Bicentennial Snapshots

Beginning on Tuesday, March 22, 2022, and concluding on March 21st, 2023, the Greece Historical Society will be posting brief videos to help commemorate the 200th anniversary of the founding of the Town of Greece. This series will share many details about the people and events that influenced the town’s evolution. The topics in the Snapshots are researched, written, and narrated by Maureen Whalen, and all the snapshots are edited and produced by Pat Worboys. We hope that you will find these videos both interesting and informative.

We would like to thank the following people, town officials, fire departments, school districts, newspapers, and news stations for all the images and information from them that we used to compile these snapshots for you to learn more about the history of the Town of Greece.

People we would like to thank for their contributions to the snapshots are the following people: Gina DiBella, Bill Sauers, Marie Poinan, Douglas Worboys, Gene Preston, Jane Grant, Robert Bilsky, Ralph DeSptephano Sr., Alan Mueller, Joseph Vitello, Pat Worboys, Carolyn Kerheart, and many more. Some of the notes and research are from people that are longer with us we would like to give credit to Helen Slocum, Virginia Tomkiewicz, Shirley Cox Husted, William Aeberli, and especially Lorraine Kress Beane.

The organizations we like to thank for the use of the images are the following: North Greece Fire Department, Greece Ridge/Ridge Road Fire District, Barnard Fire Department, The Office of the Greece Historian, Rochester Public Library, The University of Rochester, Rochester Institute of Technology, Democrat and Chronicle, 13 Wham TV, WHEC, WROC, Spectrum News, Mother of Sorrows, Greece Baptist Church, Greece United Methodist Church, Greece Central School District, The Landmark Society of Western New York, Rochester Museum and Science Center, and others.

A blog post about the current week’s snapshot will also appear on this website each week at 9 am with a description of the video. Some of the posts will contain information that is written to explain content that was not included in the video but is related to the video so you can understand its connection to the snapshot. They may also include related articles that were written in the society’s newsletter or links to buy some of the books that the society has published over the years to enhance the subjects that are covered in the Snapshots that are put together each week.

If you have ideas or topics that you would like to see covered in this or a different future series, please let us know via our Facebook page or by submitting a request for a snapshot topic or subject.

The Bicentennial Snapshots

Bicentennial Snapshot No. 44: Rumrunners and Bootleggers

January 17, 2023
Today we are exploring the wild and lawless days of Prohibition in the town of Greece…
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Bicentennial Snapshot No. 43: Rediscovering Greece’s Historic Schoolhouses of 1872 Part 2

January 10, 2023
Today we will conclude our tour of the old district schools in Greece. Common School District in this snapshot: Common School Districts Joint Common School District Greece Central 1929 Common School District # 7 The original No. 7 schoolhouse was torn down in 1899 and replaced with this one-room wood-frame building located on the north…
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Bicentennial Snapshot # 42 - 1872 Common School Districts of Greece Part 1

Bicentennial Snapshot No. 42: Rediscovering Greece’s Historic Schoolhouses of 1872 Part 1

January 3, 2023
Bicentennial Snapshot No. 42: Rediscovering Greece’s Historic Schoolhouses of 1872 Part 1 explores Common School Districts # 1 – # 6 in Greece, New York…
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Bicentennial Snapshot # 41: Northgate Plaza

December 27, 2022
On October 29, 1953, “the first major suburban shopping center in Monroe County and one of the largest open-air malls in the eastern United States” opened at 3800 Dewey Avenue. On the site of the Dobson Farm…
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Bicentennial Snapshot # 40 – Growing up on Paddy Hill Farm

December 20, 2022
Today we’ll share with you what it was like growing up on a farm on Latta Road. The Whelehan farm at 1438 Latta Road is the last of the Irish family farms in the Paddy Hill community. In 1990, a volunteer with the Greece Historical Society interviewed Francis Howard Whelehan, who lived his entire 94…
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Bicentennial Snapshot # 39 - Paddy Hill, Read's Corners, Latta at Mount Read

Bicentennial Snapshot # 39 – Paddy Hill, Read’s Corners, Latta at Mount Read

December 13, 2022
This week we explore the area in Greece New York Known as Paddy Hill or Read’s Corners. In this snapshot, you will learn a bit about the back story of where the Irish Immigrants that settled in the Latta and Mount Read Area came from, a little bit more on Peter Larkin, The Whelehan Family, a brief over of Mother of Sorrows, and Paddy Hill School. The Whelehan Family will be featured more in next week’s snapshot of growing up on a farm. In two weeks we will look at the School District’s past and in that we will go a little bit more on Paddy Hill School or Common School District # 5 is what it was labeled as for school reports in 1872 til the formation of Central District or known as Free School Districts…
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Bicentennial Snapshot No 38: Our Town in World War II

December 6, 2022
This week we explore what life was like one month out from December 7th, 1941, and then on December 7th at 7am Pacific Standard Time, it all changed and Pearl Harbor was attacked. And The folks from Greece answered the call from the Commander and Chief President Delano Roosevelt. One of our town’s residents Stanely Hwalek, he was lucky to survive the attack at Pearl Harbor and his story is in Our Town in World War II book for sale on the Greece Historical Society Web site and in the Museum Gift Shop. And Do you know how much the town had collected for the war efforts? The answer is 165.5 tons of scrap metal, 384 tons of waste paper, 3 tons of rubber, 4 tons of old rags, and 200 bags of milkweed for war efforts…
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Bicentennial Snapshot No. 37: Unsolved Arson Case – The Holiday Inn Fire of 1978

November 29, 2022
Today we look back at the horrific fire at the Holiday Inn in Greece in which ten people lost their lives while staying at the Holiday Inn. Every year goes by when the generation of people who were are the scene of the horrific fire and the temperature was a balmy chilly 20°F (-6.7°C) temperature and winds out of the north around 10mph. Remember when we told you about the town of Greece didn’t join the 9-1-1 call center and operations until around 1986, before that time you would have to call the station directly or if the business had an alarm system properly wired up to the fire company’s alarm system to alert the firefighters that there was a fire at certain places of business, this also played a roll in the case of this tragic hotel fire that took the lives of ten people…
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Bicentennial Snapshot No.36: Centennial Celebration of North Greece and Ridge Road Fire District

November 22, 2022
Today we are spotlighting the two Greece fire districts that are celebrating their centennial years and they are the North Greece Fire Department and the Greece Ridge/Ridge Road Fire District…
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Bicentennial Snapshot No 35 - “Lafayette, We Are Here!” - World War 1

Bicentennial Snapshot # 35: “Lafayette, We Are Here!”

November 11, 2022
Today we salute seventeen men from the town of Greece who lost their lives during World War I…
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