The building at 501 West University was Rochester High School, put up in 1889 on the site of a school that had burned down in 1888. It opened as Rochester School, Avon District No. 5, served the district for well over a century, and has stood empty since the school offices moved out in 2022.
The people who built it didn’t know that
They were replacing something they had just lost, in a hurry, and what they put up happened to be good enough to keep being useful long after its original purpose ended. That is what building properly buys: not a guarantee of the future, but the option of having one.
The same option in a suit
A suit bought for one wedding and built decently becomes the suit worn to interviews, dinners and funerals for a decade. A suit bought for one wedding and built badly is finished when the wedding is.
Where the difference sits
In the chest of the jacket. A half-canvassed suit, $300 to $500, has a canvas that holds its shape through years of wearing and hanging; below that tier the shape is fused in place and eventually stops holding. That is the whole argument for the middle of our floor.
Also for Rochester: Nineteenth-Century Storefronts, and What Survives a Fashion. More on style consulting, or plan your visit to our Oak Park showroom.
