The city is sometimes known as the Flour City, based on its early industrial history as a site for grain mills, located along waterfalls on the Genessee in what is now the Brown's Race area of downtown Rochester. Later during the mid-19th century, the city became known as the Flower City, due to the growing commercial nurshery busines in the area.
Rochester is home to a number of colleges and universities, including the [Rochester Institute of Technology]?, the University of Rochester, and Saint John Fisher College. The city is also host to a number of international businesses, including [Eastman Kodak]?, which makes Rochester its world headquarters, as well as Xerox and [Bausch and Lomb]?.
South of Rochester sits New York's Southern Tier, including the scenic [Letchworth Park]? with it's spectacular riverine canyon, and the glacially-formed Finger Lakes.
[Irondequoit Bay]? bounds, roughly, the eastern edge of Rochester.
Surrounding communities include Irondequoit, Webster, Penfield, Henrietta, Gates, Chili, Pittsford and East Rochester
The city's Victorian era Mt. Hope Cemetary includes the final resting place of several famous Americans, including Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass.