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The Remaking of a City: Rochester, New York 1964-1984
433 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 1984
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 18, 2026
Excellent history of Rochester ca. 1964-1984. Covers people, organizations, and policies.
March 29, 2015
I read this history of Rochester to better acquaint myself with the race rebellion of 1964 as well as to find out more about the police at that time. In March 1963, the Police Advisory Board (hereafter "PAB") came into existence and was meant to investigate cases of unnecessary and excessive use of force. While hunting for information on that board (at the time, there were four others like it across the country) I read a fairly normative (not oppositional) chronology of Rochester history in Hare and Buttino's book.
The Remaking of a City: Rochester, NY 1964 – 1984 by Lou Buttino and Mark Hare offered some historical insight into events just before and just after the race rebellion of 1964 and mentioned the PAB, although information about the police was scattered throughout the book. It was written as an historical chronology that relied heavily on a dominate social and political narrative as well as the reporting of the Democrat & Chronicle and the Times-Union newspapers. It tracked organizations for 20 years, from 1964 to 1984, that were created as a result of the race rebellion in July 1964 such as FIGHT, Action for a Better Community, the Urban League, and others, as well as community groups, neighborhood associations, business, labor, the school district, city administration, and the political parties. The book really did feel like a chronology and nothing else, as critical reflection was absent from its pages. Since there was a dearth of oppositional sources used in the book, Buttino and Hare's narrative, which relied heavily on the two papers and their biases—conservative, pro-business, with white audiences in mind, and opposed to police accountability—remained within a fairly narrow re-telling of the historical record. Reading a decade's worth of newspaper clippings from two main sources of news, specifically focused on a police review board, was a significant education in the depth of racism and the breadth of denial in the white community when compared with the book's narrative. Sadly, Buttino and Hare didn't focus on the police union or the police department in any substantial way. Still, it did offer clues about the nature of police misconduct and brutality at that time.
The Remaking of a City: Rochester, NY 1964 – 1984 by Lou Buttino and Mark Hare offered some historical insight into events just before and just after the race rebellion of 1964 and mentioned the PAB, although information about the police was scattered throughout the book. It was written as an historical chronology that relied heavily on a dominate social and political narrative as well as the reporting of the Democrat & Chronicle and the Times-Union newspapers. It tracked organizations for 20 years, from 1964 to 1984, that were created as a result of the race rebellion in July 1964 such as FIGHT, Action for a Better Community, the Urban League, and others, as well as community groups, neighborhood associations, business, labor, the school district, city administration, and the political parties. The book really did feel like a chronology and nothing else, as critical reflection was absent from its pages. Since there was a dearth of oppositional sources used in the book, Buttino and Hare's narrative, which relied heavily on the two papers and their biases—conservative, pro-business, with white audiences in mind, and opposed to police accountability—remained within a fairly narrow re-telling of the historical record. Reading a decade's worth of newspaper clippings from two main sources of news, specifically focused on a police review board, was a significant education in the depth of racism and the breadth of denial in the white community when compared with the book's narrative. Sadly, Buttino and Hare didn't focus on the police union or the police department in any substantial way. Still, it did offer clues about the nature of police misconduct and brutality at that time.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews