THE PITKIN HOUSE

THE PITKIN HOUSE

by Joan K Yanni

Docents have often been questioned about Charles Willson Jr.'s painting, View of the Pitkin House and East Avenue.  The house—still standing—is one of three "country homes" built on East Avenue in the mid-1800s by eminent Rochesterians.

The Pitkin House

The Pitkin house at 474 East Avenue near Prince Street, was completed around 1839.  It was built by William Pitkin, druggist, banker, and, from 1845 to 1847, mayor of Rochester.  (Incidentally, Pitkin's second wife was the daughter of Nathaniel Rochester!)  Today the house is the headquarters of the Otetiana Chapter of the Boy Scouts of America.

The home is Greek Revival architecture, a style which reflected America's reaction to ornate European taste during the 1800s.  It has simple, symmetrical lines with bold moldings, pedimented gables, heavy cornices, unadorned friezes, and a horizontal transom above the entrance.

When the house later passed into the hands of Daniel Powers, he added a mansard roof, similar to the roofline on his commercial structure, The Powers Building, downtown.  Toward the end of the century a third story was added to the Pitkin house under the supervision of J. Foster Warner, famed Rochester architect.  Legend has it that Jenny Lind, in a visit to Rochester, greeted admirers from its balcony.

The two other houses built in the early 1840s—across East Avenue, however—were Woodside, built by Silas Smith, a storekeeper at the Four Corners; which  now houses the Rochester Historical Society, and the home of wool merchant Aaron Erickson, now the Genesee Valley Club.

The artist, Charles Willson Jr, was the son of a music teacher.  He was listed in the Rochester City Directory from 1849 to 1854 as painter, artist, and finally landscape painter.  From the date of our painting, we know that he was active at least until 1859.  Another of his paintings is owned by Woodside.

Source: Curatorial files                                                                                                                May 1989