Austin Steward Plaza, formerly known as Charles Carroll Plaza, is a large greenspace along the Genesee River. The renovated plaza, which opened in 2024, features improved lighting, seating, greenspaces, and river views, along with a stage for music and other performances. The project also created ADA accessible connections between Main, Andrews, State, and St. Paul Streets.
The Plaza is named for Austin Steward, who was born into slavery in Virginia, but escaped at the age of 22. He came to Rochester around 1817, a few years before the Erie Canal was completed, and developed a successful grocery business in the 1820s. Steward became increasingly involved in the antislavery, temperance, and black convention movements. In 1857, he published his autobiography “Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman“.
Download the free Tour Blend app, or tap the photo below for a free audio narrated Downtown ROC Riverfront tour. The tour begins here and takes you across two historic bridges, including one that was lined with commercial buildings for more than 100 years, and another that carried the Erie Canal over the Genesee River for more than 75 years. Along the way, you’ll see where Frederick Douglass published the North Star, his abolitionist newspaper, and where the waters of the Genesee River continue to cool a historic library.
Austin Steward Plaza is located along the Genesee Riverway Trail, a scenic multi-use trail which runs along the river from Lake Ontario to the Erie Canal. It is a designated National Recreational Trail, and connects to both the statewide Erie Canal Heritage Trail and the Genesee Valley Greenway Trail, which continues south along the Genesee River.
This website was created by the Genesee River Alliance. Be the first to learn about events and activities along the river by signing up for the Genesee River Alliance Enews.
Genesee Riverway Trail 