The peaceful, tree-lined stretch of Wimbledon Road between North Clinton and Seneca avenues in Irondequoit is lined with attractive, well-kept, modest homes. It resembles many of the town's neighborhoods.
But look closely at the Tudor Revival and Colonial Revival houses. While they're all different, there are some marked similarities.
They were built between 1927 and 1929 by Fred P. Tosch, a prolific builder in the Rochester area, as his first effort at a planned development.
"No two fronts of the homes are the same, and there's different styles applied to them," said Christopher Brandt, a preservation architect who chairs Irondequoit's Preservation Commission. "But in general, the overall construction and layout of each house is very similar to sort of capitalize on the efficiency of scale that that provided."
That stretch of street was recently added to the National Register of Historic Places as the Wimbledon Road Historic District, the result of a years-long effort by the Irondequoit Perseveration Commission and the residents. It's the first such district in the town.
The designation comes with a practical benefit. Homeowners within it are eligible for state income tax credits if they complete repairs or renovations that are approved by the state's preservation office.
But the designation also recognizes the neighborhood as a snapshot of an important time in Irondequoit's history. The 31 houses within the district were built at a time when the town was shifting from an agricultural community to a residential one, Brandt said.
During the 1920s, Irondequoit saw an influx of new residents from the city, made possible by the expansion of Rochester's streetcar system. That also fueled growth in two other inner-ring suburbs, Brighton and Greece.
"That sort of 19-teens, 1920s boom was a major sort of characteristic of what we sort of know and love about Irondequoit today," Brandt said.
Jerry Bradley and his husband own a Tudor Revival house in the new historic district, which they moved into four years ago when they relocated from Manhattan. Once they bid on the house, Bradley began looking into its history. What he learned from Brandt and his own research excited him.
"The block is totally intact ... there's been no major fire damage, knock on wood," Bradley said. "There's been no one adding an addition that's visible from the street — there are many additions on the backs of the houses because they were modest in size — but it has great integrity, and I think it has an esthetic appeal."
For Bradley, one other thing sticks out. His neighbors, he said, have "pride of place" and they readily help each other out when it comes to house projects.
Irondequoit is now undertaking a townwide historic resources survey, and one the main goals is to identify other potential historic districts within its boundaries. More districts would mean more residents would be able to pursue state tax credits when they invest in their houses, Brandt said.
He added that the district does not place any restrictions on what homeowners can do with the properties. It's "a carrot, not a stick," he said.
