merritt M. Nye.

Merritt Nye turned the building into a factory for his Nye Manufacturing Company, which produced a bean picker of Nye's own patented design.  The 1896 plat map of Rochester even shows the Nye Manufacturing Company building at this location. The implement was not an economic success, apparently, for only three years later Nye abandoned the enterprise and returned to his former occupation of carpentry.  As for the building, the Rochester Era reported on November 5, 1897: "The Nye Manufacturing Company are turning their shop into a double dwelling house, one of which will be occupied by M. M. Nye and wife."  The Rochester correspondent to the Utica Sentinel reported in early 1898 that the work on Nye's double house on Oak was almost complete.

Since 1898, the building that began its life as a church and then became a factory has been used as a multiple family dwelling, probably giving it the additional distinction of being the oldest apartment house in the City of Rochester.

At Home in Rochester: The Peter Lomason House

In September 1900 the Rochester Era newspaper opined that "when completed, Peter Lomason's new house on East Fifth street will be one of the finest residences in Rochester."  The next time you pass this house at 113-115 East University, look up - all the way up - and you will see some of the details that led the Era to make such a statement. Although the rest of the house has undergone many changes and additions in the past 114 years,  the ornamental iron work and slate roof are still its crowning glory, a testament to a different era in house construction.

Peter Lomason was a descendant of Rochester's pioneers. His mother's family was among the first non-native settlers of the Township of Avon. Peter Lomason served as Justice of the Peace for Rochester and held a number of municipal offices. Only a few years after building this house he moved to Bad Axe, where he ran unsuccessfully for the state legislature.

Lomason died in August 1919, and just a few weeks prior to his death he sold his Rochester house to local merchant Camille DeBaene. DeBaene owned the property until 1936, when it went to the First National Bank of Rochester. The bank immediately disposed of it to James Stackhouse and his wife, Jessie McDonald Stackhouse. James Stackhouse was a Rochester meat merchant and his wife was the postmaster of Rochester from 1934-1945. In 1946, after the death of his wife, James Stackhouse sold the house to Oral E. Camp and his wife Jane. The Camps were the proprietors of Rochester Lunch and Camp's Cafe in Rochester from 1944 to 1965. The Camps are shown in the 1948 Rochester telephone directory as residents of the house. In 1977, the house was sold by the Camp estate and was thereafter used for commercial and office purposes.

This Month in Rochester History

In July 1964, Rochester residents were congratulating local mail carrier Harold Dawe on his retirement after 42 years on the job.  Mr. Dawe started his employment with the Rochester post office in 1922, just a few years after he had returned home after serving in the Army in World War I.  At that time, the post office had seven employees plus the postmaster, and Dawe was one of two mail carriers who covered the entire village of Rochester for a salary of $1,000 per year.

"We delivered twice a day and the routes were much longer then," he told the Rochester Clarion in 1964 when interviewed about his career.  He also told the newspaper that he and the other carrier had done the parcel post deliveries as well, sometimes working 16-hour days before Christmas and borrowing an ambulance to use as a makeshift delivery truck.

Harold Dawe was also a musician and was the leader of the Rochester town band during the 1930s, which is why the retirement cake shown in the photo is decorated with musical notes.

In this photo published in the Rochester Clarion at the time of his retirement, Harold Dawe is shown with his wife and postmaster Cole Neumann.