Teoronto Block Historic District

This one-acre block on the northwest edge of downtown Rochester, New York, combines two building groups from the mid-nineteenth century. Along State Street runs the Teoronto/Smith Block, a row of three-story, five-bay brick buildings under continuous gable roofs, with stone sills and lintels and apartments above storefronts. A limestone plaque reads "Teoronto Hall" and "Smiths Block." Around the corner on Mill Street stand brick industrial buildings from the 1850s and 1860s, with brick cornices, flat roofs, cast iron columns and wood mill framing. The block was built between 1844 and 1868, when Rochester was growing as a mill center and Erie Canal boom town. It is the oldest surviving building group from the early Frankfort neighborhood and connects State Street with the nearby Brown's Race industrial area. Storefronts and rear areas have been heavily altered, and several upper floors are badly deteriorated, but the building shells have changed little since the nineteenth century.