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Support for this program is provided by the Finger Lakes Food Processing Cluster Initiative.
www.monroecc.edu/go/agriculture (585) 292-2200
August 28, 2016
Issue No. 35
www.westsidenewsny.com
NORTH EDITION
Distributed
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Hilton-Parma
Sun rays beaming down upon the reflective Erie Canal on Canal Road in Spencerport. Photo by Joe Pompili.
Hamlet of Coldwater subject of new local history book Today, it is just a place name—an unincorporated hamlet within the towns of Gates and Chili in Monroe County. But in its day, Coldwater (or Cold Water, as it was sometimes known) was a residential, business and transportation hub with an official U.S. Post Office address and a regular stop on the New York Central main line. Donald G. Ioannone, a decades-long Gates resident and business owner, and John M. Robortella, past editor of the Gates-Chili News and local-history writer, have collaborated on a new book entitled Coldwater: An Eclectic History of the Hamlet, released by Finger Lakes Historical Press, Canandaigua, New York. Published in soft cover with 188 pages and more than 150 archival photographs, the book begins with the impact of the railroad on the hamlet, followed by the arrival of a group of German Catholics who first established a school and then Holy Ghost parish.
“A traditional downtown and Main Street never formed in Gates,” said Ioannone. “The boundaries originally extended east into present-day Rochester. The hamlet of Coldwater - named, they say, for the readily available cold water for steam locomotives - with its railroad depot and post office, quickly filled the downtown void when the first railroad train passed through Gates on May 11, 1837. “The railroad changed everything for Coldwater and the town of Gates,” he said. Coldwater then became the home to hundreds of German Catholics who began to leave the central city and purchase land in today’s suburban Monroe County towns. “Interestingly, a German Catholic church in Coldwater was not their first priority,” said Robortella. “Instead, they constructed a school on an acre of land donated in 1865 by William and Euphemia Vogel on the east side of Coldwater Road.
“Without a parish, the Catholic school was considered a mission station until Holy Ghost Church was officially founded on July 3, 1876,” said Robortella. Ioannone and Robortella drew upon a number of town and county histories which were augmented with interviews, documents and photographs from the descendants of Coldwater’s pioneer families, many of whom still reside in the area and others who are now living throughout the United States. “Baseball was a huge pastime for players and spectators,” said Ioannone. “We were fortunate to have received what so far is the only known photograph of a game in the 1920s at Knoepfler Field at the corner of presentday Coldwater Road and Cherry Road. Afterward, the games then moved to the better known Russer Field in the 1950s, which was one of the few lighted stadiums in Monroe County at the time.” continued on page 2