The Grand View Beach Club

At the turn of the last century, our Town’s lakeshore was the vacation destination for many in the Rochester area. Summer cottages, hotels, resorts, and private clubs dotted the area along the eight-mile route of the Manitou Trolley. During Prohibition, this remote area also provided a haven for those who ignored the Volstead Act. All those places are now gone, although many are preserved in memories and stories about the area.

A building with a sign on the front<br><br>Description automatically generated
Grand View Beach Club provided of Barb Bray
Grand View Beach Neighboord sign, taken by Pat Worboys

One of the grand old establishments in the area called Grand View Beach was the Grand View Beach Hotel, known as “Rosenbach’s by the locals. It was built in 1882 and destroyed by fire in 1947. (Learn about that hotel in Bicentennial Snapshot #45) Only a few properties west of the hotel, at 2286 Old Edgemere Drive, was the private Grand View Beach Club.

The Grand View Beach Club was organized in 1902. With a membership of over 100 cottagers, they built a pavilion/clubhouse for $3,500 (which would cost $126,295.47 in today’s value).

Not much is known about the club’s early years. A 1915 Democrat & Chronicle article stated that the building was used for entertainment, card parties, minstrel shows, dances, meetings, and other purposes, and that the club also advocated for civic improvements.

A group of men sitting at a table<br><br>Description automatically generated
Claim Bake Committee – from left to right Joseph C. Murrer, Joseph Mahler, Edmund M. Lambiase, Robert F. Gifford, Dr. Joseph W. Martin Jr., Harold D. Cross, and William L. Dibacco – The date of this Clambake Committee photo is unknown.

By the 1940s, on Wednesday nights, silent, black & white “kid’s movies” were shown for 10 cents, and Saturday night dances were held for the teen youth crowd. A 1947 Greece Press article stated that “the dances were described as definitely ‘swell’ by the dungaree crowd.” (See our Historic Newspapers section for links to the Greece Press newspapers that have been digitized and hosted on NYS Historic Newspapers)

A group of people sitting on a bench<br><br>Description automatically generated
Democrat & Chronicle June 25, 1950
A black and white advertisement for a dance<br><br>Description automatically generated
Democrat & Chronicle July 15, 1950

For adult entertainment, there were five slot machines (rumor has it that they were purchased from the mob) and a 10-15-foot bar. Behind the bar was a closet, and behind the closet was storage for the slot machines and other “paraphernalia” when not in use.

A black and white advertisement<br><br>Description automatically generated
Democrat & Chronicle Nov 14, 1949
provided by Pat Martin

In the mid-1940s, a well-known annual Turkey Raffle was held, which sometimes included winning a pig. Annual field days, carnivals, and clambakes were held to raise funds for the club.

Turkey Raffle Committee November 1946. Back row (Left to right) Dr. Joe Martin Sr, Joe Mahler, unknown, Jim Bell, unknown, Bill McCormick. Front row (left to right) Fred McCormick, *Leonard B. Finewood, Dr. Ed Hardenbrook, unknown, Don Blanchard, unknown. (front center) Boy with a pig, unknown.
Turkey Raffle Committee November 1946. Back row (Left to right) Dr. Joe Martin Sr, Joe Mahler, unknown, Jim Bell, unknown, Bill McCormick. Front row (left to right) Fred McCormick, *Leonard B. Finewood, Dr. Ed Hardenbrook, unknown, Don Blanchard, unknown. (front center) Boy with a pig, unknown.
*Leonard B. Finewood raised the turkeys and the pigs on his farm on Long Pond Rd. and donated them to the club. Photo provided by Pat Martin.

By the early 1950s, the club offered their clubhouse for Protestant church services as well as space to the Grand View Fire Department (see Bicentennial Snapshot No. 50: Barnard and Lakeshore Fire Districts) during the winter months. In 1951 and ’52, the place was used for public meetings asking for government help with the problems of the rising water level of Lake Ontario.

As the saying goes: “All good things must come to an end.” For the Grand View Beach Club, it was the mid-1950s when membership and attendance began to decline. In 1961, the property was listed as delinquent in its taxes. In December 1963, the Town considered using the old place for a senior citizens group, but in the spring of 1964, the club sold the building to the Mennonites who carefully dismantled it for the wood. Finally, in August 1964, the now-empty lot, was sold at public auction. The parcel stood empty until 1977 when a private home was built on it.

Nothing remains of the Grand View Beach Club except the memories of some old timers and the sign on the building that was saved by a neighbor during the building’s deconstruction. To this day that sign hangs in the living room of a Greece resident.

A group of houses on a lake<br><br>Description automatically generated
A contemporary aerial photo showing the location of the former Grand View Beach Club. provided by Barb Bray
A sign above a window<br><br>Description automatically generated
Original Grand View Beach Club sign

Check out the following Related Snapshots that fit this story and they are Bicentennial Snapshots: # 44 RUMRUNNERS AND BOOTLEGGERS, # 45 SPEAKEASIES, and # 50 BARNARD AND LAKESHORE FIRE DISTRICTS

mail

How Different It Might Have Been?

The fall of 1953 was a rapidly changing time for the residents of the town of Greece. The Lake Ontario State Parkway (LOSP) was under construction and contractors had all they could do to build new homes for Greece’s growing population, as 100 people a month moved into the town. According to Ray Cole, the town’s building inspector at the time, 55 new home permits were issued in September alone. Then there was the Northgate Plaza grand opening, a three-day event that drew crowds of up to 75,000. A new shopping complex today would cause little excitement, but back then it was to be the very first suburban shopping center in Monroe County.

Meanwhile, in October, a small group of town citizens would affect the future of Greece. A grassroots group, the Shoremont Association, headed by Mario Berardi of Edgemere Drive, was protesting the proposed construction of a factory at Dewey Avenue and Ling Road. It seemed that a 47-year-old local company with 800 employees was rapidly outgrowing their plant on Hollenbeck Street and other sites scattered around the City of Rochester.

The company had acquired an option on the land and was seeking a zoning change to build their proposed “campus­ type” research and production facility. The group of residents was afraid that a factory “would destroy the natural beauty of the lakeshore site, increase traffic, cause a smoke and industrial dirt nuisance and depreciate nearby proper­ ty values and those of Greece as a whole.”

A Democrat & Chronicle editorial praised the residents for their opposition to changing the towns zoning laws “that might allow the installation of a big factory in their neighborhood.” The editorial stated that “the company was one with a conscience and a sense of civic responsibility. Its officers were public-spirited, and it could be taken for granted they would not willingly ruin a great public asset”. (Indeed, the president of the company had been mayor of the City only 20 years before). ‘The citizens were wise to move rapidly in trying to repulse an effort to change the zoning laws.” Because of the residents’ protest, the company pulled out of the deal and began the search for another site.

Were the right decisions made that first week in October of 1953? Certainly, it would have changed the character of the neighborhood and we now know the site that the company had chosen would have been woefully inadequate.

Would they have soon abandoned the site when they ran out of room, leaving another empty building, such as the old Odenbach shipbuilding factory that was unoccupied for many years, or would they have continued to expand throughout the town of Greece? We will never know.

The Town of Greece certainly did prosper over the years without that factory, but so did the community that eagerly welcomed it. In 1954, Joseph C. Wilson, the president of the Haloid Co. announced his com­pany’s plans for a new complex in the town of Web­ster. Several years later in 1961, the company changed its name to Xerox.

The area as it looks today (Google Maps)

This is an edited version of a story by me that originally appeared in the Greece Post Oct 16, 2003.

mail

“The Main Street of Greece” – From The Historian’s Desk

Ridge Road in photos: 1909 -1960

Every few years, if not sooner, a news article about the Ridge being expanded or improved pops up in news­ print or other media. From what was once the eastern edge at Lake Avenue to the western edge of Greece at Manitou Road, Ridge Road has always been in a state of fluctuation.

The early 1800s saw what had been a narrow Native American trail turns into a muddy dirt or occasional wood plank stretch of road by the mid-1860s. The fifty-year span from the early 1900s saw the fastest transfor­mation of the Ridge in the 20th century.

Eastman Kodak, introducing folding and box cameras near the turn of the century, made outdoor photography simpler and cheaper to take satisfactory photos. Hence, we began to have photos similar to the circa 1909 view of Richard and Katherine Emrich standing in muddy Ridge Road (east of Dewey Ave.) with their home be­ hind them. The other photos from the early 20th century speak for themselves. How many of the shops and stores do you recall? If you are younger than a certain age…..all would be foreign to your eyes…

Ridge Rd, Emrich Kids 1909, one of the earliest photos of Ridge Rd, W of Kodak Pk.
Cube-block installation Ridge Rd. 1909
New Grader for Greece 1928

Alteration, transition, variety, and diversity would apply to “The Lewiston Road”, one of several variations given to Ridge Road as it traversed our town. For further information and history about the Ridge, check out our ever-popular publication, Eight Miles Along the Shore, available in several formats at our museum shop.

“Things changed, people changed, and the world went rolling along right outside our windows.”

– Nicholas Sparks, Message in a Bottle
Ridge at Dewey 1940
Naum Bros. Ridge Rd. 1955
N.W. Corner Ridge Rd. at Stone Rd. 1956
Ridge Rd looking west at Pepperidge Dr 1956
Long Pond at Ridge Rd. Greece Baptist Church in the background while Greece DPW and Monroe County Water Authority upgrade the sewer lines in 1961

More of this can be seen in the Bicentennial Snapshots episodes 11 and 12

Bicentennial Snapshot # 11 – The Ridge Part 1 This covers the beginnings of the Ridge till the early 1900s.

Bicentennial Snapshot # 12 – The Ridge Part 2 covers the 1900s till the early 2000s and some parts of the current times of the ridge.

Photos, data supplied by Alan Mueller, Greece Historian’s Office.

mail