The roots of Maplewood’s resilience

Deep history, a diverse community, affordability, and access to nature in Maplewood make the neighborhood in Rochester’s northwest quadrant an easy one to fall in love with.

It is bordered to the north by the Holy Sepulchre Cemetery, to the east by the Genesee River, to the south by Driving Park Avenue, and to the west by the boundary with the town of Greece.

“I find people who don’t know about it are always shocked at how beautiful Maplewood is,” says Bill Collins, president of the Maplewood Neighborhood Association. “I think the southeast (part of the city) tends to get more press, and the other quadrants are less publicized unless something bad happens. There’s a lot they’re missing when they do that.”

“Rochester was my first home (in the United States), and especially Maplewood,” says Bijaya Khadka, a 13-year resident of the neighborhood who came to this country in 2009 after being born to parents from Bhutan in a Nepali refugee camp. “It is close to me and my heart. Emotionally, I will always be drawn to Maplewood.”

It is also a neighborhood that has weathered economic hardship and the sustained aftershocks of Eastman Kodak’s closure of operations at its business park, a connection that helped to build the area in the first place. However, the 3.4-square-mile neighborhood has persisted. New residents like Khadka have worked quietly over the years to grow it into perhaps one of the most resilient parts of the city. Some experts believe that the neighborhood has untapped potential.

This article, the first in a series on the Maplewood neighborhood, is part of the Rochester Beacon’s From the Ground Up project.

Native roots

Maplewood is Rochester’s second-largest neighborhood geographically. However, it has a relatively low population density compared to most of the city, closer to areas like Dutchtown in the northwest quadrant or the neighborhood around Strong Memorial Hospital.

The land was first an important site for the native Seneca people. With convenient water access, they worked to establish overland paths for travel and trade. The European settlers who eventually made Maplewood one of the earliest outposts in Rochester’s colonial history would benefit from their efforts. In the late 1790s, English colonists from Connecticut used the Genesee River to travel inland, reaching the Lower Falls, and established a port called King’s Landing.

In the ensuing decades, the area would grow, eventually leading to the transfer of municipalities from the town of Greece to the recently established city of Rochester in the 1830s and 1840s. It would also evolve from a farming community to an industrial one, driven by the widespread development of water-powered mills.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the industrialization era kicked into high gear, marked by the construction of Kodak Business Park in 1890. As the company flourished, so did Maplewood, which became a residential hub for Kodak’s upper management and middle-class workers. The housing stock built during its heyday is a key identifier of it even today.

“Even if it’s not at the same place it was back then, (houses) still have a structure that reminds folks of a time when they can imagine that this house was one of the nicest houses in the area, and this neighborhood was one of the nicest in the area,” says Christopher Thomas, a broker at New 2 U Homes, who has sold many homes in Maplewood. “And I think that gives it a bit of a charm that lingers until today.”

While the neighborhood rose with Kodak’s success, its fortunes similarly waned with the company’s decline. A combination of shrinking employment and white flight to the suburbs drained population.

Available historical records show that the area reached over 25,000 residents in the 1950s and 1960s. Only a decade later, however, it had lost a fifth of its population before slumping into the low 19,000s by 2000.

“The neighborhood changed dramatically during that time with absentee landlords starting to buy up houses and properties were no longer maintained,” says Mike Coniff, founder and CEO of Rochester Refugee Resettlement Services. 

RRRS bought up units for refugees to have suitable housing as they transitioned to living in America. Over the past 14 years, the organization has grown to manage about 100 units with the majority located in Maplewood.

New Americans

What filled the neighborhood in the mid-2000s and 2010s were new American families and, in particular, refugees like Khadka. 

“When you are back in your home country, you have these images of America. Tall buildings, good roads, all good stuff. But when they first drove me to my new home, it was in October. It was raining, leaves were falling down, and when we pulled into this neighborhood, my first thought was, ‘Am I in the right place? Is this really America?’” he recalls. “But my thoughts changed very much after that.”

Khadka, who now is a part of the New American Advisory Council, says he found other people who looked like him or had experienced similar hardships from Myanmar and Somalia in Maplewood. The ability to share stories with others who understood those experiences and struggled with similar issues strengthened their bonds and the community.

“It’s all part of the package, it makes (Maplewood) a place people actually want to stay in,” says Djifa Kothor, executive director of RRRS. Originally from Togo, he came to America in 2000 and moved to Rochester 14 years later. “Like now, there is a Congolese store that’s on Dewey Avenue. I can shop and know they eat the same food as I do.”

With these new residents, Maplewood has seen a slight recovery in population, with 20,703 residents as of 2024. 

Green spaces

Maplewood does have its own commercial and industrial sprawl, including the Eastman Business Park, the Rochester and Southern Railroad tracks, and large business warehouses along Mount Read Boulevard.

However, most residents associate the neighborhood with modest single-family or duplex housing, easily accessible parks, and tree-lined streets. Its location directly above the Genesee River gorge and Lower Falls is enhanced by its trailways and Frederick Law Olmsted-designed Maplewood Park, which features a famed rose garden.

“The gorge is beautiful almost any season,” says Collins, who gives historical tours of the neighborhood and Genesee River Valley. “The people that come and do the tours are almost universally shocked at how much is in the gorge and how much history is there.

“The rose garden isn’t really part of the Olmstead design, but it’s still a huge asset for everyone in the city,” he adds. “People come for wedding pictures, graduation pictures, all kinds of photo shoots.” 

Adds Khadka: “The first place many of our people would go most of the time was the rose garden. A lot of our people came from a farming background and used to have small gardens, especially older people. My dad would spend most of his day there.”

Maplewood makes up a third of the northwest quadrant, but according to the city of Rochester’s tree inventory, it accounts for about half of all trees in the quadrant. Maplewood Park, the Genesee River trailway, and Holy Sepulchre Cemetery are major contributors to that tree count and the neighborhood’s treasured green space.

The Maplewood Park Nature Center is set to finish a $11 million renovation in the coming months, including trail improvements, a new playground, and an environmental education center. Other key landmarks beyond the environmental elements of the neighborhood are the widely praised and frequently used Maplewood Community Library, the Maplewood Family YMCA, the Kodak Center performance space, Virgil I. Grissom School No. 7, the Aquinas Institute of Rochester, and several charter schools, including the University Preparatory Charter School for Young Men.

By the numbers

Data on Maplewood reveals two distinct sections. One is in the north and central areas of the neighborhood, covering the Holy Sepulchre cemetery and the streets around the Aquinas Institute. The other surrounds that area, from Driving Park Avenue in the south to the gorge in the east.

The north and central section typically has higher homeownership rates, more car access, and lower poverty. The southern streets are often more diversely populated, with a greater amount of multilingualism.

According to data from the United States Census Bureau, over the past decade, an average of one in four households in Maplewood had income under the federal poverty level. This is lower than the citywide rate, which averaged 27 percent during that same time frame, and much better than nearby Edgerton, which averaged 49%.

The proportion of impoverished Maplewood households seems to be rising, however. In 2013, 22 percent of households fell below poverty levels. By 2024, it was 27 percent. While that rise is observable across the entire neighborhood, its growth was most pronounced in the southern part of Maplewood, near School No. 7 and Driving Park Avenue, which already had the highest poverty rate.

About 21% of all Maplewood households have no vehicle access, which is similar to the Beechwood and Pearl-Meigs-Monroe neighborhoods and slightly better than the citywide average of 23%.

Echoing the geographical neighborhood split, Maplewood vehicle access is limited the farther south one goes. One in three households in that area have no car. The neighborhood has two well-serviced bus lines along Dewey and Lake avenues, however.

“When we came (to America), first we would walk around to get familiar with the place. Then, most started learning the routes of the bus, and only then people would slowly start buying cars,” Khadka notes.

His family had a two-year wait before buying a “very used” car for $1,800, he says, calling it “the most exciting day” ever for them.

The northern and central part of Maplewood is tilted stronger toward homeownership, while the surrounding areas tend to have more renter-occupied units. In recent years, the lines between owners and renters seem to have solidified further. For example, in 2013, Maplewood’s southern area was made up of 62 percent renters. In 2024, it was 91 percent.

While the exact location of homeowners may have become more concentrated over the past decade, the proportion has remained relatively static. The rate of owner-occupied units in Maplewood has hovered between 41% and 49% from 2013 to 2024, putting it at par with the Ellwanger-Barry or Lyell-Otis neighborhoods.

However, Thomas finds that even a slight amount of affordability, a difficult measure in today’s market, can differentiate Maplewood for homebuyers. With his own experience being denied a mortgage multiple times as a Black buyer and a passion for addressing housing segregation, Thomas likes to help first-time homebuyers and those historically marginalized from buying. New 2 U Homes offers both first-time buyer and financial classes. He has found that those types of buyers, people who are looking to spend between $150,000 and $200,000 on a home, can actually compete in Maplewood, he says.

“The properties do come up in a price range where my folks can at least compete,” he says. “They don’t win all the time and there’s still plenty of folks that beat us out, even in (Maplewood). However, because of the fact that the houses come up in a range where my folks can compete, it gives us the opportunity to go hard and win.

“There are larger and larger pockets of the Maplewood area that are still affordable and still very comfortable for the demographics that I serve.”

In fact, during a conversation with the Beacon, Thomas was on his way to list a house in the neighborhood he was certain would get immediate interest based on its location. 

The average monthly mortgage for a Maplewood home in 2024 was $1,171. That is $200 less than the Rochester average. Rents were similarly more affordable in the area, averaging $967 a month versus $1,105 citywide.

Coniff says that RRRS’ efforts are a part of keeping those costs affordable, but the organization also works to integrate new Americans and older neighbors in the neighborhood to avoid any friction.

Undeniably, vacancy rates are decreasing in Maplewood. In 2013, 18% of the neighborhood’s residential units were vacant. By 2024, it had been cut nearly in half, to 9.8%.

“Back in 2014, we had houses on Alameda and Augustine Street that were empty and vacant. Now it actually feels populated, you can see people out walking around,” remarks Kothor.

That level of improvement is on par with Center City and North Marketview Heights, two areas that have seen development focus from local government with the Inner Loop East project, as well as modular homes and the Buy the Block program.

Maplewood has had its own recent housing developments, too. For example, the Eastman Reserve is a $52.9 million, 187 residential unit, mixed-use project within the Eastman Business Park. It opened in 2020.

A younger demographic

Maplewood’s population is more racially diverse and slightly younger than the citywide average. In 2024, 42% of those living in Maplewood were Black, 29% were white, and the median age was 33. By comparison, Rochester as a whole was 32% Black, 38% white, and had a median age of 34.)

From 2010 to 2024, a steady average of 29 percent of all households in Maplewood were foreign-born. The neighborhood’s placement in the city’s northwest is close to other areas with high proportions of new American households including Brown’s Square (31%), Edgerton (31%), and Upper Falls (30%). Across the city, an average of 20% of all households originated from outside the U.S.

Likely from the years of refugee resettlement from countries in Asia, most new Americans in Maplewood come from that continent. Immigrants from Latin America are a close second, and those from Africa are a more distant third. Forty-two percent of all Maplewood households and 81% in the southern section spoke a language other than English at home.

While there is relative racial diversity across Maplewood, its foreign-born population very closely hews to the previously observed north/south dichotomy. Seventy-three percent of all households living in the southern streets are new Americans versus 19 percent in the north.

This placement in the southern section makes it easier for these families to access important services. The Maplewood Library staff is praised by residents for its services, which include after-school child care programming, English language and citizenship courses, and job application support. It is also close to RRSS and Mary’s Place, another refugee support organization, a Price Rite grocery, a community garden on Lexington Avenue, and Maplewood Park.

“We’re always happy to have new residents, we have no problem with them being here, and I think it gives an additional flavor to the neighborhood,” Collins says. “As far as I’m concerned, they’re a net positive for the neighborhood. They tend to work very hard, study very hard, and tend to be very happy that they’re here.”

Says Khadka: “I think the Maplewood neighborhood is one of the most diverse neighborhoods in the entire city of Rochester. If people want to see a mini-world, they can go visit Maplewood. They will see people from all over the world living in this small neighborhood.”

Jacob Schermerhorn is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer and data journalist.

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