title: The Great Wall (film)

text: Principal photography began on March 30, 2015, on location in Qingdao. It is the most expensive film ever shot entirely in China.


title: The Great Wall (film)

text: Three walls were built during production as they could not shoot on the actual Great Wall. During the filmmaking, the director said the most impressive part for him was the presence of so many translators to handle communication, as he assembled an international crew for the filming. More than 100 on-set translators worked with the various cast and crew members.


title: The Great Wall (film)

text: The film's score is composed by Ramin Djawadi. The first track called "Nameless Order" was released on December 14, 2016.


title: The Great Wall (film)

text: "The Great Wall" was released in China on December 16, 2016. It was released on February 17, 2017 in the United States by Universal Pictures in 3D, 2D and IMAX 3D. In the Philippines, the film was released by United International Pictures through Columbia Pictures Philippines on January 25, 2017.


title: The Great Wall (film)

text: "The Great Wall" released its first trailer in July 2016. The trailer shows views of the Great Wall in fog, thousands of soldiers on a battlefield ready for war, and a mysterious monster, as well as the roster views of the cast, including Matt Damon and Andy Lau.


title: The Great Wall (film)

text: A song from Wang Leehom and Tan Weiwei was released on November 15, 2016, to promote "The Great Wall". "Bridge of Fate" was composed and produced by Wang Leehom, with lyrics written by Vincent Fang, a longtime collaborator of singer-songwriter Jay Chou. Female rocker Tan Weiwei joined Wang for a duet, but with two different vocal styles. Wang sang pop, while Tan performed a traditional Qinqiang – a folk Chinese opera style from Shaanxi Province.


title: The Great Wall (film)

text: Chinese pop diva Jane Zhang released another new English song, "Battle Field", and its promotional music video, for "The Great Wall" on November 22, 2016. The song was composed by King Logan and Maroon 5's keyboardist PJ Morton and written by Josiah "JoJo" Martin and Jane Zhang. It was produced by Timbaland.


title: The Great Wall (film)

text: Universal Pictures and Legendary Entertainment debuted eight character posters of the film on November 17, 2016. All in all, Legendary spent $110–120 million on promotion and advertising worldwide.


title: The Great Wall (film)

text: Legendary Pictures made a strategic decision to work with Chinese talent and investors and altered their production plan to better cater to Chinese audiences. "The Great Wall", funded by Legendary, China Film Group, and Universal Pictures was an attempt at a joint production between Chinese and American talent. The film was directed by a big-time Chinese director, Zhang Yimou, and starred Hollywood stars Matt Damon and Willem Dafoe alongside Chinese film stars in an attempt to capture Chinese audiences. Although the film was considered to be a box office failure in China, the intent was clear and compelling. Other film studios such as Pixar have been making these minor adjustments to appeal to international audiences for years.


title: The Great Wall (film)

text: "The Great Wall" grossed $45.5 million in the United States and Canada, and $289.4 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $334.9 million, against a production budget of $150 million.


title: The Great Wall (film)

text: In China, "The Great Wall" opened on December 16, 2016 and made $24.3 million on its first day and $67.4 million in its opening weekend. In the second weekend, it grossed $26.1 million. The film went on to gross $170.9 million at the Chinese box office, which is considered a disappointment.


title: The Great Wall (film)

text: In the United States and Canada, the film opened alongside "A Cure for Wellness" and "Fist Fight", and was projected to gross $17–19 million from about 3,200 theaters in its opening weekend. The film made $970,000 at 2,470 theaters from Thursday night previews, and $5.9 million on its first day. It went on to open to $18.1 million, finishing third at the box office, behind holdovers "The Lego Batman Movie" and "Fifty Shades Darker", and eventually grossing $45.2 million. The film joined "Terminator Genisys", "Warcraft" and fellow 2017 release "" as the only Hollywood films to earn $100 million in China without making $100 million in the United States.


title: The Great Wall (film)

text: In March 2017, "The Hollywood Reporter" wrote that the film was likely to lose about $75 million due to its underwhelming performance theatrically, as its performance in most major markets, including the United States and Canada, was disappointing. The loss incurred by all four studios varied, with Universal Pictures, which funded about 25% of the film's $150 million production budget, losing around $10 million. The rest of the investors, Legendary Entertainment, China Film Group and Le Vision Pictures, will have an equal loss. Universal also covered almost all of the film's global marketing expenses of more than $80 million, so the studio will incur an even heavier loss. Ancillary revenues from home entertainment sales and TV rights, may offset some of the losses. In March 2018, "Deadline Hollywood" calculated the film lost the studio $74.5 million, when factoring together all expenses and revenues.


title: The Great Wall (film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, the film has an approval rating of 35% based on 234 reviews, and an average rating of 4.90/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "For a Yimou Zhang film featuring Matt Damon and Willem Dafoe battling ancient monsters, "The Great Wall" is neither as exciting nor as entertainingly bonkers as one might hope." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 42 out of 100, based on 40 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.


title: The Great Wall (film)

text: Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, writing for "The A.V. Club", gave the film a B− on an A to F scale, saying: "There is no logical reason for the film to climax in a tower of stained glass that paints Lin Mae and William in psychedelic "Suspiria" lighting, but boy does it look gorgeous in 3-D." Simon Abrams, a contributor for RogerEbert.com, gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, summarizing: ""The Great Wall" is unlike any American blockbuster you've seen, a conservative movie with action set pieces that are actually inventive and thrilling enough to be worthwhile. See it on as big a screen as you can."


title: The Great Wall (film)

text: Clarence Tsui, writing for "The Hollywood Reporter", gave the film a negative review, saying: ""The Great Wall" is easily the least interesting and involving blockbuster of the respective careers of both its director and star."


title: The Great Wall (film)

text: In 2021 Matt Damon said his daughter had mocked him for the movie. She made a point of calling it "The Wall", and when Damon corrects her with "The "Great" Wall", she remarks that there was nothing great about it.


title: The Great Wall (film)

text: Because some of the characters, including a main character played by Matt Damon, are white in a film set in medieval China, the film was accused of whitewashing and using the white savior narrative prior to its release. Ann Hornaday, chief film critic for "The Washington Post", wrote that "early concerns about Damon playing a 'white savior' in the film turn out to be unfounded: his character, a mercenary soldier, is heroic, but also clearly a foil for the superior principles and courage of his Chinese allies." Jonathan Kim, in a review for "the Huffington Post", writes that "having seen "The Great Wall", I can say that ... on the charge of "The Great Wall" insulting the Chinese and promoting white superiority, I say: Not Guilty. The question of whether "The Great Wall" is a white savior movie is a bit trickier, but I'm still going to say Not Guilty. ... On the charge of whitewashing, I say: Not Guilty." Deadline Hollywood noted that audience surveys by PostTrak indicated that Asians were turning out to see the film and constituted its second largest demographic group at 26% (behind Caucasians at 43%).


title: The Great Wall (film)

text: Director Zhang said that Damon was not playing a role that was intended for a Chinese actor. He criticized detractors for not being "armed with the facts" and stated that "In many ways "The Great Wall" is the opposite of what is being suggested. For the first time, a film deeply rooted in Chinese culture, with one of the largest Chinese casts ever assembled, is being made at tentpole scale for a world audience. I believe that is a trend that should be embraced by our industry."


title: The Great Wall (film)

text: The film's largest investor, the Wanda Group (owner of Legendary Pictures) has a good relationship with the Chinese Communist Party. As of July 2017, users of film review website Douban rated "The Great Wall" 4.9 out of 10. On Maoyan, another film review aggregator, the "professional score" is 4.9 out of 10. On December 28, 2016, the Communist Party's official media outlet "People's Daily" published an article on its website severely criticizing Douban and Maoyan for doing harm to the Chinese movie industry with their bad reviews. On the same day, Maoyan took down its "professional score" of 4.9 for "The Great Wall" but kept the high "audience score" of 8.4 out of 10. However, another article was published later in the evening from the same People's Daily and it commented the Chinese movie industry should accept people have the right to leave even one-star reviews. After the second article was published, many questioned People's Daily, they have since published two commentaries on the same day and they were in stark contrast, which one was their opinion. The editorial board responded the second article published later was newspaper's opinion on the matter, People's Daily overseas edition restated it the next day.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Rochester () is a city in the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, and Yonkers, with a population of 211,328 at the 2020 United States census. Located in Western New York, the city of Rochester forms the core of a larger metropolitan area with a population of 1 million people, across six counties. The city was one of the United States' first boomtowns, initially due to the fertile Genesee River Valley, which gave rise to numerous flour mills, and then as a manufacturing center, which spurred further rapid population growth.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Rochester rose to prominence as the birthplace and home of some of America's most iconic companies, in particular Eastman Kodak, Xerox, and Bausch & Lomb (along with Wegmans, Gannett, Paychex, Western Union, French's, Constellation Brands, Ragú, and others), by which the region became a global center for science, technology, and research and development. This status has been aided by the presence of several internationally renowned universities (notably the University of Rochester and Rochester Institute of Technology) and their research programs; these schools, along with many other smaller colleges, have played an increasingly large role in Greater Rochester's economy. Rochester has also played a key part in US history as a hub for certain important social and political movements, especially abolitionism and the women's rights movement.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Today, Rochester's economy is defined by technology and education (aided by a highly educated workforce, research institutions, and other strengths born in its past). While the city experienced some significant population loss as a result of deindustrialization, strong growth in the education and healthcare sectors boosted by elite universities and the slower decline of bedrock companies such as Eastman Kodak and Xerox (as opposed to the rapid fall of heavy industry with steel companies in Buffalo and Pittsburgh) resulted in a much less severe contraction than in most Rust Belt metro areas. The Rochester metropolitan area is the third-largest regional economy in New York, after the New York City metropolitan area and the Buffalo-Niagara Falls Metropolitan Area. Rochester's gross metropolitan product is US$50.6 billion—above those of Albany and Syracuse, but below that of Buffalo.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Rochester is also known for its culture, in particular its music culture; institutions such as the Eastman School of Music (considered to be one of the most prestigious conservatories in the world) and the Rochester International Jazz Festival anchor a vibrant music industry, ranked as one of the top-10 music scenes in the US in terms of the concentration of musicians and music-related business. It is the site of multiple major festivals every year (such as the Lilac Festival, the aforementioned Jazz Festival, the Rochester Fringe Festival, and others that draw hundreds of thousands of attendees each) and is home to several world-famous museums such as The Strong National Museum of Play and the George Eastman Museum, which houses the oldest photography collection in the world and one of the largest.


title: Rochester, New York

text: The Rochester metro is ranked highly in terms of livability and quality of life and is often considered to be one of the best places in America for families due to low cost of living, highly ranked public schools and a low unemployment rate. It is considered to be a global city, ranked by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network as having sufficiency status.


title: Rochester, New York

text: The Seneca tribe of Native Americans lived in and around Rochester until losing claim to most of this land in the Treaty of Big Tree in 1797. Settlement before the Seneca tribe is unknown.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Rochester's development followed the American Revolution, and forced cession of their territory by the Iroquois after Britain's defeat. Allied with the British, four major Iroquois tribes were forced out of New York. As a reward for their loyalty to the British crown, they were given a large land grant on the Grand River in Canada.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Rochester was founded shortly after the American Revolution by a wave of English-Puritan-descended immigrants from New England, who were looking for new agricultural land. They were the dominant cultural group in Rochester for over a century. On November 8, 1803, Colonel Nathaniel Rochester (1752–1831), Major Charles Carroll, and Colonel William Fitzhugh, Jr. (1761–1839), all of Hagerstown, Maryland, purchased a 100-acre (40-ha) tract from the state in western New York along the Genesee River. They chose the site because its three cataracts on the Genesee offered great potential for water power. Beginning in 1811, and with a population of 15, the three founders surveyed the land and laid out streets and tracts. In 1817, the Brown brothers and other landowners joined their lands with the Hundred Acre Tract to form the village of Rochesterville.


title: Rochester, New York

text: By 1821, Rochesterville was the seat of Monroe County. In 1823, it consisted of and 2,500 residents, and the Village of Rochesterville became known as Rochester. Also in 1823, the Erie Canal aqueduct over the Genesee River was completed, and the Erie Canal east to the Hudson River was opened. In the early 20th century, after the advent of railroads, the presence of the canal in the center city was an obstacle; it was rerouted south of Rochester by 1918 when the Barge Canal was completed. By 1830, Rochester's population was 9,200, and in 1834, it was rechartered as a city.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Rochester was first known as "the Young Lion of the West", and then as the "Flour City". By 1838, it was the largest flour-producing city in the United States. Having doubled its population in only 10 years, Rochester became America's first "boom town".


title: Rochester, New York

text: In 1830–31, Rochester experienced one of the nation's biggest Protestant revivalist movements, led by Charles Grandison Finney. The revival inspired other revivals of the Second Great Awakening. A leading pastor in New York, who was converted in the Rochester meetings, gave this account of Finney's meetings there: "The whole community was stirred. Religion was the topic of conversation in the house, in the shop, in the office, and on the street. The only theater in the city was converted into a livery stable; the only circus into a soap and candle factory. Grog shops were closed; the Sabbath was honored; the sanctuaries were thronged with happy worshippers; a new impulse was given to every philanthropic enterprise; the fountains of benevolence were opened, and men lived to good."


title: Rochester, New York

text: By the mid-19th century, as the center of the wheat-processing industry moved west with population and agriculture, the city became home to an expanding nursery business, giving rise to the city's second nickname, the Flower City. Nurseries ringed the city, the most famous of which was started in 1840 by immigrants Georg Ellwanger from Germany and Patrick Barry from Ireland.


title: Rochester, New York

text: In 1847, Frederick Douglass founded the abolitionist newspaper, the "North Star" in Rochester. A former slave and an antislavery speaker and writer, he gained a circulation over 4,000 readers in the United States, Europe, and the Caribbean. The "North Star" served as a forum for abolitionist views. The Douglass home burnt down in 1872, but a marker for it is in Highland Park off South Avenue.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Susan B. Anthony, a national leader of the women's suffrage movement, was from Rochester. The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, in 1920, which guaranteed the right of women to vote, was known as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment because of her work toward its passage, which she did not live to see. Anthony's home is a National Historic Landmark known as the National Susan B. Anthony Museum and House.


title: Rochester, New York

text: At the end of the 19th century, anarchist Emma Goldman lived and worked in Rochester for several years, championing the cause of labor in Rochester sweatshops. Rochester also had significant unrest in labor, race, and antiwar protests.


title: Rochester, New York

text: After the Civil War, Rochester had an expansion of new industries in the late 19th century, founded by migrants to the city, including inventor and entrepreneur George Eastman, who founded Eastman Kodak, and German immigrants John Jacob Bausch and Henry Lomb, who launched Bausch & Lomb in 1861. Not only did they create new industries, but Eastman also became a major philanthropist, developing and endowing the University of Rochester, its Eastman School of Music, and other local institutions.


title: Rochester, New York

text: In the early 20th century, Rochester became a center of the garment industry, particularly men's fashions. It was the base of Bond Clothing Stores, Fashion Park Clothes, Hickey Freeman, and Stein-Bloch and Co. Carriagemaker James Cunningham and Sons founded the pioneer automobile company Cunningham.


title: Rochester, New York

text: The population reached 62,386 in 1870, 162,608 in 1900, and 295,750 in 1920. By 1950, the population had reached a high of 332,488. In 1950, the Census Bureau reported Rochester's population as 97.6% White and 2.3% Black. With industrial restructuring in the later 20th century, and the decline of industry and jobs in the area, by 2018, the city's population had declined to 206,284 (although the metropolitan area was considerably larger) with 46.58% recorded as White and 40.71% as Black or African American.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Rochester's black population tripled to more than 25,000 during the 1950s. Casually employed by the city's iconic industries, most African Americans in the city held low-pay and low-skill jobs, and lived in substandard housing. Discontent exploded in the 1964 Rochester race riot. Triggered by the attempted arrest of a 19-year-old intoxicated black male at a street block party, order was restored after three days, and only after Governor Nelson Rockefeller called out the New York National Guard. By the time the disturbance was over, five were dead (four in a helicopter crash) and 350 were injured. Almost a thousand people were arrested and 204 stores were either looted or damaged.


title: Rochester, New York

text: In the wake of the riots, the Rochester Area Churches, together with black civil rights leaders, invited Saul Alinsky of the Industrial Areas Foundation to help the community organize. With the Reverend Franklin Florence, who had been close to Malcolm X, they established FIGHT (Freedom, Integration, God, Honor, Today), which successfully brought pressure to bear on Eastman Kodak to help open up employment and city governance.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Rochester is located at (43.165496, −77.611504) in Upstate New York. The city is about east-northeast of Buffalo and about west of Syracuse. Albany, the state capital, is to the east; it sits on Lake Ontario's southern shore. The Genesee River bisects the city. Toronto, Ontario, Canada, is northwest and New York City is about to the southeast.


title: Rochester, New York

text: According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which are land and are covered by water (3.42%).


title: Rochester, New York

text: Rochester's geography was formed by the ice sheets during the Pleistocene epoch. The retreating ice sheets reached a standstill at what is now the southern border of the city, melting at the same rate as they were advancing, depositing sediment along the southern edge of the ice mass. This created a line of hills, including (from west to east) Mt. Hope, the hills of Highland Park, Pinnacle Hill, and Cobb's Hill. Because the sediment of these hills was deposited into a proglacial lake, they are stratified and classified as a "kame delta". A brief retreat and readvance of the ice sheet onto the delta deposited unstratified material there, creating a rare hybrid structure called "kame moraine".


title: Rochester, New York

text: The ice sheets also created Lake Ontario (one of the five freshwater Great Lakes), the Genesee River with its waterfalls and gorges, Irondequoit Bay, Sodus Bay, Braddock Bay, Mendon Ponds, numerous local streams and ponds, the Ridge, and the nearby Finger Lakes.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Rochester has of public streets, of water mains, 44 vehicular and eight pedestrian bridges, 11 public libraries, two police stations (one for the east side, one for the west), and 15 firehouses. The principal source of water is Hemlock Lake, which, with its watershed, is owned by the state of New York. Other water sources include Canadice Lake and Lake Ontario. The 30-year annual average snowfall is just above . The monthly daily average ranges from in January to in July. The high amount of snow Rochester receives can be accounted for by the city's proximity to Lake Ontario (see lake-effect snow).


title: Rochester, New York

text: Rochester has a number of neighborhoods, including the 19th Ward, 14621 Community, Beechwood, Browncroft, Cascade District, Cobbs Hill, Charlotte, Corn Hill, Dewey, Dutchtown, Edgerton, Ellwanger-Barry, German Village, Grove Place, High Falls District, Highland Park, Maplewood (10th Ward), Marketview Heights, Mt. Read, North Winton Village, Neighborhood of the Arts , Lyell-Otis, Park Avenue, Plymouth-Exchange, Southwest, East End, South Wedge, Swillburg, Susan B. Anthony, university-Atlantic, Upper Monroe, and more are all recognized communities with various neighborhood associations. Also, living spaces are available in downtown Rochester.


title: Rochester, New York

text: The Browncroft neighborhood is built on the former nursery grounds of the Brown Brothers nursery. The business district situated on Winton Rd has a mix of restaurants and shops. The neighborhood borders the nearby Tryon and Ellison Parks. The Browncroft Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Historically an Italian-American neighborhood, this area of the City of Rochester is now home to citizens from across the globe. There have recently been efforts to improve the quality of life in this neighborhood, as the area has opportunity for redevelopment and renewal.


title: Rochester, New York

text: The Lyell-Otis neighborhood is in the City of Rochester, in the Northwest Quadrant. Bordering the suburbs of Gates and Greece, the Lyell-Otis boundaries are the Erie Canal (the City Line) on the west, Lyell Avenue on the south, Driving Park Boulevard on the north, and the old subway bed (long since filled-in, which previously was where the Erie Canal flowed) on the east - almost to Dewey Avenue.


title: Rochester, New York

text: The 19th Ward is a southwest neighborhood bordered by Genesee Street, West Avenue, and the Erie Canal, and is across the river from the University of Rochester. Now known by its slogan "Urban by Choice", in the early 19th century, the area was known as Castle Town, after Castle Inn, a tavern run by Colonel Isaac Castle. By the early 1820s, however, the area was overshadowed by developments in the north that would become downtown Rochester. Due to a tumultuous bend in the Genesee, the area was home to skilled boatsmen who assisted boats traveling north to Rochester and the area was consequently known during this time as "The Rapids". In the 1890s, as Rochester expanded, the area became a prosperous residential area that thrived as the city grew. By 1930, it was a booming residential area for doctors, lawyers, and skilled workers; it includes the still prestigious Sibley Tract development. Homes in the originally upper-class neighborhood typically have gumwood trim, leaded glass, fireplaces, hardwood floors, and open porches. In the 1960s, property values fell as the population of Rochester did, the area experienced white flight accelerated by school busing, blockbusting, and race riots downtown, and crime increased, with violence, drug use, and neglected property further diminishing property values.


title: Rochester, New York

text: To respond to these issues, the 19th Ward has had an active community association since 1965 and is now known for its ethnic, class, and cultural diversity. The "Brooks Landing" development along the Genesee River at the former "rapids" is bringing new economic development to the community, including an 88-room hotel, office building, of new retail, two restaurants, and Brue Coffee shop. Residential development is also increasing with completion of a 170-bed University of Rochester student housing tower at Brooks Landing in 2014, and 29 new market-rate homes nearby.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Located in the 19th Ward are the Arvine Heights Historic District, Chili–West Historic District, Inglewood and Thurston Historic District, and Sibley–Elmdorf Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Charlotte (shar-LOT) is a lakefront community in Rochester bordering Lake Ontario. It is home to Ontario Beach Park, commonly known as Charlotte Beach, which is a popular summer destination for Rochesterians. A new terminal was built in 2004 for the Rochester-to-Toronto ferry service and was later sold after the ferry ceased operations in 2005. The Port of Rochester terminal still exists and has since been revamped. It now houses the restaurant California Rollin', a coffee shop named The Nutty Bavarian along with offices for the marina created around it. In summer 2016 a proposed redevelopment project for the Port of Rochester was put on hold due to the developers failing to meet financial obligations as set by the city.


title: Rochester, New York

text: This neighborhood is a Preservation District on the National Register of Historic Places, known as the Madison Square-West Main Street Historic District. It encompasses a three-and-one-half block area within walking distance from downtown Rochester, and comprises residential, commercial and industrial buildings. The center of the residential area is Susan B. Anthony Square, a park shown on city maps from 1839, which was designed by the famous Olmstead Brothers. Also within the neighborhood is the Susan B. Anthony House, which was the suffragist's residence for the last decades of her life, now a museum, as well as the Cunningham Carriage factory built in 1848 on Canal Street. James Cunningham Son & Co. sold more carriages in the United States in the 1880s than all other manufacturers combined. The Canal Street property, which still stands, remained Cunningham's headquarters for more than 100 years.


title: Rochester, New York

text: This wedge-shaped piece of the city is bordered by S. Clinton Avenue on the west, Field St on the south, and Interstate 490 on the east. The neighborhood received its moniker when a 19th-century Rochester pig farmer utilized the area to collect swill for his swine. The area has one of the highest rates of home-ownership in the city.


title: Rochester, New York

text: The local elementary school is #35, Field Street, which often sponsors a community garden in its courtyard on Pinnacle Street.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Running east from Union Street just north of Main Street, Marketview Heights is best known as the location of the Public Market, which offers a variety of groceries and other goods from marketeers from farms and shops from surrounding areas, primarily on the weekends.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Homestead Heights is in northeast Rochester. It is bordered on the west by Goodman Street, on the north by Clifford Avenue, on the south by Bay Street, and on the east by Culver Road, which is also the border between the city and the town of Irondequoit. The neighborhood is a mix of residential and commercial. Real estate values are higher on the eastern end of the neighborhood near the Irondequoit border. The neighborhood is approximately 2–2 miles west of the Irondequoit Bay.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Rochester lies in the humid continental climate zone (Köppen "Dfa") and has four distinct seasons. Winters are cold (temperatures drop to on 4.2 nights annually) similar to other US cities of the same latitude. However, Rochester receives vast amounts of snow (primarily lake effect snow resulting from its location on the southern shores of Lake Ontario), ranking among the snowiest large cities on earth and occasionally setting records for annual snowfall among large US metros. Spring sees plentiful rain with the rising temperatures, and occasional late snowstorms depending on the year. Summers are warm and sunny; there are occasional short periods of high heat and humidity but in general, Rochester is set apart from most of the continental US by comparatively cool, comfortable summers (ranking among the top five coolest summers among large metros alongside Seattle, Portland, Oregon, and neighboring Buffalo). Autumn features brilliant foliage colors, cooling temperatures and occasionally an excess of rain depending on the year, though precipitation is generally plentiful and dispersed fairly evenly throughout the year.


title: Rochester, New York

text: As of the 2020 Census, the population of Rochester was 211,328. Like most Rust Belt cities, the city has experienced a sustained population decline over the last 60 years. In 2020, for the first time in 200 years, Rochester dropped to fourth most populous city in the state behind Yonkers.


title: Rochester, New York

text: As of the 2020 United States census, Rochester had a population of 211,328. Of which, 38.0% were non-Hispanic Black, 33.0% were non-Hispanic White, 19.8% were Hispanic/Latino, 3.9% were Asian, 0.2% were Native American or Pacific Islander, 5.1% were mixed or other.


title: Rochester, New York

text: According to the 2010 census, the city's population was 43.7% White or White American, 41.7% Black, 0.5% American Indian and Alaska Native, 3.1% Asian, 0.0% Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, 6.6% from some other race and 4.4% from two or more races. 16.4% of the total population were Hispanic or Latino of any race, mostly made up of Puerto Ricans. Non-Hispanic Whites were 37.6% of the population in 2010, compared to 80.2% in 1970.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Although losing population since 1950, over the course of the past 50 years Rochester has become a major center for immigration, particularly for arrivals from Eastern and Southeastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Caribbean. Rochester had the highest percentage of Puerto Ricans of any major city in the United States in 2013, one of the four largest Turkish American communities, one of the largest Jamaican American communities in any major U.S. city and a large concentration of Polish Americans along with nearby Buffalo, New York. Rochester's Bhutanese and Nepalese communities are among the largest (top 3) in the United States, concentrated primarily in Jones Square and Edgerton with growth fueled by recently arrived migrants and refugees. In addition, Rochester was ranked number 9 in the nation for the largest Italian population in the United States in 2018.


title: Rochester, New York

text: In 1997, Rochester was reported to have the largest "per capita" deaf population in the United States, likely because it is home to the National Technical Institute for the Deaf.


title: Rochester, New York

text: In 2010, of 88,999 households, 30.0% had children under 18 living with them, 25.1% were married couples living together, 23.3% had a female householder with no husband present, and 47.0% were not families. Of all households, 37.1% were made up of individuals, and 9.2% had someone living alone 65 or older. The average household size was 2.36, and the average family size was 3.19. The age distribution was 28.1% under 18, 11.6% from 18 to 24, 32.2% from 25 to 44, 18.1% from 45 to 64, and 10.0% who were 65 or older. The median age was 31. For every 100 females, there were 91.6 males. For every 100 females 18 and over, there were 87.3 males.


title: Rochester, New York

text: The median income for a city household was $27,123, and for a family was $31,257. Males had a median income of $30,521, versus $25,139 for females. The per capita income for the city was $15,588. About 23.4% of families and 25.9% of the population were below the poverty line, including 37.5% of those under age 18 and 15.4% of those age 65 or over.


title: Rochester, New York

text: By the 1920s and 1930s, Rochester's population was roughly half Protestant and half Catholic, although a significant Jewish population was also present. In 1938, the city had 214 religious congregations, two-thirds of which had been founded after 1880. At that time, the city added, on average, 2.6 new congregations per year, many founded by immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. During peak immigration from 1900 to 1920, dozens of churches were established, including four Roman Catholic churches with Italian clergy, three Roman Catholic churches with Slavic clergy, a Greek Orthodox Church, a Polish Baptist church, 15 Jewish synagogues, and four small Italian Protestant mission churches (Baptist, Evangelical, Methodist, and Presbyterian). Additionally, several Buddhist temples are in the city, one Cambodian, two Lao, and one Vietnamese.


title: Rochester, New York

text: In 2012, Rochester had 2,061 reported violent crimes, compared to a national average rate of 553.5 violent crimes in cities with populations larger than 100,000. That same year, Rochester had 827 personal-crime incidents and 11,054 property-crime incidents.


title: Rochester, New York

text: In 2018, Rochester reported 28 murders (13.9 per 100,000 residents). In 2012, 95 sexual assaults, 816 robberies, 1,104 aggravated assaults, 2,978 burglaries, 7,694 larceny thefts, 111 forcible rape, 622 auto thefts, and 152 acts of arson occurred.


title: Rochester, New York

text: On November 12, 2021, Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren declared a state of emergency due to a rising violent crime rate in the city. As of November 12, there were 71 reported murders in Rochester so far, making 2021 the deadliest year in the city's recorded history. The Rochester police chief said, to date, 247 local violent offenders have been arrested in 2021, 134 of which for firearms related offenses. Of those arrests, 65 are facing federal prosecution and 61 face state prosecution. According to the police chief, the mayor has reached out to the governor for additional state assistance in the fight against local violence as the police chief said the RPD resources, and the Persons In Crisis Team, have been stretched thin — a request that Governor Kathy Hochul approved, according to The RPD Chief.


title: Rochester, New York

text: On July 21, 2022, Rochester Mayor Malik Evans declared a state of emergency due to ongoing gun violence. Between the beginning of the calendar year and July 21, Rochester recorded 34 homicides in which a gun was involved.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Rochester is home to a number of "Fortune" 1000 and international businesses, including Paychex ( Fortune #662), as well as several national and regional companies, such as Carestream Health. Xerox was founded in Rochester in 1906 as the Haloid Company, and retains a significant presence in Rochester, although its headquarters are now in Norwalk, Connecticut. Bausch & Lomb moved to Bridgewater, New Jersey, in 2014. The Gannett newspaper company and Western Union were founded in Rochester by Frank Gannett and Hiram Sibley, respectively, but have since moved to other cities.


title: Rochester, New York

text: The median single-family house price was $135,000 in the second quarter of 2015 in greater Rochester, an increase of 5.4% from a year earlier, according to the National Association of Realtors.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Tech Valley, the technologically recognized area of eastern New York, has spawned a western offshoot into the Rochester and Finger Lakes areas. Since the 2000s, as established companies in Rochester downsized, Rochester and Monroe County's economy has been redirected toward high technology, with new, smaller companies providing the capital necessary for business foundation. The Rochester area is important in the field of photographic processing and imaging, as well as incubating an increasingly diverse high-technology sphere encompassing STEM fields, in part the result of private startup enterprises collaborating with major academic institutions, including the University of Rochester and Cornell University.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Other organizations such as High Tech Rochester provide local startups with mentorship, office space, and other resources. Given the high prevalence of imaging and optical science among the industry and the universities, Rochester is known as the world capital of imaging. The Institute of Optics of the University of Rochester and the Rochester Institute of Technology in nearby Henrietta have imaging programs. In 2006, the University of Rochester became the Rochester area's largest employer, surpassing the Eastman Kodak Company.


title: Rochester, New York

text: One food product Rochester calls its own is the "white hot", a variant of the hot dog or smoked bratwurst made by the local Zweigle's company and other companies. Another local specialty is the "Garbage Plate", a trademark of Nick Tahou Hots that traditionally includes macaroni salad, home fries, and two hot dogs or cheeseburgers topped with mustard, onions, and their famous meat hot sauce. Many area restaurants feature copies or variations with the word "plate" commonly used as a general term. Rochester was home to French's Mustard, whose address was 1 Mustard Street.


title: Rochester, New York

text: The Ragú brand of pasta sauce used to be produced in Rochester. Some of the original facility still exists and produces products for other labels (including Newman's Own) as Private Label Foods.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Other local franchises include: Bill Gray's, DiBella's, Tom Wahl's, American Specialty Manufacturing (producers of Boss Sauce), Salvatore's Old Fashioned Pizzeria, Mark's Pizzeria, Cam's Pizzeria, Pontillo's Pizzeria, Perri's Pizzeria, Jeremiah's Tavern, and Abbott's Frozen Custard. Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, which originated in Syracuse, also operates its second franchise downtown in the former Lehigh Valley Railroad station on the Genesee River.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Rochester is governed by a mayor serving as chief executive of city government and a city council consisting of four district members and five at-large members. Rochester has a Strong mayor-council form of government. Mayor Malik Evans was sworn in as mayor at midnight on January 1, 2022.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Enforcement of property code violations in Rochester had been handled by the Neighborhood Empowerment Team (NET). Rather than using a centralized code-enforcement office, 10 sectors in Rochester were assigned a total of six NET offices by the city government. However, complaints have been made about the lack of consistency in the manner and severity of enforcement between NET offices. On July 16, 2008, the city announced two of the NET offices would be closed and another relocated, due to what it had found to be the high cost and low value of operating the decentralized network. Following the restructuring, the remaining offices were renamed Neighborhood Service Centers. Now, one office per city quadrant helps resolve quality-of-life issues, works with neighborhood groups, and paves the way for appropriate housing and economic development. Most code enforcement processes were consolidated into the Bureau of Inspection and Compliance within the Department of Neighborhood and Business Development located centrally in City Hall.


title: Rochester, New York

text: The city is covered by New York's 25th congressional district currently represented by Democrat Joe Morelle of Irondequoit, Monroe County, in Congress. From 1987 until 2018, the city was represented by longtime Democrat Louise M. Slaughter of Fairport, Monroe County, in Congress.


title: Rochester, New York

text: After redistricting based on the 2010 United States Census, the city was split between three state senate districts:


title: Rochester, New York

text: After redistricting based on the 2010 United States Census, Monroe County was split between three state assembly districts:


title: Rochester, New York

text: Rochester is represented by districts 7, 16, and 21–29 in the Monroe County legislature (a 29-seat body with legislators elected to two-year terms). Rochester is also under the jurisdiction of the county executive (currently Democrat Adam Bello) along with the rest of Monroe County. The District Attorney is also elected at the county level along with several other offices (such as Sheriff and Clerk) which in part govern the city.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Rochester has played an important role in both regional and national politics at various points over the past 150 years (particularly as a hub for American Progressivism and sweeping social and cultural movements). It was one of the key centers of Abolitionism and a top destination for freed and escaped slaves, most notably Frederick Douglass, who settled in Rochester and did most of his work and writings there, including publishing "The North Star". Many other prominent abolitionists hailed from and/or operated in the area, such as Thomas James, Austin Stewart and many others.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Around the same time, Rochester and the wider Finger Lakes region was the birthplace of the Women's Suffrage movement. A critical suffragettes' convention was held in 1848 in nearby Seneca Falls, and Rochester was the home base of Susan B. Anthony (the most prominent American leader in the fight for women's voting rights) along with other notable Suffragettes like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Abigail Bush and Amy Post. The city itself played host to the Rochester Women's Rights Convention in 1848.


title: Rochester, New York

text: The dawn of the 20th century in Rochester saw rapid growth, driven in large part by waves of immigrants arriving from Ireland, Italy, Poland and elsewhere which (as in other American cities) had a major impact on the political landscape. The surge in new arrivals, along with increased industrialization resulted in the city becoming a hotbed of labor activism. From the 1920s and continuing into the post-war era Rochester grew into a power center for newly formed industrial unions, which steadily began accumulating influence within local and state government. It was only one of a very few American cities where the labor movement was powerful enough to mount a General Strike (and one of even fewer where it was successful) when in 1946 when an estimated 50,000 workers across multiple sectors walked off in support of hundreds of city employees fired for attempting to unionize. After that point local unions played a decisive role in area politics, primarily by partnering with the area Democratic Party.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Later, Rochester saw the arrival of a great many black southerners as part of the Great Migration and large numbers of Hispanics (primarily from Puerto Rico. This coincided with White flight, leading to dramatic changes in the social, cultural and demographic makeup of Rochester (changes that were reflected in the city's politics). Racism, Segregation, Redlining and similar problems caused a great deal of racial tension and resentment, culminating in the 1964 Rochester race riot (as well as the city's black community playing a role in the national Civil rights movement).


title: Rochester, New York

text: The ethnic and economic makeup of Metro Rochester (with poorer blacks, Hispanics and Asian-Americans heavily concentrated either within the city proper or a few inner-ring suburbs and wealthier white residents predominantly in the suburbs) continues to impact the area's modern day political situation. Like in many other large American cities, traditionally the city government has been completely dominated by the Democratic Party whereas the suburbs have reliably voted for Republican officials (at least on the local and state level). In recent decades the result of this has almost always been Democratic control of city government, Republican control of county government and Rochester's state senate seats and Democratic control of Rochester's primary congressional district (with a similar overall pattern in area state assembly districts). Fusion Voting has allowed several third parties to have some impact on the local and state level; the Working Families Party plays a role particularly in city politics, and the Conservative Party endorses candidates primarily in the suburbs.


title: Rochester, New York

text: In recent years, the urban area's traditional partisan dynamic appears to have begun shifting in the Democratic Party's favor (see Blue Wave). A Democrat won the 2017 race for county sheriff for the first time in decades, in 2019 Democrat Adam Bello was elected county executive after over 30 years of Republican control, in 2020 democrats Samra Brouk and Jeremy Cooney flipped state senate districts long held by the GOP and the traditionally Republican county legislature is now split 15–14. It is not possible to say whether or not this trend will continue; though it is in keeping with a broader national trend of increased Democratic success in suburban areas.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Rochester is protected by about 500 professional firefighters in the Rochester Fire Department (RFD). It is the third-largest fire department in the state of New York. It operates from 16 fire stations throughout the city, under the command of two battalion chiefs and a deputy chief per shift. The department operates 13 engines, six ladders, one heavy rescue, two hazardous material units, a fireboat, and a salvage unit (Rochester Protectives), as well as many other special and support units. Usually, 87 front-line members work each shift, including chief officers and fire investigation (not including staff divisions such as Fire Safety, the Training Academy, and Supply Depot). RFD responds to around 40,000 emergency calls annually. Around 90% of RFD personnel are certified NY State EMTs and roughly 50% of the calls each year are for EMS. The RFD also operates its own apparatus repair division at the Public Safety Training Facility. The chief of department is Willie Jackson.


title: Rochester, New York

text: The City of Rochester is served by the Rochester City School District, which encompasses all public primary and secondary education. The district is governed by a popularly elected seven-member board of education. Also, parochial and private primary and secondary schools are located within the city. Rochester City Schools consistently post below-average results when compared to the rest of New York, although on-time graduation rates have improved significantly during the past three years. However, the high-school graduation rate for African-American males is lower in Rochester than in any city in the United States (9%). Rochester also offers 15 free public charter schools with 26 locations serving students K–12.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Rochester and the surrounding region host a high concentration of colleges and universities, which drive much of the economic growth in the five-county area. The University of Rochester is the only large research institution primarily within the city limits, although Monroe Community College and SUNY Brockport operate campuses downtown. The Highland Park neighborhood is home to Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School (part of whose facility is leased by Ithaca College's Department of Physical Therapy) and an office maintained by the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations.


title: Rochester, New York

text: The University of Rochester is the metropolitan area's oldest and most prominent institution of higher learning, and one of the country's top research centers. It was ranked as the 34th-best university in the nation by "U.S. News & World Report" for 2021 and was deemed "one of the new Ivies" by "Newsweek". The nursing school has received many awards and honors and the Simon School of Business is also ranked in the top 30 in many categories.


title: Rochester, New York

text: The university is also home to the Eastman School of Music, which was ranked the number-one music school in America. It was founded and endowed by George Eastman in his years as a philanthropist. He also contributed greatly to the University of Rochester from wealth based on the success of Eastman Kodak.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Rochester was the host of the Barleywood Female University, a short-lived women's college from 1852 to 1853. The Lutheran seminary that became Wagner College was established in the city in 1883 and remained for some 35 years before moving to Staten Island.


title: Rochester, New York

text: The Rochester City School District operates 13 public secondary schools, each serving grades 7–12. In addition, six charter secondary schools operate.


title: Rochester, New York

text: The city of Rochester is home to numerous cultural institutions. These include the Garth Fagan Dance, the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, the Rochester City Ballet, George Eastman Museum International Museum of Photography and Film, Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester Contemporary Art Center, Rochester Museum & Science Center, the Rochester Broadway Theater League, Strong National Museum of Play, the Strasenburgh Planetarium, Hochstein School of Music & Dance, the Auditorium Theater, and numerous arts organizations. Geva Theatre Center is the city's largest professional theater.


title: Rochester, New York

text: The East End Theater is on East Main Street in the theater district. The Rochester Association of Performing Arts is a non-profit organization that provides educational theater classes to the community.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Rochester's East End district, located downtown, is well known as the center of the city's nightlife. It is the stopping point for East Avenue, which along with the surrounding streets is occupied by nightclubs, lounges, coffee shops, bars, and high-end restaurants. The Eastman School of Music, one of the top musical institutes in the nation, and its auditorium are also within the neighborhood. The Eastman Theatre is host to the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and other musical/drama events.


title: Rochester, New York

text: There are other, smaller enclaves of after-hours activity scattered across the city. "Southeast" is the center of Rochester's prosperous arts scene, particularly in and around the Park Avenue neighborhood (which is known for its many coffee shops, cafes, bistros and boutique shops). Nearby on University Avenue can be found several plazas, like the Village Gate, which give space to contemporary bars, restaurants and art galleries that stay open late into the night. Monroe Avenue, several streets over, is filled with pubs, small restaurants, smoke shops, theaters and several clubs as well as cigar bars and hookah lounges. These neighborhoods are home to many artists, musicians, students, and Rochester's large LGBT community.


title: Rochester, New York

text: The South Wedge district, directly south of downtown, has seen significant gentrification in recent years and now is the site of many modern cafes and bars that serve the student community attending the University of Rochester several blocks away from the neighborhoods. The "Wedge" is quickly becoming one of the most vibrant areas within the city limits; its numerous nightspots keep the streets active with college students and young professionals, many of whom live there due to the abundance of affordable housing and proximity to many of the region's major hospitals, parks, and colleges.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Rochester's parks include Highland, Cobb's Hill, Durand Eastman, Genesee Valley, Maplewood, Edgerton, Seneca, Turning Point, and Ontario Beach; four of these were designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. The city's Victorian-era Mt. Hope Cemetery includes the final resting places of Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglass, George B. Selden, and many others. Other scenic sites are Holy Sepulchre and neighboring Riverside Cemetery.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Throughout its history, Rochester has acquired several nicknames; it has been known as "the World's Image Center", "the Flour City", "the Flower City". As a legacy of its time as "The Flower City", Rochester hosts a Lilac Festival for ten days every May, when nearly 400 varieties of lilacs bloom, and 100,000 visitors arrive.


title: Rochester, New York

text: The "Democrat and Chronicle," a Gannett newspaper"," is Rochester's main daily newspaper. There are numerous other publications and magazines that cater to many of the city's different people groups or special interests such as "Insider" magazine, "City" Newspaper, "Rochester Business Journal", and the "Minority Reporter". Former publications serving the city include the "Rochester Post Express" and "Rochester Evening Journal". Rochester is also served by several local television and radio stations, with WROC-TV as the oldest television station serving the Rochester metro area.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Several movies have been filmed at least in part in Rochester, including "The Amazing Spiderman 2" (2013), "The Tomorrow Man" (2019), and "Wonder Boys" (2000).


title: Rochester, New York

text: Rochester was named the top minor league sports market in the country by "Street & Smith's Sports Business Journal" in July 2005, the number 10 "best golf city" in America by "Golf Magazine" in 2007, and the fifth-best "sports town" in the country by Scarborough Research in September 2008.


title: Rochester, New York

text: In addition, there are numerous other amateur and club sports such as rowing and rugby. Rochester and its surrounding area also has a rich golf history and has hosted numerous professional tournaments on its local golf courses. The city also boasts other facilities such as 13 full-time recreation centers, 19 swimming programs, 3 artificial ice rinks, 66 softball/baseball fields, 47 tennis courts, 5 football fields, 7 soccer fields, and 43 outdoor basketball courts. The Rochester Royals (now the Sacramento Kings) were a professional basketball team in Rochester from 1945 to 1957 with roots as an amateur team dating back to 1923. They won the NBA title in 1951, defeating the New York Knicks in 7 games.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Rochester is the largest Metropolitan Statistical Area in the U.S. which does not include at least one college or university participating at the NCAA Division I level in all sports. Almost all area college sports are played at the NCAA Division III level. The only exceptions are the RIT men's and women's ice hockey teams, which compete at the Division I level, and the University of Rochester men's squash team, which is consistently ranked top 5 in Division I. RIT and UR's other sports, as well as both institutions as a whole, are in Division III. The men's team made it to the NCAA Frozen Four in 2010 and the women's team won the Division III national championship in 2012, just before switching over to Division I.


title: Rochester, New York

text: As of the 2014–2015 academic year, the only college in the Rochester area "not" officially classified at the Division III level is Roberts Wesleyan College, which completed its transition from membership in the National Christian College Athletic Association (NCCAA); Roberts Wesleyan was granted full membership in NCAA Division II beginning with the 2014–15 year.


title: Rochester, New York

text: There is marine freight service at the Port of Rochester on Lake Ontario, which is connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Saint Lawrence Seaway.


title: Rochester, New York

text: A short-lived, high-speed passenger/vehicle ferry Spirit of Ontario I built in Australia, nicknamed The Breeze or The Fast Ferry, linked Rochester to Toronto across Lake Ontario. Canadian American Transportation Systems (CATS) was the company in charge of the Fast Ferry operations. The Spirit of Ontario I had a delayed arrival on April 29, 2004, as a result of hitting a pier in New York City on April 5, 2004, and was finally officially christened on June 16, 2004, at the Port of Rochester. The Fast Ferry was bought by the City of Rochester in an attempt to save the project. The Fast Ferry operated between June 17, 2004, and December 12, 2005, and cost the city $42.5 million. The project was initially well received by the inhabitants of Rochester.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Considerable effort was spent by inhabitants of Rochester to build up the waterfront to embrace the idea as well as to capitalize on potential tourism which was estimated to be an additional 75,000 tourists per month. In the first three months of operation, the fast ferry had carried about 140,000 people between Rochester and Toronto. A second Fast Ferry was proposed by CATS on August 27, 2004, which would have cost an additional $100 million. There were a number of problems concerning the ship's engine, the lack of mutual building up of waterfronts in Toronto and the inability of the city to put pressure on the company responsible for the production of the Fast Ferry. This resulted in the failure of the project. It was sold to Förde Reederei Seetouristik, a German company, for $30 million.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Rochester is served by the Frederick Douglass Greater Rochester International Airport (GRIA). Scheduled air service is provided by American, Allegiant, Delta, Frontier, JetBlue, Southwest, Spirit, and United.


title: Rochester, New York

text: In 2010, the GRIA was ranked the 14th-least expensive airport in the United States by Cheapflights. This was considered a major achievement for the county and the airport authority; as recently as 2003, Rochester's ticket prices were among the highest in the country, ranking as high as fourth in 1999.


title: Rochester, New York

text: FedEx founder Fred Smith has stated in several articles that Xerox's development of the copier, and its need to quickly get parts to customers, was one of the economic issues that led him to pioneer the overnight delivery business in 1971. Because Xerox manufactured its copiers in Rochester, the city was one of the original 25 cities FedEx served on its first night of operations on April 17, 1973.


title: Rochester, New York

text: In 2016, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced a $63.4 million project to renovate the GRIA. The renovations include a large canopy extending over both main entrances, solar panels, a rainwater collection system, and modern communication and security enhancements. All construction was completed by October 2018.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Rail service to Rochester is provided by the Louise M. Slaughter Rochester Station, served by Amtrak's "Empire Service" between New York City and Niagara Falls, the "Maple Leaf" between New York City and Toronto, and the "Lake Shore Limited" between New York City/Boston and Chicago. Prior to 1965, Rochester had a smaller station reminiscent of New York City's "Grand Central Terminal". It was among Claude Fayette Bragdon's best works in Rochester, New York. The current station is modeled after Bragdon's work and named in honor of former longtime congresswomen Louise Slaughter.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Rochester used to be a major stop on several railroad lines. It was served by the New York Central Railroad which served Chicago and Buffalo to the west and Albany and New York City to the east and southeast. The Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway (absorbed by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad) served Buffalo and Pittsburgh until 1955. A rail route to Salamanca in southern New York State afforded connections in Salamanca to southwestern and southeastern New York State. The last long-distance train in a southern direction was the "Northern Express"/"Southern Express" that went to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, via Canandaigua, Elmira and Williamsport; service ended in 1971. Also serving Rochester was the Erie Railroad and Lehigh Valley Railroad.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Amtrak (passenger) and freight lines provide rail service to Rochester. Rochester has intercity and transcontinental bus service via Greyhound and Trailways.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Local bus service in Rochester and its county suburbs is provided by the Rochester-Genesee Regional Transportation Authority (RGRTA) via its Regional Transit Service (RTS) subsidiary. RTS also provides suburban service outside the immediate Rochester area and runs smaller transportation systems in outlying counties, such as WATS (Wayne Area Transportation System). All RTS routes are based out of the RTS Transit Center on Mortimer Street.


title: Rochester, New York

text: From 1927 to 1957, Rochester had a light rail underground transit system called the Rochester Subway. It was the smallest city in the world to have one. The subway, which was operated by the Rochester Transit Corporation, was shut down in 1956. The eastern half of the subway past Court Street became the Eastern Expressway with the western end of the open cut being filled in 1976. The tunnel was last used for freight service by Gannett Company to bring paper to the printing presses for the Democrat and Chronicle in 1997. Over the years there have been privately sponsored proposals put forth that encourage the region to support a new system, possibly using some of the old tunnel. One includes converting the Broad Street bridge tunnel—the former canal aqueduct—into an enhanced pedestrian corridor, which would also include a Rochester Transportation Museum, and a tram system.


title: Rochester, New York

text: The former canal and subway tunnel have become a frequent source of debate. Homeless people trespass in the tunnels. The city has considered multiple solutions for the space including recreating a canal way, putting the subway system back in or filling the tunnels entirely. The plan to fill the tunnels in completely generated criticism, as the cost of filling would not generate or leverage economic development. The western end of the tunnel was filled in to the former Baltimore and Ohio Railroad turnout in 2010 as part of a redevelopment of the above street and the eastern end of the tunnel is undergoing redevelopment. The Broad Street aqueduct and most famous part of the tunnel is on the National Register of Historic Places being added in 1976.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Three exits off the New York State Thruway (Interstate 90) serve Rochester. Rochester has an extensive system of limited-access highways (called 'expressways' or just 'highways', but never 'freeways') which connects all parts of the city and the Thruway.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Rochester's expressway system, conceived in the 1950s, was designed as two concentric circles with feeder expressways from the west, south and east. The system allows for quick travel within the metropolitan area and a lack of the traffic gridlock typically found in cities of comparable size; in part this is because the system was designed to accommodate rapid travel between the suburbs and downtown, and also because it was built when the city's population was over 330,000, whereas today it is a full third less.


title: Rochester, New York

text: The Outer Loop circles just outside the city limits while the former Inner Loop once circled around the immediate downtown area within the city (the easternmost sector was closed in 2015). From the west are Lake Ontario State Parkway, NY-531 and I-490; Interstate 390 feeds from the south; and NY-104, NY-441, and I-490 approach from the east.


title: Rochester, New York

text: In 2016, the City of Rochester launched the Pace Car Program. "Pace Car drivers sign a pledge to drive within the speed limit, drive courteously, yield to pedestrians and be mindful of bicyclists and others on the street."


title: Rochester, New York

text: In the early 1970s, the Genesee Expressway Task Force, City leaders, and NYSDOT studied the feasibility of connecting the outer and inner Loops with a new southern expressway. The proposed route extended north from the I-390 and I-590 interchange in Brighton, cutting through Rochester's Swillburg neighborhood. In 1972, consultants Berger Lehman Associates recommended a new 'Busway', an expressway with dedicated bus lanes, similar to Bus Rapid Transit. The expressway extension was never built.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Notable individuals who were born in and/or lived in Rochester include American social reformer and women's rights activist Susan B. Anthony, African-American social reformer and abolitionist Frederick Douglass, and Kodak founder George Eastman.


title: Rochester, New York

text: Rochester has twelve sister cities, as designated by Sister Cities International. They are all dedicated by a branched concrete walkway over the Genesee River, dubbed the Sister Cities Bridge (known as the Frank and Janet Lamb Bridge since October 2006):


title: New Spain

text: New Spain, officially the Viceroyalty of New Spain (, ), or Kingdom of New Spain, was an integral territorial entity of the Spanish Empire, established by Habsburg Spain during the Spanish colonization of the Americas and having its capital in Mexico City. Its jurisdiction comprised a huge area that included what is now Mexico, the Western and Southwestern United States (from California to Louisiana and parts of Wyoming, but also Florida) in North America; Central America, the Caribbean, very northern parts of South America, and several territorial Pacific Ocean archipelagos.


title: New Spain

text: After the 1521 Spanish conquest of the Aztec empire, conqueror Hernán Cortés named the territory New Spain, and established the new capital, Mexico City, on the site of the Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Mexica (Aztec) Empire. Central Mexico became the base of expeditions of exploration and conquest, expanding the territory claimed by the Spanish Empire. With the political and economic importance of the conquest, the crown asserted direct control over the densely populated realm. The crown established New Spain as a viceroyalty in 1535, appointing as viceroy Antonio de Mendoza, an aristocrat loyal to the monarch rather than the conqueror Cortés. New Spain was the first of the viceroyalties that Spain created, the second being Peru in 1542, following the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire. Both New Spain and Peru had dense indigenous populations at conquest as a source of labor and material wealth in the form of vast silver deposits, discovered and exploited beginning in the mid 1500s.


title: New Spain

text: New Spain developed strong regional divisions based on local climate, topography, distance from the capital and the Gulf Coast port of Veracruz, size and complexity of indigenous populations, and the presence or absence of mineral resources. Central and southern Mexico had dense indigenous populations, each with complex social, political, and economic organization, but no large-scale deposits of silver to draw Spanish settlers. By contrast, the northern area of Mexico was arid and mountainous, a region of nomadic and semi-nomadic indigenous populations, which do not easily support human settlement. In the 1540s, the discovery of silver in Zacatecas attracted Spanish mining entrepreneurs and workers, to exploit the mines, as well as crown officials to ensure the crown received its share of revenue. Silver mining became integral not only to the development of New Spain, but also to the enrichment of the Spanish crown, which marked a transformation in the global economy. New Spain's port of Acapulco became the New World terminus of the transpacific trade with Asia via the Manila galleon. The New Spain became a vital link between Spain's New World empire and its East Indies empire.


title: New Spain

text: From the beginning of the 19th century, the kingdom fell into crisis, aggravated by the 1808 Napoleonic invasion of Iberia and the forced abdication of the Bourbon monarch, Charles IV. This resulted in the political crisis in New Spain and much of the Spanish Empire in 1808, which ended with the government of Viceroy José de Iturrigaray. Conspiracies of American-born Spaniards sought to take power, leading to the Mexican War of Independence, 1810-1821. At its conclusion in 1821, the viceroyalty was dissolved and the Mexican Empire was established. Former royalist military officer turned insurgent for independence Agustín de Iturbide would be crowned as emperor.


title: New Spain

text: The Kingdom of New Spain was established on 18 August 1521, following the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, as a New World kingdom ruled by the Crown of Castile. The initial funds for exploration came from Queen Isabella. Although New Spain was a dependency of Castile, it was a kingdom and not a colony, subject to the presiding monarch on the Iberian Peninsula.


title: New Spain

text: The monarch had sweeping power in the overseas territories, with not just sovereignty over the realm but also property rights. All power over the state came from the monarch. The crown had sweeping powers over the Roman Catholic Church in its overseas territories, and via the Patronato real, a grant by the papacy to the crown to oversee the Church in all aspects save doctrine. The Viceroyalty of New Spain was created by royal decree on October 12, 1535, in the Kingdom of New Spain with a viceroy appointed as the king's "deputy" or substitute. This was the first New World viceroyalty and one of only two that the Spanish empire administered in the continent until the 18th-century Bourbon Reforms.


title: New Spain

text: At its greatest extent, the Spanish crown claimed on the mainland of the Americas much of North America south of Canada, that is: all of present-day Mexico and Central America except Panama; most of present-day United States west of the Mississippi River, plus the Floridas. The Spanish West Indies, settled prior to the conquest of the Aztec Empire, also came under New Spain's jurisdiction: (Cuba, Hispaniola (comprising the modern states of Haiti and the Dominican Republic), Puerto Rico, Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, Trinidad, and the Bay Islands). New Spain also claimed jurisdiction over the overseas territories of the Spanish East Indies in Asia and Oceania, (the Philippine Islands, the Mariana Islands, the Caroline Islands, parts of Taiwan, and parts of the Moluccas). Although asserting sovereignty over this vast realm, it did not effectively control large swaths. Other European powers, including England, France, and the Netherlands established colonies in territories Spain claimed.


title: New Spain

text: Much of what was called in the United States the "Spanish borderlands", is territory that did not attract many Spanish settlers, with less dense indigenous populations and apparently lacking in mineral wealth. Huge deposits of gold in California were discovered immediately after it was incorporated into the U.S. following the Mexican-American War (1846–48). The northern region of New Spain in the colonial era was considered more marginal to Spanish interests than the most densely populated and lucrative areas of central Mexico. To shore up its claims in North America in the eighteenth century as other powers encroached on its claims, the crown sent expeditions to the Pacific Northwest, which explored and claimed the coast of what is now British Columbia and Alaska. Religious missions and fortified presidios were established to shore up Spanish control on the ground. On the mainland, the administrative units included Las Californias, that is, the Baja California peninsula, still part of Mexico and divided into Baja California and Baja California Sur; Alta California (present-day Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah, western Colorado, and southern Wyoming); (from the 1760s) Louisiana (including the western Mississippi River basin and the Missouri River basin); Nueva Extremadura (the present-day states of Coahuila and Texas); and Santa Fe de Nuevo México (parts of Texas and New Mexico).


title: New Spain

text: The Viceroyalty was administered by a viceroy residing in Mexico City and appointed by the Spanish monarch, who had administrative oversight of all of these regions, although most matters were handled by the local governmental bodies, which ruled the various regions of the viceroyalty. First among these were the "audiencias", which were primarily superior tribunals, but which also had administrative and legislative functions. Each of these was responsible to the Viceroy of New Spain in administrative matters (though not in judicial ones), but they also answered directly to the Council of the Indies.


title: New Spain

text: The Captaincy Generals were the second-level administrative divisions and these were relatively autonomous from the viceroyalty.


title: New Spain

text: Santo Domingo (1535); Philippines (1574); Puerto Rico (1580); Cuba (1608); Guatemala (1609); Yucatán (1617); Commandancy General of the Provincias Internas (1776) (analogous to a dependent captaincy general). Two governorates, third-level administrative divisions, were established, the Governorate of Spanish Florida (Spanish: "La Florida") and the Governorate of Spanish Louisiana (Spanish: "Luisiana").


title: New Spain

text: The high courts, or "audiencias", were established in major areas of Spanish settlement or, as the case of the East Indies, areas of geographical importance. In New Spain the high court was established in 1527, prior to the establishment of the viceroyalty. The First Audiencia was headed by Hernán Cortés's rival Nuño de Guzmán, who used the court to deprive Cortés of power and property. The crown dissolved the First Audiencia and established the Second Audiencia.


title: New Spain

text: The audiencias of New Spain were Santo Domingo (1511, effective 1526, predated the Viceroyalty); Mexico (1527, predated the Viceroyalty); Panama (1st one, 1538–1543); Guatemala (1543); Guadalajara (1548); Manila (1583). Audiencia districts further incorporated the older, smaller divisions known as governorates ("gobernaciones", roughly equivalent to provinces), which had been originally established by conquistador-governors known as "adelantados". Provinces which were under military threat were grouped into captaincies general, such as the Captaincies General of the Philippines (established 1574) and Guatemala (established in 1609) mentioned above, which were joint military and political commands with a certain level of autonomy. (The viceroy was captain-general of those provinces that remained directly under his command).


title: New Spain

text: At the local level there were over two hundred districts, in both indigenous and Spanish areas, which were headed by either a "corregidor" (also known as an "alcalde mayor") or a "cabildo" (town council), both of which had judicial and administrative powers. In the late 18th century the Bourbon dynasty began phasing out the "corregidores" and introduced intendants, whose broad fiscal powers cut into the authority of the viceroys, governors and "cabildos". Despite their late creation, these intendancies so affected the formation of regional identity that they became the basis for the nations of Central America and the first Mexican states after independence.


title: New Spain

text: As part of the sweeping eighteenth-century administrative and economic changes known as the Bourbon Reforms, the Spanish crown created new administrative units called intendancies, to strengthen central control over the viceroyalty. Some measures aimed to break the power of local elites in order to improve the economy of the empire. Reforms included the improvement of the public participation in communal affairs, distribution of undeveloped lands to the indigenous and Spaniards, end the corrupt practices of local crown officials, encourage trade and mining, and establish a system of territorial division similar to the model created by the government of France, already adopted in Spain. The establishment of intendancies found strong resistance by the viceroyalties and general captaincies similar to the opposition in the Iberian Peninsula when the reform was adopted. Royal audiencias and ecclesiastical hierarchs opposed the reform for its interventions in economic issues, by its centralist politics, and the forced ceding of many of their functions to the intendants. In New Spain, these units generally corresponded to the regions or provinces that had developed earlier in the center, South, and North. Many of the intendancy boundaries became Mexican state boundaries after independence. The intendancies were created between 1764 and 1789, with the greatest number in the mainland in 1786: 1764 Havana (later subdivided); 1766 New Orleans; 1784 Puerto Rico; 1786 Mexico, Veracruz, Puebla de Los Angeles, Guadalajara, Guanajuato, Zacatecas, San Luis Potosí, Sonora, Durango, Oaxaca, Guatemala, San Salvador, Comayagua, León, Santiago de Cuba, Puerto Príncipe; 1789 Mérida.


title: New Spain

text: The history of mainland New Spain spans three hundred years from the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire (1519–1521) to the collapse of Spanish rule in the Mexican War of Independence (1810–1821).


title: New Spain

text: The Caribbean islands and early Spanish explorations around the circum-Caribbean region had not been of major political, strategic, or financial importance until the conquest of the Aztec Empire in 1521. However, important precedents of exploration, conquest, and settlement and crown rule had been initially worked out in the Caribbean, which long affected subsequent regions, including Mexico and Peru. The indigenous societies of Mesoamerica brought under Spanish control were of unprecedented complexity and wealth compared to what the conquerors had encountered in the Caribbean. This presented both an important opportunity and a potential threat to the power of the Crown of Castile, since the conquerors were acting independent of effective crown control. The societies could provide the conquistadors, especially Hernán Cortés, a base from which the conquerors could become autonomous, or even independent, of the Crown. Cortés had already defied orders that curtailed his ambition of an expedition of conquest. He was spectacularly successful in gaining indigenous allies against the Aztec Empire, with the indispensable aid of indigenous cultural translator, Marina, also known as Malinche, toppling the rulers of the Aztec empire. Cortés then divvied up the spoils of war without crown authorization, including grants of labor and tribute of groups of indigenous, to participants in the conquest.


title: New Spain

text: As a result, the Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain, Charles V created the Council of the Indies in 1524 as the crown entity to oversee the crown's interests in the New World. Since the time of the Catholic Monarchs, central Iberia was governed through councils appointed by the monarch with particular jurisdictions. The creation of the Council of the Indies became another, but extremely important, advisory body to the monarch.


title: New Spain

text: The crown had already created the Casa de Contratación (House of Trade) in 1503 to regulate contacts between Spain and its overseas possessions. A key function was to gather information about navigation to make trips less risky and more efficient. Philip II sought systematic information about his overseas empire and mandated reports, known as the "Relaciones geográficas", describing topography, economic conditions, and populations, among other information. They were accompanied by maps of the area discussed, many of which were drawn by indigenous artists. The Francisco Hernández Expedition (1570–77), the first scientific expedition to the New World, was sent to gather information on medicinal plants and practices.


title: New Spain

text: The crown created the first mainland high court, or Audiencia, in 1527 to regain control of the administration of New Spain from Cortés, who as the premier conqueror of the Aztec empire, was ruling in the name of the king but without crown oversight or control. An earlier Audiencia had been established in Santo Domingo in 1526 to deal with the Caribbean settlements. That court, housed in the Casa Reales in Santo Domingo, was charged with encouraging further exploration and settlements with the authority granted it by the crown. Management by the Audiencia, which was expected to make executive decisions as a body, proved unwieldy. In 1535, Charles V of Spain appointed Don Antonio de Mendoza as the first Viceroy of New Spain, an aristocrat loyal to the crown, rather than the conqueror Hernán Cortés, who had embarked on the expedition of conquest and distributed spoils of the conquest without crown approval. Cortés was instead awarded a vast, entailed estate and a noble title.


title: New Spain

text: Spanish conquerors saw it as their right and their duty to convert indigenous populations to Christianity. Because Christianity had played such an important role in the "Reconquista" (Christian reconquest) of the Iberian peninsula from the Muslims, the Catholic Church in essence became another arm of the Spanish government, since the crown was granted sweeping powers over ecclesiastical affairs in its overseas territories. The Spanish Crown granted it a large role in the administration of the state, and this practice became even more pronounced in the New World, where prelates often assumed the role of government officials. In addition to the Church's explicit political role, the Catholic faith became a central part of Spanish identity after the conquest of last Muslim kingdom in the peninsula, the Emirate of Granada, and the expulsion of all Jews who did not convert to Christianity.


title: New Spain

text: The conquistadors brought with them many missionaries to promulgate the Catholic religion. Amerindians were taught the Roman Catholic religion and the Spanish language. Initially, the missionaries hoped to create a large body of Amerindian priests, but were not successful. They did work to keep the Amerindian cultural aspects that did not violate the Catholic traditions, and a syncretic religion developed. Most Spanish priests committed themselves to learn the most important Amerindian languages (especially during the 16th century) and wrote grammars so that the missionaries could learn the languages and preach in them. This was similar to practices of French colonial missionaries in North America.


title: New Spain

text: At first, conversion of indigenous peoples seemed to happen rapidly. The missionaries soon found that most of the natives had simply adopted "the god of the heavens," as they called the Christian god, as another one of their many gods. While they often held the Christian god to be an important deity because it was the god of the victorious conquerors, they did not see the need to abandon their old beliefs. As a result, a second wave of missionaries began an effort to completely erase the old beliefs, which they associated with the ritualized human sacrifice found in many of the native religions. They eventually prohibited this practice, which had been common before Spanish colonization. In the process many artifacts of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican culture were destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of native codices were burned, native priests and teachers were persecuted, and the temples and statues of the old gods were torn down. The missionaries even prohibited some foods associated with the native religions, such as amaranth.


title: New Spain

text: Many clerics, such as Bartolomé de las Casas, also tried to protect the natives from "de facto" and actual enslavement to the settlers, and obtained from the Crown decrees and promises to protect native Mesoamericans, most notably the New Laws. But the royal government was too far away to fully enforce these, and settler abuses against the natives continued, even among the clergy. Eventually, the Crown declared the natives to be legal minors and placed under the guardianship of the Crown, which was responsible for their indoctrination. It was this status that barred the native population from the priesthood. During the following centuries, under Spanish rule, a new culture developed that combined the customs and traditions of the indigenous peoples with that of Catholic Spain. The Spaniards had numerous churches and other buildings constructed in the Spanish style by native labor, and named their cities after various saints or religious topics, such as San Luis Potosí (after Saint Louis) and Vera Cruz (the True Cross).


title: New Spain

text: The Spanish Inquisition, and its New Spanish counterpart, the Mexican Inquisition, continued to operate in the viceroyalty until Mexico declared its independence in 1821. This resulted in the execution of more than 30 people during the colonial period. During the 17th and 18th centuries, the Inquisition worked with the viceregal government to block the diffusion of liberal ideas during the Enlightenment, as well as the revolutionary republican and democratic ideas of the United States War of Independence and the French Revolution.


title: New Spain

text: During the first twenty years after the conquest, before the establishment of the viceroyalty, some of the important cities of the colonial era that remain important today were founded. Even before the 1535 establishment of the viceroyalty of New Spain, conquerors in central Mexico founded new Spanish cities and embarked on further conquests, a pattern that had been established in the Caribbean. In central Mexico, they transformed the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan into the main settlement of the territory; thus, the history of Mexico City is of huge importance to the whole colonial enterprise. Spaniards founded new settlements in Puebla de los Angeles (founded 1531) at the midway point between the Mexico City (founded 1521–24) and the Caribbean port of Veracruz (1519). Colima (1524), Antequera (1526, now Oaxaca City), and Guadalajara (1532) were all new Spanish settlements. North of Mexico City, the city of Querétaro was founded (ca. 1531) in a region known as the Bajío, a major zone of commercial agriculture. Guadalajara was founded northwest of Mexico City (1531–42) and became the dominant Spanish settlement in the region. West of Mexico City the settlement of Valladolid (Michoacan) was founded (1529–41). In the densely populated indigenous South, as noted, Antequera (1526) became the center of Spanish settlement in Oaxaca; Santiago de Guatemala was founded in 1524; and in Yucatán, Mérida (1542) was founded inland, with Campeche founded in 1541 as a small, Caribbean port. Sea trade flourished between Campeche and Veracruz. The discovery of silver in Zacatecas in the far north was a transformative event in the history of New Spain and the Spanish Empire, with silver becoming the primary driver of the economy. The city of Zacatecas was founded in 1547 and Guanajuato, the other major mining region, was founded in 1548, deep in the territory of the nomadic and fierce Chichimeca, whose resistance to Spanish presence became known as the protracted conflict of the Chichimeca War. The silver was so valuable to the crown that waging a fifty-year war was worth doing. Other Spanish cities founded before 1600 were the Pacific coast port of Acapulco (1563), Durango (1563), Saltillo (1577), San Luis Potosí (1592), and Monterrey (1596). The cities were outposts of European settlement and crown control, while the countryside was almost exclusively inhabited by the indigenous populations.


title: New Spain

text: During the 16th century, many Spanish cities were established in North and Central America. Spain attempted to establish missions in what is now the southern United States, including Georgia and South Carolina between 1568 and 1587. These efforts were mainly successful in the region of present-day Florida, where the city of St. Augustine was founded in 1565. It is the oldest European city in the United States.


title: New Spain

text: Upon his arrival, Viceroy Don Antonio de Mendoza vigorously took to the duties entrusted to him by the King and encouraged the exploration of Spain's new mainland territories. He commissioned the expeditions of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado into the present day American Southwest in 1540–1542. The Viceroy commissioned Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo in the first Spanish exploration up the Pacific Ocean in 1542–1543. Cabrillo sailed far up the coast, becoming the first European to see present-day California, now part of the United States. The Viceroy also sent Ruy López de Villalobos to the Spanish East Indies in 1542–1543. As these new territories became controlled, they were brought under the purview of the Viceroy of New Spain. Spanish settlers expanded to Nuevo Mexico, and the major settlement of Santa Fe was founded in 1610.


title: New Spain

text: The establishment of religious missions and military presidios on the northern frontier became the nucleus of Spanish settlement and the founding of Spanish towns.


title: New Spain

text: Seeking to develop trade between the East Indies and the Americas across the Pacific Ocean, Miguel López de Legazpi established the first Spanish settlement in the Philippine Islands in 1565, which became the town of "San Miguel" (present-day Cebu City). Andrés de Urdaneta discovered an efficient sailing route from the Philippine Islands to Mexico which took advantage of the Kuroshio Current. In 1571, the city of Manila became the capital of the Spanish East Indies, with trade soon beginning via the Manila-Acapulco Galleons. The Manila-Acapulco trade route shipped products such as silk, spices, silver, porcelain and gold to the Americas from Asia. The first census in the Philippines was founded in 1591, based on tributes collected. The tributes count the total founding population of Spanish-Philippines as 667,612 people, of which: 20,000 were Chinese migrant traders, at different times: around 16,500 individuals were Latino soldier-colonists who were cumulatively sent from Peru and Mexico and they were shipped to the Philippines annually, 3,000 were Japanese residents, and 600 were pure Spaniards from Europe, there was also a large but unknown number of Indian Filipinos, the rest of the population were Malays and Negritos. Thus, with merely 667,612 people, during this era, the Philippines was among the most sparsely populated lands in Asia.


title: New Spain

text: Despite the sparsity of the Philippine population, it was profitable for Mexico City which used it as a transhipment point of cheap Asian products like Silk and Porcelain. However, due to the higher quantity of products from Asia it became a point of contention with the mercantilist policies of mainland Spain which supported manufacturing based on the capital instead of the colonies, in which case the Manila-Mexico commercial alliance was at odds against Madrid. The importance of the Philippines to the Spanish empire can be seen by its creation as a separate Captaincy-General. Products brought from Asia were sent to Acapulco then overland to Veracruz, and then shipped to Spain aboard the West Indies Fleets. Later they were traded across Europe. Several cities and towns in the Philippines were founded as Presidios commanded by Spanish officers and staffed by Mexican and Peruvian soldiers who were mostly forcefully conscripted vagrants, estranged teenagers, petty criminals, rebels or political exiles at Mexico and Peru and were thus a rebellious element among the Spanish colonial apparatus in the Philippines.


title: New Spain

text: Since the Philippines was at the center of a crescent from Japan to Indonesia, it alternated into periods of extreme wealth congregating to the location, to periods where it was the arena of constant warfare waged between it and the surrounding nation(s). This left only the fittest and strongest to survive and serve out their military service. There was thus high desertion and death rates which also applied to the native Filipino warriors and laborers levied by Spain, to fight in battles all across the archipelago and elsewhere or build galleons and public works. The repeated wars, lack of wages, dislocation, and near starvation were so intense, that almost half of the soldiers sent from Latin America and the warriors and laborers recruited locally either died or disbanded to the lawless countryside to live as vagabonds among the rebellious natives, escaped enslaved Indians (from India) and Negrito nomads, where they race-mixed through rape or prostitution, which increased the number of Filipinos of Spanish or Latin American descent, but were not the children of valid marriages. This further blurred the racial caste system Spain tried so hard to maintain in the towns and cities. These circumstances contributed to the increasing difficulty of governing the Philippines. Due to these, the Royal Fiscal of Manila wrote a letter to King Charles III of Spain, in which he advises to abandon the colony, but this was successfully opposed by the religious and missionary orders that argued that the Philippines was a launching pad for further conversions in the Far East. Due to the missionary nature of the Philippine colony, unlike in Mexico where most immigrants were of a civilian nature, most settlers in the Philippines were either soldiers, merchants or clergy and were overwhelmingly male.


title: New Spain

text: At times, non-profitable war-torn Philippine colony survived on an annual subsidy paid by the Spanish Crown and often procured from taxes and profits accumulated by the Viceroyalty of New Spain (Mexico), mainly paid by annually sending 75 tons of precious Silver Bullion, gathered from and mined from Potosi, Bolivia where hundreds of thousands of Incan lives were regularly lost while being enslaved to the Mit'a system. Unfortunately, the silver mined through the cost of many lives and being a precious metal barely made it to the starving or dying Spanish, Mexican, Peruvian and Filipino soldiers who were stationed in presidios across the archipelago, struggling against constant invasions, while it was sought after by Chinese, Indian, Arab and Malay merchants in Manila who traded with the Latinos for their precious metal in exchange for silk, spices, pearls and aromatics. Trade and immigration was not just aimed towards the Philippines, however. It also went the opposite direction, to the Americas, from rebellious Filipinos, especially the exiled Filipino royalties, who were denied their traditional rights by new Spanish officers from Spain who replaced the original Spanish conquistadors from Mexico who were more political in alliance-making and who they had treaties of friendship with (due to their common hatred against Muslims, since native Pagan Filipinos fought against the Brunei Sultanate and native Spaniards conquered the Emirate of Granada). The idealistic original pioneers died and were replaced by ignorant royal officers who broke treaties, thus causing the Conspiracy of the Maharlikas among Filipinos, who conspired together with Bruneians and Japanese, yet the failure of the conspiracy caused the royals' exile to the Americas, where they formed communities across the western coasts, chief among which was Guerrero, Mexico, which was later a center of the Mexican war of Independence.


title: New Spain

text: The Spanish crown created a system of convoys of ships (called the "flota") to prevent attacks by European privateers. Some isolated attacks on these shipments took place in the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea by English and Dutch pirates and privateers. One such act of piracy was led by Francis Drake in 1580, and another by Thomas Cavendish in 1587. In one episode, the cities of Huatulco (Oaxaca) and Barra de Navidad in Jalisco Province of México were sacked. However, these maritime routes, both across the Pacific and the Atlantic, were successful in the defensive and logistical role they played in the history of the Spanish Empire. For over three centuries the Spanish Navy escorted the galleon convoys that sailed around the world. Don Lope Díez de Armendáriz, born in Quito, Ecuador, was the first Viceroy of New Spain who was born in the 'New World'. He formed the 'Navy of Barlovento' "(Armada de Barlovento)", based in Veracruz, to patrol coastal regions and protect the harbors, port towns, and trade ships from pirates and privateers.