Haunted Rochester by Mason Winfield

Author:Mason Winfield
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Published: 2013-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

ROCHESTER

GHOST OF A BUILDING

One of Rochester’s Victorian hotspots was on Exchange Place (later Corinthian Street) behind the Reynolds Arcade on Main Street. The Athenaeum Building was an assembly hall built for financier William Reynolds in 1849. (Anything called Athenaeum is aimed at promoting culture and named after the Greek war/wisdom goddess Athena.) The rack of Corinthian-style columns on the stage was what everyone remembered about this building that was soon to be called Corinthian Hall.

The 1897 city directory gives the address as Exchange Place, which then ran from 33 Front Street West to 20 State Street. Big for its day, this architectural gem seated twelve hundred people and held a law library, reading rooms and office space. An entertainment hall and convention center, the Corinthian’s theater was specialized for speaking and listening. Legendary New York Tribune newspaperman Horace Greeley wrote of “its lofty ceiling, admirable lighting, and air ventilation.” A wide range of period luminaries took its stage.

As a lecture hall, the Corinthian was a forum for progressive political ideas as well as alternative subjects like mesmerism and phrenology. Literary events included Shakespearean readings and visits from authors, among them Charles Dickens. Performers like showman P.T. Barnum and singer/dancer Jenny Lind (“the Swedish Nightingale”) graced the stage, with political stars like abolitionist Frederick Douglass, suffragette Susan B. Anthony, statesman William Lloyd Garrison and Lincoln cabinet member William H. Seward. Sheer spectacle took place here, too, like gymnastics and “the manly pugilist arts” (boxing). Some visitants may not have been mortal.

By the fall of 1849, two country girls from nearby Hydesville were getting famous. In the presence of Maggie and Katie Fox, “the spirits”—or something—made knocking sounds and could even be coerced into a sort of code. In one session at a Rochester home, the spirits told the sisters, “Hire Corinthian Hall.”

Approximately four hundred of the city’s curious residents showed up on Wednesday, November 14. Author and minister Eliab Capron lectured on “the full history of the rise and progress of these strange manifestations.” The sisters paraded out to applause and catcalls and sat or stood quietly. A metallic knocking announced that the spirits were ready. Then the blunt raps commenced, but from where they came—walls, ceilings or floors—no one agreed. For all three demonstrations, the girls were studied by selected audience members, sometimes even held or bound. No trickery was proved.

These demonstrations tested everybody. Some religious folks picketed the shows of apparent necromancy, or speaking to the dead. Others came to expose the trick and stormed the stage to check for themselves. Some shows were near riots. Known then and remembered today as “the Rochester Knockings,” the three Corinthian Hall displays launched an international craze and founded a religion.

Corinthian Hall came to be called “the Academy of Music” and was lost to fire in 1898. Rebuilt in 1904 as the Corinthian Theater, it closed in 1928 and was razed a year later. Some of the old streets don’t exist now, and its foundations are hard to pinpoint. Some say they lie beneath a parking garage, and others claim that they’re under the Crowne Plaza Hotel.

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