Sympathy flowers in Rochester

Rochester buries its dead in one of the most consequential cemeteries in the country, and that shapes how sympathy flowers move here. Mount Hope Cemetery at 1133 Mount Hope Avenue in 14620 opened in 1838 as the first municipal cemetery in the United States, a Victorian landscape laid over glacial ridges and kettles, and it holds the graves of Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony — the Anthony plot draws a line of visitors every election, and the surrounding sections still take family committals every week. On the north side, Holy Sepulchre Cemetery at 2461 Lake Avenue is the Diocese of Rochester's principal Catholic burying ground, with Riverside Cemetery beside it on the same Lake Avenue stretch; Ascension Garden on Pinegrove Avenue in Irondequoit carries the diocesan overflow on the east side; White Haven Memorial Park on Marsh Road in Pittsford serves the southeast suburbs; and Irondequoit Cemetery takes the bay-side families. Graveside work here is weather work: from December into March the ground is frozen and lake-effect snow comes off Lake Ontario in bands, so a Rochester family often holds a funeral in winter and defers the committal to spring. When that happens the flowers arrive twice — once at the chapel or the church in January, once at the grave in April or May — and it is worth telling the studio which of the two you are sending, because a piece built for an indoor chapel easel is not the piece you want standing in April wind at Mount Hope.

The chapel map is the other half of the work, and Rochester's funeral homes are neighborhood institutions rather than anonymous facilities. On the west and north side, Bartolomeo & Perotto Funeral Home on Vintage Lane in Greece and Vay-Schleich & Meeson Funeral Home across its Greece and Irondequoit chapels carry a large share of the Italian-American and Catholic services; Anthony Funeral & Cremation Chapels works both the Monroe Avenue side in Brighton and Ridge Road West in Greece. Schauman-Sulewski Funeral Home on the St. Paul Street corridor sits in what was the heart of Polish Rochester, near St. Stanislaus Kostka Church on Hudson Avenue. Dreier-Giltner Funeral Home on Portland Avenue and Paul W. Harris Funeral Home on Kings Highway South serve the northeast and Irondequoit parishes. Crawford Funeral Home on North Winton Road and Miller Funeral and Cremation Services on Winton Road South cover the east-side and Brighton families; New Comer Cremations & Funerals handles cremation-first services across the metro. East of the city, Falvo Funeral Home works Fairport Road in East Rochester and Empire Boulevard in Webster, with Michael R. Yackiw Funeral Home also on the Empire Boulevard side, and Thomas E. Burger Funeral Home anchors Hilton and the northwest towns. Which studio takes your order depends on which chapel: Genrich Florist at 375 Cooper Road in 14617 is 3.6 miles from the centroid and closest to the Irondequoit chapels, Penfield Flower Barn on Five Mile Line Road is 5.9 miles out toward Penfield and Webster, and Fabulou's Flowers And Gifts on W. Ridge Road and Shoreline Florist NY on Shoreway Drive sit nearest the Greece and Lake Avenue side.

Rochester's religious map is unusually layered for a city its size, and the eight studios work all of it. Catholic services dominate volume, running out of Sacred Heart Cathedral on Flower City Park — the seat of the Diocese of Rochester, and a fitting address in a city that calls itself the Flower City — plus St. Mary's on Washington Square downtown, Blessed Sacrament on Oxford Street in the Park Avenue blocks, Corpus Christi on Prince Street, St. Michael on North Clinton Avenue, where the Mass is Spanish as often as English for the Puerto Rican and Latino families of 14605 and 14621, and St. Stanislaus Kostka for the Polish parishes; standing sprays, easel pieces and casket work are ordinary and expected. The Black church tradition on the west side and in the northeast — Baber AME Church on Meigs Street, Mount Olivet Baptist Church on Adams Street, and the 19th Ward, Beechwood and Marketview Heights congregations — runs long homegoing services where large floral tributes and standing crosses are part of the service, not an addition to it. Greek Orthodox families gather at the Annunciation church on East Avenue with the 40-day and one-year remembrances that follow. Jewish Rochester is concentrated in Brighton, Pittsford and Penfield around Temple B'rith Kodesh on Elmwood Avenue and Temple Beth El on Winton Road South, where the convention is a donation in lieu of flowers and, where flowers are welcome at all, a plant or a fruit arrangement sent to the shiva home rather than to the chapel. The Islamic Center of Rochester on Westfall Road and the Hindu temple community in Pittsford follow traditions where flowers at the service are generally not customary — the studios will tell you plainly rather than sell you an arrangement that will not be used.