Last week I spent most of my time scanning and uploading a new set of photos that show the construction of the war memorial. They are in this new folder. It has 56  photos by Al Piccoli. When I looked him up, I found that he was the staff photographer for the Greece Press and the Gates-Chili Press in the 1950s. He also took wedding photos.

This photo on the right shows that when they dug out the lot they found the remains of a wall and arch from an old mill race. I don’t know if they knocked it all down. I would suspect they only took down the top part and covered up the rest. If so, then some of that wall would still be under the War Memorial (now Blue Cross Arena).

The last photo in that series is from what I suspect was the first event at the War Memorial. The Rochester Catholic Diocese put on “Mission Scenerama,” Oct. 16 – 23, 1955, which had some sort of displays and also had special Masses each day with guest speakers. On Oct. 23rd, Bishop Fulton J. Sheen gave two masses and spoke. Newspaper accounts say that the War Memorial was filled for those events.

I also scanned a photo of St. Joseph’s church in Rochester. If you look at that picture, you can see it was printed on highly textured paper.

Another new picture has a mother taking a movie of her daughter at the Pansy Bed in Highland Park. Hopefully she is using a Kodak movie camera.