Brown Square (Rochester, New York)

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The Brown Square neighborhood sits on the site of the original Brown Brothers Tract, named for the entrepreneurial brothers who harnessed the Genesee River’s High Falls for business and industry in the early 1800s. Within the Tract, Brown Square Park was the first public land in Rochester designated for a city park and designed by the firm of famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted.

Alongside the park, houses were built for Irish immigrants who were later joined by Italians who emigrated for a better life in the New World. The ethinic composition of the neighborhood is survived by longstanding business, such as DiPaolo’s Bakery and Rocky’s Italian Restaurant.

During urban renewal in the 1960s, the city began to tear down old homes, leaving empty lots. Officials planned to raze homes from Jay Street to Lyell Avenue, but stopped at Smith Street. More homes were lost upon expansions at the nearby Zweigles’s factory and Kleen Brite Laboratories.

The greatest draw to the neighborhood is the Rochester Rhinos soccer stadium on Oak Street. The stadium was constructed in 2004 on a filled-in section of the Erie Canal’s original route and Rochester’s old subway bed.