Draft:Clarissa Street

Clarissa Street is a neighborhood in the Third Ward of Rochester. Clarissa Street is a historic area of African American businesses in Rochester, New York's Third Ward neighborhood. Originally named Caledonia Avenue, it was renamed between 1844 and 1930 to “Clarissa,” the name of Clarissa Greig, daughter of an early Rochester investor named John Greig. Institutions along Clarissa Street included The Pythodd Room. Rioting in 1964 damaged businesses along the street and a helicopter surveying the scene crashed, further damaging the street and its surrounding neighborhood. The neighborhood was destroyed by urban renewal programs. Its history has received renewed interest.

Historical Context (1930–)
The Pythodd was located along one of the major commercial arteries of the Third Ward: the Clarissa Street neighborhood. Clarissa Street’s status as a bustling majority Black-owned and operated commercial and residential district made it a key place for clubs like the Pythodd, as well as many other music venues on the street, to thrive. While 70% Black during this era, the Third Ward was also home to immigrant families from Italy and Poland, as well as the original campus of the Rochester Institute of Technology and University of Rochester across the River.

This neighborhood was a hub of Black culture in Rochester with families dating back to the 1820s, before the city was incorporated. From the 1940s through 1960s, Black people began to arrive into the Third Ward and Clarissa Street more steadily from the South during the later period of the Great Migration. In response to major local employer Kodak refusing to hire Black people, some neighbors opened their own businesses, creating a self-sustaining community.

Ahh the same time, from the 1930s-1960s, as was happening across northern cities in the United States, the neighborhood was legally Redlined by HOLC maps and racially restrictive Covenants, which restricted Black people to living in Rochester’s Third or Seventh Wards only. Pressures of forcing too many people to live in a limited area, landlords subdividing single-family homes into multiple apartments, and redlining restrictions on home improvement mortgages, led to decay in the neighborhood’s infrastructure. Add tensions with police and Rochester experienced one of the first urban uprisings of the 1960s. A surveillance helicopter crashed on a Clarissa Street home contributing to five deaths during the three-day rebellion. Local organizers with FIGHT called in Saul Alinsky to assist with organizing. They focused on getting Kodak and Xerox to hire and train Black workers in higher paying skilled jobs and fighting urban renewal in neighborhoods like the Third Ward.

Although it was a booming neighborhood throughout this jazz era, urban renewal and the construction of the Interstate Highway System in Rochester between the 1960s and 1980s displaced nearly all of the residents of this once thriving community. In the infamous tradition of urban planner Robert Moses, the Inner Loop expressway and Interstate 490 projects cut the neighborhood off from downtown, razed eight blocks of buildings, including the Pythodd, and led to a decline in population as displaced Clarissa Street residents were forced to leave the neighborhood and even the city in order to start over. In 1996, former Clarissa Street neighbors decided that they should celebrate the rich and diverse culture of their neighborhood by hosting the Clarissa Street Reunion on the very street that was the center of the Third Ward in the mid 20th century. The Clarissa Street Reunion is an annual festival celebrating the culture and history of the Clarissa Street neighborhood. It also was started with the intention of creating a positive and festive environment for former residents to remember their time living in the neighborhood. In addition to the Reunion, Clarissa Street history has been shared with the youth of the neighborhoods that currently surround Clarissa Street itself through a partnership between the Center for Teen Empowerment and the Clarissa Street Reunion Committee called: Clarissa Street Uprooted.

Rochester’s Jazz Scene
Rochester, New York has been a hub for music since as early as the 1920s with the creation of the Eastman School of Music. However, the music scene in Rochester throughout the twentieth century was more than just classical music and its instruction. The jazz scene in Rochester was exceptionally vibrant between the late 1940s through the 1960s. With many jazz clubs located within the official city limits as well as larger venues such as the Eastman Theatre catering to the local jazz enjoying audience, Rochester was able to host great jazz musicians every day. Some of the most prominent clubs included the Pythodd and two dozen clubs catering to white audiences including the Ridge Crest Inn, Hi-Land Inn, and more.

The Pythodd Room
The Pythodd Room (“The Pythodd”) was a prominent jazz club on the national Chitlin' Circuit in the Third Ward neighborhood of Rochester, New York. At 159 Troup Street, it was originally intended as a meeting space for two local Black-run benevolent societies, the Knights of Pythias and the Odd Fellows. By the 1950s, notable jazz musicians such as Pee Wee Ellis, Ron Carter, Roy McCurdy, and brothers Chuck and Gap Mangione began their careers as young regular performers at the Pythodd.

Legacy
Wider interest in remembering the cultural impact of the Clarissa Street neighborhood and its important sense of community, legacy as Rochester’s version of Black Wall Street, stories, and landmarks has only grown, resulting in a renewed interest in the Pythodd and the deep legacy of jazz greatness in Rochester and the surrounding Western New York region. With this renewed interest, researchers and various community organizations in Rochester began to look more into the history and legacy of the Pythodd. Contemporary examples include Tina Chapman’s film, Remembering the Pythodd (2013).

The Clarissa Street Reunion celebrates the area's history.

Since 2019, through a partnership between The Center for Teen Empowerment and the Clarissa Street Reunion Committee (now known as Clarissa Street Legacy), Youth History Ambassadors, and elders who grew up in the neighborhood created Clarissa Uprooted. They recorded oral histories, created a documentary that won multiple national media and film festival awards. These partners also researched and designed a museum-quality exhibit to share Clarissa Street’s history and its lessons with the next generation. A full-sized replica of The Pythodd stage forms a centerpiece of the Clarissa Uprooted exhibit.

In 2020, the Public History course at the University of Rochester created a website dedicated to chronicling and digitally archiving the history of Jazz in Rochester and the Pythodd Room called “The Spirit of the Pythodd”

In the summer and fall of 2023, Teen Empowerment Rochester along with local artists, youth, and elders, commissioned a mural to be painted on the I-490 overpass over Main Street in Rochester to commemorate the Pythodd and Clarissa Street neighborhood.

Newspaper and Public Library Articles and Interviews
Interview with Pythodd drummer Roy McCurdy by WXXI (2022)

O’Brien, Bill (September 6, 1970). "The Pythodd Feeling". Upstate Magazine, a former Democrat & Chronicle Sunday insert, p. 90. (image of article)

Rochester Public Library Local History and Genealogy Division Blog about Rochester’s Jazz Clubs

Stanley Thomas, Jr. Obituary in the Democrat and Chronicle (1989)

Still and Moving Image Collections
Paul Hoeffler Collection Archiveworks (1955-2003)

Gitterman Gallery Pythodd Picture Collections by Paul Hoeffler (1958)

Gitterman Gallery Pythodd Picture Collections by Paul Hoeffler (1959)

Democrat and Chronicle Clarissa Street Reunion Pictures (2019)

Other Resources
Poetry inspired by Clarissa Street and The Pythodd: bobby johnson (sic.) Bard of Clarissa Street (AKA the Bebop poet). (1982) “Death of a Friend and Our Favorite People,” YouTube. (3’11”-3’21”)

Teen Empowerment. (2020) “Youth History Ambassadors mark Clarissa St. landmarks,” YouTube.

Noal Cohen’s Website feature on Jazz in Rochester (1955-1961)