Located along Lake Ontario in the top half of Western New York State, the City of Rochester has a current population of just over 200,000 residents. But when the overall, greater Rochester metropolitan area is considered, it boasts just over one million people.
Sandwiched between Buffalo (73 miles away) and Syracuse (87 miles away), the city ranks as the third largest city in the state behind New York City and Buffalo. Located in Monroe County, it is approximately 35 square miles in size.
Rochester was the original birthplace of Kodak, Paychex, Western Union, French’s, Bausch & Lomb, Gleason, Ragu’, and Xerox. Yet, it is a largely depressed region, with a black population of over 40% and a poverty rate that tops a staggering 33% of its residents. Its population has dropped by roughly one-third from its 1950 high of over 330,000 residents who called the city home.
The city was once a Mecca for Italian immigrants, who flocked up to Rochester in droves upon coming to America. It never had one clearly delineated “Little Italy” neighborhood per se, yet even today, still one in five of its residents can boast Italian lineage.
But as the decades past, and they achieved higher education and growing affluence, by the 1960s the Italian people by and large were leaving the city for more expensive housing in the area’s bucolic outer suburbs. Today, only 12% of city residents are of Italian extraction. But it wasn’t always that way.
Back in the day, the city of Rochester was a vibrant city that drew many Italians because of its wealth, business opportunities, and growing metropolis.
Since at least the 1920s, it also had a vibrant underworld that hosted a variety of ethnicities, all trying to grab their portion of the city’s illicit rackets. But no group became more prevalent than the Italian crime groups of the city.
It is well-documented that various independent and semi-independent Italian racketeers operated in the city, running a host of varied rackets through the years.
By at least the early 1940s, it seems that Buffalo’s mafia boss, Stefano Magaddino, had cast a considerable shadow over Rochester and considered it part of his racket domain. Magaddino, who had immigrated from Castellammare del Golfo in Sicily, was one of the most important mafioso in America at that time, and the undisputed Capo of all Upstate New York.
The FBI has well-documented over the years that various racketeers and mafiosi connected to his Family operated in Rochester. It was also well known that he regularly received his tithe as the kingpin of the territory.
And yet, a funny thing happened along the way to maintaining that city as his personal mafia utopia. It seems that by the early 1960s, a notorious racketeer who lived and operated in Rochester became its resident boss or “capo.”
More than that, it seems (and is well documented) that he actually formed his very own mafia borgata. And was clearly recognized as the “official” boss over all of the city.
That man was Frank Valenti, who with his brother Stanley, became the two highest-profile mafiosi to ever operate in the city of Rochester.
