Brown's Race Historic District

Brown's Race Historic District occupies an industrial corner of Rochester beside the Upper Falls of the Genesee River gorge. It includes 15 contributing buildings, 2 contributing structures and 14 contributing sites, mostly brick and stone factories from the nineteenth century. Notable examples include the six-story Romanesque Revival Gorsline Building, the High Victorian Rochester Water Works, the stone Selye Fire Engine Factory and the former Rochester Button Factory buildings. The structures include the open stone-lined millrace, thirty feet wide and five feet deep, and the iron truss Platt Street Bridge, now used by pedestrians. The district matters because it holds rare surviving evidence of Rochester's milling and manufacturing past. The race is the last visible water-filled raceway in the city, and the Triphammer site contains an overshot water wheel still in place in its pit. Parking lots over vanished mills add high archaeological potential.