Rochester History: Birthplace of the a blues(man)
So, I’ve mentioned my interesting office-mate before. His real passion is the blues band he plays bass in, so I’ll call him Bluesman. Today Bluesman regaled me with tales of his childhood in the city. He grew up in the late 50s and early 60s in an area off St. Paul Blvd., close to where the Genesee Brewery is.
It’s now a Coke bottling plant.
(Click image to see full size.)
It’s amazing hearing about his old neighborhood. See that “1″ on the map, sandwiched between Upper Falls Blvd, N. Clinton, and St. Paul? That’s where his house was. It was a 4-family house, and his fam lived on half of the 2nd floor, while his grandma lived on the other half. Downstairs was another family, and a dude they just called “Indian Joe”. (This was the late 50s, remember.)
That “2″? That was his friends, the Mangione’s, house. Yes, THAT Mangione family. Chuck’s dad ran a grocery store that was at the front of the house, and every Halloween he would open it to the neighborhood kids, with candy all over, for them to help themselves (within limits). There was music coming out of that house at all hours, and Bluesman would see jazz greats like Dizzy Gillespie dropping by the neighborhood just to jam.
The Mangione’s weren’t the only musical fam in the neighborhood. If you look at that 3 on the map? That’s where the dudes from House of Guitars, Rochester music’s legendary music shop, got their start. The Schaubroeck brothers began by selling factory-second guitars (blemished but still sounded fine) out of their mom’s basement. Bluesman remembers they had a big bay window in the front where they showed off some of their latest offerings. Wonder what Mrs. Schaubroeck thought of that decor. 
One of the most striking things Bluesman remembers about the neighborhood though is how tight-knit it was. “If Mr. Jones across the street told you and your pals to stop messin’ around, and you didn’t, when your father got home Mr. Jones had a talk with him and then you got it!”
What a great little bit of history. And the best part about it, he segued right into a mini-rant on the County. “We are the 2nd highest taxed county in the country! And whatta we got to show for it?”
I said, “Exactly! Makes you want to go down to the County Leg and ask them what the heck’s going on!”
He shook his head slowly, “I’ll tellya, if people ran their finances like the county runs theirs…”
He didn’t have to finish. I’m right there with him.
I suspect your co-worker might be using the anti-tax rant as a cover for “the city is going to hell” rant, which can easily turn a “those no-good, lazy [fill-in-the-blanks]” rant. The real reason that the reason that the city is going to hell (with murders, drug dealing, prostitution, hard-core poverty and urban decay in your co-worker’s old neighborhood) and our taxes are so high is precisely because people like the Mangiones and businesses like The House of Guitars moved out of the city. If your co-worker wants his old neighborhood back, he, and other people like him have to move back and reclaim it, and they have to bring their businesses back with them. As a byproduct, they’ll ultimately pay less in taxes (at least for prisons, courts, cops and emergency medical services).
It does no good to move to the ‘burbs (the usual excuse is “for the schools”), taking local businesses with you, and then bitch about how the city is going to hell, the city schools suck, and taxes are too high. All of the city’s problems are caused by poverty, specifically, the concentration of people too poor, sick, crazy, disposessed or otherwise screwed up to make it in the current economy. Study, after study shows the obvious: the city is a reflection of the people who live there and solid, tight-knit, middle class communities are the best, least expensive antidote to a host of social dysfunctions.
That neighborhood doesn’t exist anymore. It was torn down and replaced with a bottling plant. I sympathize with the “stay in the city” sentiment, but you have to have kids to know what it really means. I moved out of Manhattan in 1991 when our first kid was six months old and rented with relatives on Ravine Avenue in Rochester for a year and a half before they moved to Walworth. I resisted buying a house in the ‘burbs and was finally sold on the school deal. Now I live in West Irondequoit just north of the House of Guitars. My kids walk to great schools and their crime experience amounts to a stolen bike. I see the Schaubroeck’s at the library and the store. When I was a Cub Scout leader they gave me tons of free stuff to give away at our awards supper. Maybe they just outgrew their mom’s basement and the old Irondquoit Grange was a better fit, or maybe their old neighborhood was demolished for a bottling plant. I respect the people who stay in the city, like the lady next door on Ravine Avaenue whose house is probably the most immaculate in Monroe County, but we can’t attack suburbanites just for being where they are. In the eighteen months I was on Ravine Avenue there were five homicides on my block, ranging from a shaken baby death to a double stabbing. In fourteen years, there was nothing like that in the East Village. In the end, my in-laws sold the house when a tenant blew a home invader’s brains out through the bay window. I’m glad I lived there, but it was the right move to move. Someday, when the kids are gone, my wife and I hope to move back to Manhattan if we can. Times change; things change, and kids change things most of all.
Jerre Mangione, Chuck’s uncle wrote a book about that neighborhood in 1943 titled “Mount Allegroâ€ÂÂ. I’ve never read it, but I think about it when I drive past the brewery. The neighborhood was known by that name, but it was a multi-ethnic place. Jerre Mangione was an editor of the WPA Federal Writers’ Project. He was also a radical who hated fascism before it was cool. I’ll have to read the book.
Here’s his obit:
http://www.upenn.edu/gazette/1198/1198mangione.html
Thanks! I think we’ll try to do a post about this as well. That’s very interesting stuff about Jerre Mangione. I would like to read that book.
[...] BTP has a great post about local history. [...]