Conceived by the owners of local department stores McCurdy’s and B. Forman Co., and designed by Victor Gruen, a pioneer in shopping mall design, Midtown Plaza was America’s first indoor urban mall.
The $15 million development on East Main Street was dedicated on April 10, 1962, and hailed nationally as a symbol of downtown revitalization.
Covering 1.5 million square feet, it consisted of a two-level shopping plaza with a courtyard-style center, an underground parking garage and an 18-story tower with office space, a hotel and a restaurant.
In addition to McCurdy’s and Forman’s, Wegmans Food Markets was one of the plaza’s early tenants.
The Clock of Nations was a focal point on the first floor, and on the opposite end was a sparkling, illuminated fountain. Children would throw pennies into it, sometimes from the open stairway above the fountain that led to the plaza’s second level.
In 1966, Walt Disney made what the Democrat and Chronicle called “a whirlwind visit” to Rochester just to see Midtown. At the time, he was developing Walt Disney World in Orlando and said the plaza could serve as a model for a self-contained community he wanted to include in the park. “Yes, I was quite impressed with your plaza in the center of downtown,” he said during his trip here, which clocked in at less than three hours.
For generations, Midtown was the place to go at Christmastime, thanks to such seasonal attractions as the monorail, which carried small children around the shopping center in a loop, and Magic Mountain, where little ones could visit Santa Claus.
But by the early 1990s, the plaza was struggling. In ’94, McCurdy’s went out of business, and Forman’s closed. Wegmans shut down its Midtown store in 1995.
In 2007, then-New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer announced the city would buy the beleaguered plaza for $5.9 million and the state would pay to have it demolished it to make way for a high-rise that would serve as the headquarters of telecommunications company PAETEC, then based in Perinton.
Midtown closed in 2008, by which time it was mostly vacant, and in 2010 it was torn down (to the tune of $55 million funded by the state, using taxpayer money).
Midtown Tower, formerly home to The Top of the Plaza restaurant — which hosted shows by jazz legends Buddy Rich, Dizzy Gillespie and Sarah Vaughn — was spared (and later redeveloped by Buckingham Properties as mixed-use project Tower280).
In 2011, PAETEC was sold to Arkansas-based Windstream, which announced it wouldn’t build anything at the old Midtown site, by then known as Parcel 5. Instead, it took out a 15-year lease on two floors of the reconstructed Seneca Building next to where the plaza stood.
Figuring out what to do with Parcel 5 followed a number of twists and turns after Lovely Warren took office as Rochester mayor 2014. Initially, she was intent on not leaving the 1-acre property vacant.
As various proposals were floated, considered and rejected, activist groups called for making Parcel 5 a public green space. In the absence of development, it morphed into that, becoming a city-sanctioned site for Rochester Fringe Festival and Rochester International Jazz Festival shows and other programming.
In the spring of 2021, the city turned Parcel 5 from a gravel-covered lot into an expansive lawn with a concrete walking path, making the location “a community entertainment space.”
In March of 2025, a fully operational Clock of Nations was unveiled at Tower280, following a lengthy restoration by Buckingham Properties. The one-of-a-kind timepiece now stands about 80 feet from its original spot in the mall.
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Reporter Marcia Greenwood covers general assignments and has an interest in retail news. Send story tips to mgreenwo@rocheste.gannett.com. Follow her on X @MarciaGreenwood.
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Midtown Plaza: See photos of Rochester’s iconic mall
Reporting by Marcia Greenwood, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle / Rochester Democrat and Chronicle
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