Adding a wooded haven to the Cobb’s Hill series with a stroll through Washington Grove

Posted by [email protected] | Apr 24, 2017 | Cultural Life | 0 |

Inside one of the abandoned water towers atop Washington Grove. From 172 years ago when the Millerites trudged down Cobb’s Hill

George Cassidy Payne. See also Genesee Valley Park Awakens

Over the last two years, we’ve chronicled the richness of Cobb’s Hill.

There was the 100 inning softball game and a 42 year croquet league and a thirty year old basketball league. And a chilly November tennis match and a chilly April Frisbee game, a cyclocross, a leaf mound , a remembrance of a tragedy, when the Millerites trudged up and down the hill and sledding in a March blizzard. (SEE SERIES AT END)

Today, George Cassidy Payne offers another one of his naturalistic montages as he captures the ancient beauty of Washington Grove.

On the edge of Cobb’s Hill Park, there is a 27 acre forest in the city known as “Washington Grove.”

In 1932, the city and school district dedicated this quiet wooded haven, and it soon became a popular outside laboratory for learning about the natural sciences and civic responsibility.

Today, the 200 year old oaks still offer important lessons. Nestled on top of kames and kettles, this may be the most ancient biosphere open to the public for recreational visitation in Rochester.

Under a canopy of Austrian Pines and white, red, and black oaks, the park is home to Rose Breasted Grosbeaks and Red headed Woodpeckers. It is a spring migrant trap for a variety of songbirds including Vireos, Thrashers, Warblers, Tanagers, Sparrows, and Indigo Buntings. At night, the Eastern Screech Owl and Barred owl can easily be detected.

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Adding to the park’s charm is the main entrance, which is basically an extension of Alling DeForest’s wide, grassy mall which divides Nunda Boulevard. DeForest is considered to be one of the foremost landscape artists of his time. The Pittsford native worked with the iconic Olmsted firm and helped design the property of Warner Castle and the Eastman House. His urban design layout here enhances the feeling of surprise, delight, and humility that “Washington Grove” elicits from visitors, especially those discovering this horticultural gem for the first time.

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The Cobb’s Hill Series

Adding a March blizzard to the Cobb’s Hill series

172 years ago when the Millerites trudged down Cobb’s Hill

42 years and counting for the Kick Ass Kro-Kay Club of Cobb’s Hill

Once more into the breech on the banks of Lake Riley

Flowering Upper Monroe

Ultimate spring fever at Cobb’s Hill

On a mound at Cobb’s Hill! And how the City of Rochester handles its loose leaves.

Cobb’s Hill welcomes the Ninth Cobb’s Hill Cyclocross

Diehards and the Cobb’s Hill Tennis Courts

Back to normalcy at Cobb’s Hill basketball

Rochester’s own street ball Rucker League

The 8th Annual Festival of Softball: After 800 Innings the “Tribute to Noah” nears $100,000

That Championship Season thirty five years later

The Cobb’s Hill tragedy of an “invisible man” ten years later

On the 22nd of October, 1844 on top of Cobb’s Hill

About The Author

[email protected]

Welcome to Talker of the Town! My name is David Kramer. I have a Ph.D in English and teach at Keuka College. I am a former and still active Fellow at the Nazareth College Center for Public History and a Storyteller in Residence at the SmallMatters Institute. Over the years, I have taught at Monroe Community College, the Rochester Institute of Technology and St. John Fisher College. I have published numerous Guest Essays, Letters, Book Reviews and Opinion pieces in The New York Times, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, the Buffalo News, the Rochester Patriot, the Providence Journal, the Providence Business News, the Brown Alumni Magazine, the New London Day, the Boston Herald, the Messenger Post Newspapers, the Wedge, the Empty Closet, the CITY, Lake Affect Magazine and Brighton Connections. My poetry appears in The Criterion: An International Journal in English and Rundenalia and my academic writing in War, Literature and the Arts and Twentieth Century Literary Criticism. Starting in February 2013, I wrote for three Democratic and Chronicle blogs, "Make City Schools Better," "Unite Rochester," and the "Editorial Board." When my tenure at the D & C ended, I wanted to continue conversations first begun there. And start new ones. So we created this new space, Talker of the Town, where all are invited to join. I don’t like to say these posts are “mine.” Very few of them are the sole product of my sometimes overheated imagination. Instead, I call them partnerships and collaborations. Or as they say in education, “peer group work.” Talker of the Town might better be Talkers of the Town. The blog won’t thrive without your leads, text, pictures, ideas, facebook shares, tweets, comments and criticisms.