Wednesday is normally my day off from the gym. Today it was even more sedentary than usual because I had three meetings.

Note: Moving your legs up and down under the table does not register on the pedometer.

So I’m way under in steps, but I did get to do a little bit of stepping around downtown and took this picture from the 8th floor of the Stone St. ramp garage.

These  2 landmarks are familiar to most Rochesterians. Do you know their history?

The statue of Mercury is 21 feet tall and made of 700 pounds of bronze plate. Dating back to 1881, it was designed by J. Guersey Mitchell and stood atop the William S. Kimball & Co. building, which was on the site of the current War Memorial. Mitchell was Kimball’s brother-in-law. The building housed the Peerless Tobacco Works. Who knew we had a tobacco factory in Rochester that produced 750,000,000 cigarettes a year? The statue was in storage from 1951-1973, and since then it’s been atop the Aqueduct building at Court and Exchange Streets.

The Wings of Progress have been atop the Times Square Building at Broad and Exchange Streets since 1930. Architect Ralph T. Walker said he was inspired by seashells on a trip to the ocean. An interesting note is that the cornerstone for this building was laid on October 29, 1929, the day of the big Stock Market crash.

Both structures were meant to be signs of Rochester’s prosperity. May 2011 be a prosperous year for us all.

Day 5: 5,258 steps    Year Total: 35,517 steps   Goal: 44,000 steps