As we build Rocville, we have been busy getting to know the various neighborhood organizations in Rochester and our own neighborhood. Through involvement with the latter, we had the pleasure of linking up with Jimmy Catalano, a long time resident and activist in the Park Avenue neighborhood.
Hold on — let’s just pause for a second — because that description doesn’t do him justice. He is tall, tan and perhaps the smiley-est person I have ever met. His presence embraces you like one of those huge teddy bears you win at a carnival. It is no wonder he is called the “Mayor of Park Avenue.”
(Keep this description in mind, because you are going to want it in your head as you read his letter below.)
Through our conversations, Jimmy passed along some fantastic information about the Park Avenue Neighborhood Coalition, Park Avenue Revitalization Committee and the Park Avenue Merchants Association. Among the documents was a real gem — an introduction to the Park Ave neighborhood Jimmy was asked to provide for the Port of Rochester site years ago before the ferry service was discontinued.
His words capture the sentiment so many of us have about neighborhoods lost due to urban sprawl, expansion and the changing American landscape. More importantly, he expresses the joy he found becoming part of the Park Avenue neighborhood 17 years ago and discovering that neighborhoods he remembers from his youth still do exist.
Here is Jimmy’s description of the Magic of Park Avenue.
Enjoy….
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THE MAGIC OF PARK AVENUE
My name is Jim Catalano, I am a Rochester native, born and raised here initially in an area of Rochester known as “Dutchtown”, a haven for Dutch immigrants, that eventually became the core for Rochester’s Italian American community. Dutchtown was a wonderful neighborhood especially our small street of just eleven homes. Everyone watched out for each other, and never did a summer night go by where the entire neighborhood wasn’t in someone’s front yard. Joe Crispino would play his accordion, as the men would enjoy a beer or two and the women would chat over coffee served in china cups, all while we kids would run up and down the street having the best of times. It was in the sixties that Rochester began its aggressive layout of our expressway system and our street was torn right down the middle, with the State of New York purchasing our home, and the homes of all the neighbors on our side of the street. We moved to the suburbs, and although I have many fond memories of my life in suburbia, there never was the quaint ambiance I remembered so fondly.
I was nineteen when I began a life on my own with apartment living, and immediately moved back into the City of Rochester, hoping to re capture that ambiance. I am now in my forties, and about ten years ago, with the keen expertise of my partner, we had the good fortune to find and purchase a beautiful home in Rochester’s Park Avenue neighborhood. Park Avenue once served as a service street for all the wealthy homeowners living in the elegant mansions along East Avenue. It is a beautiful neighborhood filled with large stately homes, each with it’s own architectural significance, the side streets off Park Avenue also hold their own charm, again with elegant homes and beautifully maintained properties. Through the years some of these homes being very large, were modeled into apartments, which allows Park Avenue its unique charm. The neighborhood is a kind of a “melting pot” of lifestyles. Youth, seniors, gay, straight, a multitude of ethnicities, all blending together, living their lives to the beat of Park Ave. Summer nights bring out the best, as the street never sleeps. You’ll find people enjoying an evening stroll, sitting on porches, or at one of the many neighboring café’s restaurants and coffee shops, all that offer sidewalk service. You will find walking the street a must, especially if you are a people watcher. You will enjoy viewing the amazing architecture, and the variety of boutique style shops, each unique in its own special way. It’s the only way to enjoy the full value the street has to offer.
Most of our summer nights are spent on our porch, which becomes our “living room”. Throughout the summer months, not a night will go by that we don’t wind up with our porch full of people, most of them neighbors just walking by and stopping to say hello, and enjoying a cool glass of something, and passing the night away while meeting up with other neighbors that happen by.
At last I have found my magic….the ambiance that I had grown up with and found so inviting…. all here on a wonderful street called Park Avenue.
Follow me each month as I introduce you to the “Magic of Park Avenue” highlighting our special events, shops, services, boutiques restaurants and elegant homes in the area.
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I am proud to be the secretary of the Park Avenue Revitalization Committee, and also secretary of Park Avenue Merchants Association, and can offer extensive information on our neighborhood.
Also, feel free to visit our website at www.park-avenue.org
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