585 Area Code 🌍☎️

Rochester is the fourth-most populous city in New York with 206,108 residents as of 2025, serving as the county seat of Monroe County in Western New York's 1.05 million-person metropolitan area, the 54th-largest in the U.S. Founded in 1803 by three Maryland landowners on the Genesee River and formally established as a village in 1817, Rochester became one of America's first boomtowns due to its flour mills and water power, earning nicknames including "the Flour City," "the Flower City," and "World's Image Center" for its role in photography and optics. The city is the birthplace of major corporations including Eastman Kodak, Xerox, Bausch & Lomb, Wegmans, and Paychex, establishing it as a global center for science, technology, and research alongside internationally renowned institutions like the University of Rochester and Rochester Institute of Technology. Rochester's cultural significance is anchored by the Eastman School of Music, one of the world's most prestigious conservatories, the Rochester International Jazz Festival, and museums including the George Eastman Museum, which houses the world's oldest photography collection. Though experiencing deindustrialization in the late 20th century, Rochester's economy has adapted less severely than many Rust Belt peers and remains the fourth-largest regional economy in New York, increasingly driven by education, research, and technology sectors. Batavia is the county seat of Genesee County in western New York with a 2020 population of 15,600 and is part of the Rochester-Batavia-Seneca Falls combined statistical area. Named after the Batavian Republic (1795-1806) by Holland Land Company investor Paul Busti, the city was founded in 1802 by Joseph Ellicott as a land office settlement following the company's 1792-1793 purchase of 3,250,000 acres in the region. The Holland Land Company's massive land survey operations - the largest ever attempted at that time - and subsequent sales until 1846 gave rise to the phrase "doing a land office business," and Ellicott's original land office is now a National Historic Landmark. Batavia was incorporated as a village in 1823 and became the original county seat of Genesee County when it was established in 1802, though the county was subdivided into numerous modern counties. The city is home to the Batavia Muckdogs, a collegiate baseball team that won the New York Penn League Championship in 2008 and plays at Dwyer Stadium, and was ranked third among the nation's micropolitans for economic development by Site Selection magazine in 2006. Webster is a town in the northeastern corner of Monroe County, New York, with a population of 45,327 as of the 2020 census, located in the Rochester Metropolitan Area. Named after orator and statesman Daniel Webster following his 1837 speech that impressed local Whig farmers, the town was officially established on February 6, 1840, with an initial population of 2,235. The town spans 35.2 square miles along Lake Ontario's waterfront, featuring the 550-acre Webster Park and Irondequoit Bay. Webster is known for the December 24, 2012 shooting where William Spengler killed two volunteer firefighters, leading to the "Webster provision" in New York's SAFE Act mandating life without parole for murderers of emergency personnel. The town has a median household income of $81,345 and is predominantly white (89.2%) with strong family-oriented demographics, including 49.9% married-couple households.