An Institution

 

   From Station #3 you will now continue 4 blocks east to the corner of Main St. and East Ave. There are two station here. But I will do this in two posts. First of all, Looking across the street due west is the newly renovated Sibley's Square building.

   Before this building was built the Sibley's Department store was housed in the Granite building that you viewed at the last station. Even before the fire of 1904 it was determined that they had outgrown it and had made plans for the building of the Sibley's Square building. However, the fire forced them to accelerate those plans.

   Over the next two years the store opened in completed sections of the building and as the construction continued different departments within the store kept moving around as space opened up. The original building was completed in 1906 with the addition of the Baroque styled clock tower. J. Foster Warner designed it as the next generation skeletal steel building using what is called the Chicago School Style. The taller section of the building, called the Mercantile building was added in 1911 and we have what we see now.

   I am genuinely pleased to see the new work being done not only to restore the building, especially the restoration of the clock tower, but to also bring business's back into it. Rochester needs to work harder to bring vitality back to the downtown scene.