(Southeast Quadrant)

(Click here to read a feature article on Strong-Mt. Hope by the Daily Record's Colleen Farrell!)

The Strong Neighborhood is located in the southern part of the city of Rochester. Its boundaries are Elmwood Avenue to the north, the Barge Canal to the south, Genesee Valley Park/Genesee River to the west and South Avenue to the east.

The area takes its name from Strong Memorial Hospital, the teaching hospital of the University of Rochester Medical Center, which is located along Elmwood Avenue. The hospital, in turn, memorializes Henry Alvah Strong, who was a business partner of George Eastman and the first president of Eastman Kodak, and his wife, Helen Griffin Strong. Their two daughters made the naming gift possible in the 1920s.

Because of the convenience to the River Campus and the Medical Center, many of the University's students and staff members live in the area. In addition, the University has several large residence areas in the neighborhood, including Goler House adjacent to the hospital, University Park, and the de Kiewiet and Valentine tower dormitories.

The University of Rochester saw great growth and expansion in the 1920s. It decided to expand away from its Prince Street Campus, and thus the River Campus was built from 1927 to 1930 just north of Elmwood, and the newly founded School of Medicine with its teaching hospital was constructed earlier in the decade just south of Elmwood. The school opened in the fall of 1925.

This major expansion of the University resulted in the area being annexed from Brighton to the city of Rochester in the early 1920s, and began the development of the area, which continued over the next several decades. Most of the homes in the Strong Neighborhood were built from the 1920s to the 1950s and represent the varied architectural styles of the period. The houses are, in general, small to medium- sized, and on city-sized lots. Most streets run east-west off of Mt. Hope or East Henrietta Road, but a few run north-south, mainly from Elmwood or Crittenden.

The residential areas of the neighborhood with their varied architectural styles form a pleasant area for walking, and there is easy access to the Canal pathway at the southern part of the neighborhood for jogging, biking, roller-blading or just going for a walk.

The historic Genesee Valley Park is adjacent to the neighborhood to the west. Starting in 1888, the renowned landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted began designing Genesee Valley Park, with its sports fields, golf courses, tennis courts, swimming pool and ice rink. This 800 acre park is located at the confluence of the Genesee River and the Erie Canal and has canoe livery and boathouse.

Mount Hope Avenue, which runs through the neighborhood for nearly a mile, forms the commercial district of the area. A number of stores, banks, local and national food establishments and a variety of other services are located on it. A block west of Mt. Hope on Lattimore is the former School 49, now the Lattimore Medical Center. With Route I-390 just on the other side of canal from the neighborhood, Mount Hope Avenue and East Henrietta/ South avenues form gateways to the city from suburban areas. Although Mt. Hope Avenue does not have the "college town" atmosphere that is found adjacent to some universities, it is in essence the University of Rochester's "college town," as many of the services are used by the students. Several city bus routes serve the neighborhood, converging at Strong Memorial Hospital.

A century ago, this area was a part of the town of Brighton and contained the hamlet of West Brighton, with some houses along Mt. Hope Avenue and East Henrietta Road, a school house where the Hess Gas Station now stands at the corner of Mt. Hope and Crittenden, and a hotel at the "V" where East Henrietta joins Mt. Hope. The Western New York Agricultural Society grounds were south of what is now Crittenden Blvd.

Writing in the 1950s, George Hoyt Whipple, the first Dean of the Medical School, remembered the area this way:
"The Crittenden Tract was a sizable area bounded by Mt. Hope Avenue, the Lehigh Valley Railroad, Elmwood Avenue and the Barge Canal. There were a few scattered houses along Mt. Hope Avenue; otherwise the tract was completely undeveloped except for nursery plantings of trees in the eastern portion close to Mt. Hope Avenue. Elmwood Avenue was un-paved and ran straight across the Lehigh Valley and Erie Railroad tracks at grade to the old bridge across the Genesee River. There was no street on Crittenden Boulevard, only two rather rusty trolley tracks. Picnickers could ride from downtown out Mt. Hope Avenue to the Crittenden loop which was at the west end of Crittenden Boulevard close to a small sub-way for pedestrians going under the Lehigh and Erie tracks and into Genesee Valley Park."