Jun. 8—Dear Answer Man: Driving around Rochester, I see a couple of roads that look a little out of place among the other roads in their areas. One is the two blocks of boulevard that are 10th Avenue Northwest between 10th and 12th Streets. This road has a tree-lined median between the opposing lanes of traffic. The second is Seventh Street Northeast from 14th Avenue to 18th Avenue. This road is just extra wide compared to other roads in the neighborhood. My questions is why were these roads built like this, and will the city ever change them in the future? — The Road Worrier.
Dear Worrier,
You must put a lot of miles on your jalopy to find these irregular-fit roads around Rochester.
Let’s tackle these one at a time.
The first one is one Answer Man has known about for years. In fact, our esteemed editor, Jeff Pieters, wrote about it as “recently” as 2009 .
Writing a story about how the City Council denied a request from the school board to vacate part of its right-of-way along the east side of Washington Elementary — presumably, the school district had plans for that land — Pieters wrote, “The road was supposed to have been part of a grand parkway running from Assisi Heights to Saint Marys Hospital, but the parkway never was completed.”
He further noted that the grand parkway plan had been started a half century previously. Giving the excess 10th Avenue right-of-way to the school would have increased the campus’s land by 14%, or 36,000 square feet.
Why the need for this grand parkway?
Well, that goes to the connection between Assisi Heights and Saint Marys Hospital, which the sisters built for the benefit of the Mayo brothers and their burgeoning health care center. It was thought there would be a lot of travel between Saint Marys and the home for the religious order.
The second one had, previously, eluded even my vast quantities of knowledge. For that, I reached out to our good friend Megan Moeller with the city of Rochester.
According to the city’s engineering team, Moeller relates, Seventh Street Northeast was planned to be a major four-lane road back in the middle of the 1900s or so, and Seventh Street was going to become a major thoroughfare in that part of the city.
Alas, in 1965, the city purchased a farm on the east side of town, and that farm became Quarry Hill Park.
About the same time, the city grew so that the street grid expanded, and the big east-west road in that part of town became 12th Street, so the city did not build a road through the park.
“Back then, Seventh Street Northeast carried a lot more traffic as there weren’t many places to cross the Zumbro River,” Moeller said. “Building more bridges has helped disperse traffic and reduce the projected volumes on that corridor.”
So, both roads — irregularly sized as they are at the moment — are relics of a bygone time and long-discarded plans.
When the day comes to reconstruct those streets, Moeller said, “we will rebuild them to current standards.”
So, enjoy the grand parkway and the wide lanes on Seventh Street while you can. Some day it’ll all be back to normal … and maybe Rochester Public Schools can get that bonus land.
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