Schiller Park

A Glimpse into History

Tucked away at the corner of Franklin Street and Andrews Street in downtown Rochester, Schiller Park is one of those small urban gems you might walk past without noticing. But this modest green space has quite the backstory. Once known as Franklin Square, the park was renamed to honor Friedrich von Schiller, a celebrated German poet and playwright whose words have stood the test of time.

The heart of the park is a bronze bust of Schiller perched atop a marble pedestal. If this monument could talk, it would tell you how German-American societies in Rochester pooled their resources to commission it back in the early 1900s. The bust wasn't always here though - it started its life in Anderson Park before finding its way to this corner of the city.

German-American Roots

Walk through Schiller Park, and you're walking through a glimpse of Rochester's cultural history. This spot marks what was once the vibrant center of the city's German-American community. While the neighborhood has transformed over generations, the park preserves this heritage in a subtle but meaningful way.

Today, the park is a quiet patch of green amid the concrete and bustle of downtown - a place where you can pause for a moment, maybe eat a quick lunch, or just catch your breath before continuing with your day.

Surviving the Changing City

Like many urban spaces, Schiller Park has weathered significant changes over the decades. When Anderson Park fell victim to the construction of the Inner Loop in the 1960s, the Schiller monument found refuge here, ensuring this piece of cultural heritage wasn't lost.

What you see today is actually much smaller than the original Franklin Square. Road construction and urban development have nibbled away at its borders over time. Yet despite its modest footprint, this small park continues as a historical landmark in Rochester's downtown landscape - a quiet reminder of the city's layered past and the communities that shaped it.