November 9, 2019

When we first moved to Rochester from Bethesda, Maryland, I kept telling my husband I wanted to live “close in.” And he kept asking me “Close in to what?”

I had no answer. I was moving from a city with so much traffic, nothing was really close in. But I just knew that I didn’t want to be "far out" which, in my mind, meant "left out." I wanted to be able to get close to the action quickly, to be near the pulse of the city.

At the time, I had no idea that everything in Rochester is only 20 minutes from everywhere you want to be.  The whole city is “close in” because it’s small enough to traverse from one side to the other, with little traffic.  

In the ensuing years, I’ve learned that the “center” of a city is always in the eye of the beholder.

As the “beholder” in our family, “close in” was actually less about “action” than our young family’s needs. When our kids were little, “close in” meant close to school, Wegmans and the Starbucks (OK, that was my need, not the family's). When our kids got bigger, close in meant close to the great outdoors, great culture and great food.

In the end, we ended up living close in ... to a cornfield. And because of that, it required getting in the car for almost everything we did, including, I must confess, driving around the cul de sac to our neighbor’s house one winter for dinner (we were teased mercilessly).

Despite that, I thought I knew our city well and that I’d explored all our city had to offer — from museums to great restaurants and parks.

I was wrong.

Now that we’ve moved from our suburban home into the city, I have a whole new perspective on Rochester just by being able to leave the car at home and explore on foot. We have discovered new routes and hidden places that make me love our city even more. We live in an Instagram dream, filled with art and beauty in the most unexpected places — if you only take the time to see it.

We now walk on beautiful side streets with gracious homes and gardens.  We’ve discovered new restaurants on vibrant Park Avenue, including Vern’s, where I got to enjoy a massive meatball, and The Red Fern, where my husband enjoys the vegan version.

And then there’s the stately East Avenue. I still haven't tired of looking at those mansions that housed the families that changed our world.

If we Rochesterians were travelers here, we'd marvel at the beauty and take our time to sightsee. But since we live here, we have to stop our daily routines to remind ourselves of all the marvels to see right around the corner.

Most recently, one of the gems of our city was recognized as an American treasure. The George Eastman Museum was awarded a Saving America’s Treasures grant for almost half a million dollars for the restoration of the colonnade of the mansion, which itself is a National Historic Landmark.

As we walk the beautiful grounds of the George Eastman Museum and the surrounding streets as new residents of the city, we're reveling in all the history and as well as potential.  

But you don’t have to live in a zip code to appreciate and explore it. I wish I had thought years ago to park my car and walk the streets of Rochester to immerse myself in our “close in” city.  

As first published in the Democrat + Chronicle and on the USA Today Network