Corn Hill Arts Festival

Last weekend, we went to the Corn Hill Arts Festival. Corn Hill is Rochester's oldest residential neighborhood, long known as "The Third Ward." Flour millers and merchants built impressive homes during Rochester's first growth spurt after the building of the Erie Canal in the 1820s & 30s. Rochesterians called the neighborhood "The Ruffled Shirt Ward" because of the prosperity of its residents with their substantial homes & mansions of architectural diversity & style. Founding meetings were held here for the University of Rochester & Rochester General Hospital.

The advent of income tax, two World Wars, and the construction of super highways in the 20th century caused the resplendent days of the Third Ward to diminish. Large houses were made into apartments. The construction of I-490 cut through the north portion of the Third Ward. Its path cleared many houses standing in the way. Rochester's first mayor and early leaders once lived in the area demolished in the name of "progress."

The Urban Renewal Program of the 1960s threatened to take what was left of the Third Ward. Rochester would lose an important part of its historic homes & heritage. In 1964, the Landmark Society did architectural surveys of surviving homes to persuade the government to include a conservation area in the urban renewal plan. Residents who worked to revive the neighborhood formed an organization to promote & protect the area, named "The Corn Hill Neighbors Association." The name was taken from early land deeds in the area known as "The Corn Hill Tract."

In 1968, a group of artists living on Greenwood Street organized a small arts festival, which grew into the annual Corn Hill Arts Festival. Now listed as one of the top 200 festivals in the U.S., over 250,000 people converge on this small neighborhood each year to view the wares of over 500 of the country's finest artists and craftspeople. And we were no exception!