The Old Sun-dial

Reposted with permission from the Gonechester blog

The first public timepiece in Rochester, NY was a sun-dial which stood in the yard between the Presbyterian church and the first court house, on the east side of Fitzhugh Street. A wooden upright in the shape of a Latin cross, it was affixed at a forty-five degree angle to a base made from an old mill-stone. In its prominent position nearby a majestic willow-tree, it would tell the time of day to those who passed–which, in the early 19th century, was nearly everyone in Rochester.

Sunday, June 05, 1881
https://www.newspapers.com/article/democrat-and-chronicle-the-old-sun-dial/157298544/

1832 Map of Rochester
Red: Approximate site of sun-dial.
https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3804r.ct005821/?r=0.411,0.431,0.192,0.108,0

Circa 1827
South side of Buffalo Street: the Courthouse is at right, with First Presbyterian Church behind; the sun-dial would have been between them.
https://catalogplus.libraryweb.org/?section=resource&resourceid=1115914612

First Presbyterian first appeared as illustrated below; the sun-dial, depending on source, would either have at first been twenty feet in front of the main door, or else nearly directly in front of the door.

1915 First Church Chronicles
The First Presbyterian Church.
https://www.libraryweb.org/~digitized/books/First_Church_Chronicles.pdf

1851 Plan of Rochester
Red: Site of the sun-dial.
https://photo.libraryweb.org/rochimag/rpm/rpm00/rpm00446.jpg

Shockingly enough, but most welcome, sometime around the 1850s the sun-dial makes it into the photographic record, appearing in front of a photo of the First Presbyterian Church:

Circa 1850?
From the Rochester Public Library Local History Division picture file, Local History & Genealogy Division, Central Library of Rochester and Monroe County N.Y.
View of the sun-dial in front of the First Presbyterian Church.
https://catalogplus.libraryweb.org/?section=resource&resourceid=1115913424 [low res]

It appears to have made its way into the south-western quadrant of the green between court house and church.

I retrieved the above high-resolution copy of this image from the Central Library in an attempt to get the clearest shot of the sun-dial as I possibly could. Below, I cropped a selected area around the sun-dial:

Cropped, zoomed selection of above photo showing the sun-dial.

Something that becomes abundantly clear upon looking at this photo is that the size of the stone upon which the cross was mounted was severely overestimated in recollections of the sun-dial; either that, or the stone we see in the above photo was a different, smaller stone, though no mention is made of such a change in the records.

In 1869, fire would destroy the First Presbyterian Church building. The site would be sold to the city and used for the construction of the new City Hall in 1872. This seems to have been the death knell for the sun-dial; we shall touch upon its probable fate in just a moment.

1875 Atlas
City Hall replaces the old First Presbyterian Church.
https://photo.libraryweb.org/rochimag/rpm/rpm00/rpm00126.jpg

1893
S. Fitzhugh St., looking north across the canal bridge. St. Luke’s spire is at left, the City Hall at right with the court house beyond it.
https://catalogplus.libraryweb.org/?section=resource&resourceid=1115916953

Friday, April 10, 1896
https://www.newspapers.com/article/democrat-and-chronicle-whither-the-old-s/157306334/

Tuesday, August 06, 1889
https://www.newspapers.com/article/democrat-and-chronicle-primitive-sundial/157298870/

Thursday, May 05, 1898
https://www.newspapers.com/article/democrat-and-chronicle-the-old-sun-dial/157306543/

Numerous sources ascribe the design and creation of the sun-dial to one of the most famous of First Presbyterian’s historical ministers, the Reverend Dr. Joseph Penney; the installation and orientation was ascribed to civic engineer Silas O. Cornell.

1915 First Church Chronicles
https://www.libraryweb.org/~digitized/books/First_Church_Chronicles.pdf

Findagrave.com
Rev. Dr. Joseph Penney
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/7661189/joseph-penney

Wednesday, May 06, 1925
https://www.newspapers.com/article/democrat-and-chronicle-old-sun-dial/157316355/

One of the more extensive writings on the subject of the sun-dial was by Charles H. Wiltsie for the Rochester Historical Society:

It is from this publication that we learn about the likely fate of the sun-dial: the wooden cross tossed aside as rubbish and probably burned as scrap firewood, the stone base upon which it used to rest was moved to the south-east corner of City Hall and repurposed as a post for canal boats to tie up to. One particularly heavily-laden boat pulled the stone into the canal, whereupon an ice-breaker captained by William Barnard removed it from the canal’s bottom and took it to the scrap stone yard adjacent to the weigh-lock. From there, it was probably broken up and sold as fill rubble for the Parker Street Canal Bridge in Fairport.

1924 Publications of the Rochester Historical Society
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Publications_of_the_Rochester_Historical/sDILAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0

Below, a map shows the position the base stone of the sun-dial would have been in after the construction of City Hall, where it was used to tie up canal boats:

1875 Atlas
Red: Sun-dial’s base stone, south-east corner of City Hall.
https://photo.libraryweb.org/rochimag/rpm/rpm00/rpm00126.jpg

The area would have looked like the below photo at the time, though this is a couple years after the stone is supposed to have been pulled into the canal. The south-east corner of the City Hall was a dock for canal boats, where supplies were dropped off; one can observe the barrels stacked and the boat moored to the dock, with what appears to be a porter unloading goods.

1884
Position of sun-dial base stone at south-east corner of City Hall, as it appeared in the 1880s.
https://photo.libraryweb.org/rochimag/photolab/vintage/v0000/v0000026.jpg

Today, the same loading dock is part of the sidewalk along Broad Street, at the corner of Irving Place:

Google Maps
Red: Rough position of sun-dial base stone, south-east corner of City Hall.

The below advertisement for Rochester Savings Bank is the only attempt I’ve seen at recreating the appearance of the sun-dial; the rectangular stone base shown in the illustration is markedly larger than the size of the stone base seen in the photograph.

Saturday, April 21, 1934
https://www.newspapers.com/article/democrat-and-chronicle-the-sundial/157298205/

Sunday, July 24, 1983
https://www.newspapers.com/article/democrat-and-chronicle-first-sundial-in/159106039/

Sunday, July 24, 1983
https://www.newspapers.com/article/democrat-and-chronicle-first-sundial-in/159106117/

The sun-dial is mentioned in several sources as being put in place and oriented according to readings of the North Star by the important early civil engineer Silas Cornell.

wikitree.com
Silas O. Cornell
https://www.wikitree.com/photo/jpg/Cornell-3561

1922 Rochester in History
https://libraryweb.org/~digitized/books/Rochester_In_History.pdf

Cornell reportedly installed two small brass plates on the exterior walls of two nearby buildings, one of which was St. Luke’s Church, which he could use as sighting markers while orienting the sun-dial.

The Orientation Tablet

As multiple sources I found gave mention to tablets or plates installed on nearby buildings for use in orienting the sun-dial, I decided to give it a closer look. Irritatingly, two of the sources contain small errors which, while not entirely confounding, did initially cause some uncertainty.

For instance, the below article says that one tablet was placed on the “south” wall of St. Luke’s church, across Fitzhugh Street from the sun-dial:

Wednesday, May 06, 1925
https://www.newspapers.com/article/democrat-and-chronicle-old-sun-dial/157316355/

The Publications of the Rochester Historical Society regarding the sun-dial also says the plate is at the “South entrance door”.

1924 Publications of the Rochester Historical Society
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Publications_of_the_Rochester_Historical/sDILAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0

However, the south wall of St. Luke’s didn’t face where the sun-dial was. The east side of the church–which is also the front–did:

1832 Map of Rochester
Red: site of sun-dial.
Green: tablet on east side of St. Luke’s Church
https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3804r.ct005821/?r=0.396,0.433,0.196,0.118,0

Unless I’m badly misinterpreting what they mean by “south”, which I’ve never had trouble with before.

On the east side of St. Luke’s, the tablet is to the left of the main door, in agreement with the 1983 article below, and four stones up from the ground, in agreement with the 1925 article above.

Google Maps
The brass tablet on the front of St. Luke’s.

I paid a visit to St. Luke’s at the end of November to take some clearer photos; I was welcomed by a pair of volunteers there and given a lovely impromptu tour. St. Luke’s is a beautiful church, with painted bottle-glass windows and faux-marbled wood pillars. As I arrived members were setting up for advent, with clusters of flowers and candles everywhere, but were only too happy to help me locate the brass plate on the front of the church:

Photo by Author
The brass plate on St. Luke’s.

Though an unassuming little thing, it bears the hallmarks of its purpose: laid in-line with the sun-dial, with a vertical groove along its face, the plate would have been useful for direction-finding on both a horizontal and vertical axis, presumably allowing Cornell to tightly adjust the direction of the dial.

Photo by Author
The brass plaque on St. Luke’s.

If any other symbols were, at one time, engraved upon the brass plate they have been rendered illegible by time and oxidation.

Oddly, the below article refers to the tablet as being on a “cornice stone”, which usually implies something to do with the decorative elements of the roofline. However, most signs seem to point to this tablet next to the front door, so I’ll simply put that down as a misnomer.

Sunday, February 03, 1946
https://www.newspapers.com/article/democrat-and-chronicle-brass-plate/159136064/

Sunday, July 24, 1983
https://www.newspapers.com/article/democrat-and-chronicle-first-sundial-in/159106117/

I’m intrigued by the casual mention of a second tablet, which is also just as casually not mentioned again. Where would the second tablet have been installed? I can’t be sure what Cornell was specifically marking, so I could only conjecture. The 1924 Historical society claims the markings were due North and West; to me, a line connecting the sun-dial’s location and St. Luke’s would be a bit off-tangent from an East-West line, so I can’t vouch for the accuracy of that statement.

1875 Atlas
Red: Site of the sun-dial.
Green: Site of the brass plate on St. Luke’s.
Black: West and North sight-lines with brass plate taken as West.
White: True cardinal directions.

I don’t know, perhaps I’m just bad at directions. If these were indeed the directions Cornell was going by, I could see the second plate as having been installed on the back exterior wall of the old court house, which faced south.

Time’s Up

As was the case with all the time marked by the old sun-dial, the dial’s time itself has passed.

A marker of moments, gone for over a century.

I know I’m weirdly sentimental about time-pieces, but I can’t help it; there’s no more direct symbol of our human relationship with time’s passage than our attempts to delineate and graduate it. Despite these constructs, we are no less impacted by the mystery of time’s passage; nothing can stop decay, or death, or the replacement of the old ways with those of the next generation. History is an adaptation to the deep, soul-aching loss that nothing can replace. Time took it all, and time doesn’t give it back.

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