Still Picking Up Passengers Today

If you look carefully, you will see a passenger train crossing the river.

From what I could find on line, the train tracks in the picture on the front of this post card are owned today by CSX. Today, the Amtrak station is just to the northeast of the falls and Amtrak runs on the lines owned by CSX. The following information about Rochester and the falls in the picture is from Wikipedia: At Rochester, New York the Genesee River cuts through the Niagara Escarpment exposing limestones and shales of Silurian age in the rock column. The river provided the original power for the Rochester area's 19th century mills and still provides hydroelectric power for downtown Rochester. If "not for hydropower, the flour mills, clothing mills, and tool fabricators would not have located in Rochester", and the 1825 Erie Canal allowed the mills to ship products to New York City. Believe it or not, the best information that I could find on the internet about the Upper Falls of the Genesee River in Rochester, New York was on “Trip Advisor”. Here are a few excerpts from what I found: This is a striking waterfalls, most impressive perhaps because it is located in a downtown area rather than in a natural setting like a forest or a glen. It is easily viewable from a parking lot, or from a foot bridge that passes over the river. You can also eat at the Genesee Brewery and have a spot on the balcony where you can admire the falls. This is a nice waterfall right in the middle of Downtown Rochester. It’s a great place to take a walk or to stop for pictures. They have nice informational boards about the history of the falls and surrounding area. To be able to see a waterfall in the middle of a city is unusual and breathtaking. There is a long bridge, Ponte de Rennes, to walk on to get a perfect view of the falls. There are plenty of benches throughout so you don't need to feel like you have to walk to the center right away if you have issues with long distance walking.

The post card was printed by Miller Art Co. That little blue coffee cup at the bottom-middle is their trademark. They published view-cards of the Northeast in halftone lithography. Many of their cards suffer from very crude retouch work. They issued better quality holiday cards and a large set of New York World’s Fair cards in 1939, many with decorative borders. They existed from 1922 to 1941 in Brooklyn, New York. They printed the card for Scrantom’s Incorporated in Rochester, New York. That is the name printed on the left of the card. Henry Scrantom and Lansing Wetmore founded the company in 1868 with a store at 10 State St. The business originally carried both men's names. The store moved around downtown before landing in the Powers Building at Main and State streets in 1889. A second store, which proved to be Scrantom's longest-lasting, opened at 334 E. Main St. in 1924. Scrantom's was one of Rochester's oldest businesses and the place to go for office supplies, gifts, books and stationery for more than a century. At its peak, Scrantom's operated 11 stores in the area and ran a wholesale-supply business throughout New York and parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio and other states. The end came in the early 1990s. Scrantom's Book and Stationery Co. — which opened its first store in downtown Rochester just a few years after the Civil War — declared bankruptcy and closed up shop. The demise was blamed in part on a recent flood of big-box competitors, as described by Cliff Smith in a Times Union story from August 1992.