Brighton

Brighton sits on the southeast edge of the City of Rochester, in the central part of Monroe County. The town covers 15.41 square miles of land, and the 2020 Census counted 37,137 residents, while the Census Bureau’s 2025 estimate puts the population at 36,695 as of July 1, 2025. The town describes itself as the third smallest in Monroe County, a crescent running about thirteen miles from the Indian Landing in the northeast to the Genesee River in West Brighton, and nowhere more than three miles wide. Brighton borders the City of Rochester and Irondequoit to the northwest, Henrietta to the south, the Genesee River to the west, and Pittsford and Penfield to the east. See current Brighton homes for sale.

How Brighton came to be. An act of the New York State Legislature on March 25, 1814 divided Smallwood into Brighton and Pittsford, and William Billinghurst named the new town after his home in England. The first town meeting was held on April 5, 1814, and Oliver Culver served as the first Town Supervisor. Agriculture and brick making were the first industries here, and the Erie Canal arrived in 1825. Brighton is far smaller now than it was drawn in 1814. Rochesterville annexed 257 acres nine years after the town was created, cutting its population by about thirty percent, and in 1905 the City of Rochester annexed the village of Brighton near what is now Winton Road and East Avenue.

Twelve Corners. Brighton has no central village. Its commercial and civic core is Twelve Corners, where Winton Road, Monroe Avenue and Elmwood Avenue cross to form twelve distinct corners. The town’s Envision Brighton 2028 comprehensive plan treats it as the traditional town center and the generally accepted geographic center of Brighton, and both Brighton High School and Twelve Corners Middle School stand there. The main commercial corridors are Monroe Avenue, East Avenue and West Henrietta Road, which the same plan identifies as the town’s primary twentieth century development corridors. The Brighton stretch of Monroe Avenue runs about 2.25 miles and is divided into six character areas in the town’s Monroe Avenue Design Plan.

School districts, and the one thing to check first. The Town of Brighton is served by five school districts, not one. The town’s own school tax collection notice and Monroe County’s school tax rate table both list Brighton, Penfield, Pittsford, Rush-Henrietta and Wheatland-Chili for parcels inside the Town of Brighton, and the county publishes a separate rate for each. The district line and the town line are not the same line. Confirm the district for the specific address before you write an offer, rather than assuming a Brighton address means the Brighton district. Brighton Central School District itself operates four schools: Council Rock Primary for grades K-2, French Road Elementary for grades 3-5, Twelve Corners Middle School for grades 6-8 and Brighton High School for grades 9-12, with K-12 enrollment of 3,409 reported to the New York State Education Department for 2024-25.

Housing stock. Brighton is essentially built out. The American Community Survey 2019-2023 five year estimates count 16,966 housing units in the town, with a median construction year of 1959. About half of them, 8,652 units, were built before 1960, and 3,589 date from 1939 or earlier. Of 15,904 occupied units, 8,960 are owner occupied and 6,944 are renter occupied. Single unit detached houses are the largest category at 9,360, with another 1,020 single unit attached and a substantial stock of small and mid sized apartment buildings. In practice that means much of the inventory predates modern wiring, insulation and drainage standards, so the inspection carries more weight here than in a newer town. Heating systems in older Brighton homes is a useful starting point if you are looking at a pre-war house.

Architecture and historic properties. Four Brighton properties are listed on the National Register of Historic Places: the Stone-Tolan House at 2370 East Avenue, Federal in style with significant years of 1792 and 1805; the Timothy Wallace House at 2169 South Clinton Avenue and the David Hagaman House at 661 Highland Avenue, both Greek Revival; and the Alcoa Care-free Home at 1589 Clover Street, a 1958 Modern Movement house by Charles M. Goodman and Fred P. DeBlase. There is no National Register historic district in Brighton. Historic Brighton, the local historical society, documents Tudor, Colonial Revival and Mediterranean Revival houses in the Home Acres and Houston Barnard tracts, which the developer Houston Barnard began acquiring around 1918. Council Rock Estates was subdivided in the 1920s, paused through the Depression and the Second World War, and was finished afterward with split level and ranch houses. One of them, at 321 Council Rock Avenue, is a 1953 ranch by Thomas W. Boyde Jr., the first African American professional architect in Rochester and one of the area’s most prolific designers of that period. Seventeen brick buildings made with Brighton’s own nineteenth century brick still stand in the town, and a seven member Historic Preservation Commission designates town landmarks.

Property taxes. A Brighton owner pays separate town and county, school, and special district charges. The Town Clerk also serves as Receiver of Taxes and collects both the town and county bill and the school tax for all five districts. Special district charges are not uniform across the town, because each district covers only its own parcels: in the town’s 2025 budget the Brighton Fire District rate applied to 10,264 parcels and the Henrietta Fire District rate to 1,679. Assessments are set by the Town Assessor, appointed by the Town Board to a six year term. Equalization rates and Level of Assessment are New York State measures for apportioning taxes between municipalities that assess at different percentages of market value, and they are not your tax rate. Look up the actual bill on the specific parcel through the Monroe County Real Property Portal before you decide what you can carry. How Monroe County property taxes differ town by town explains why two similar houses can carry very different bills.

Roads and transit. I-590 runs through Brighton with the Winton Road interchange at Exit 1, and New York State describes that corridor as the access route to the Frederick Douglass Greater Rochester International Airport and the Thruway. I-390 and I-490 also serve the town. Monroe Avenue is NY Route 31 and runs northwest to southeast through the center of Brighton, linking downtown Rochester with Twelve Corners and continuing toward Pittsford. East Avenue is NY Route 96, Clover Street is NY Route 65 and West Henrietta Road is NY Route 15. Elmwood Avenue and Westfall Road are Monroe County highways crossing east to west, and Winton Road and Clinton Avenue cross north to south. RTS serves Brighton on fixed routes rather than an On Demand zone: Route 11 Monroe runs seven days a week through Twelve Corners, Route 97 Elmwood is a weekday commuter route serving Twelve Corners, Brighton Town Hall and URMC, and Route 41 serves the Monroe Community College Brighton Campus.

What is in Brighton, and what is not. This catches people out constantly, and it decides which municipality taxes and services an address. Monroe Community College’s Brighton Campus at 1000 East Henrietta Road is in the town, and so is University of Rochester Medicine’s Clinton Crossings complex at 2400 South Clinton Avenue. Strong Memorial Hospital at 601 Elmwood Avenue and the University of Rochester’s River Campus are both inside the City of Rochester rather than Brighton, although both are a short drive away. Rochester Institute of Technology is in Henrietta, which shares a town line with Brighton; RIT moved there from downtown Rochester in 1968.

Parks and trails. The Town Parks Department maintains more than 350 acres across six park sites. Buckland Park on Westfall Road covers 120 acres with ball fields, playgrounds, tennis and basketball courts, a lodge and the restored Historic Buckland Farmhouse. Meridian Centre Park off Winton Road South is a 24 acre site bordering the historic Erie Canal, with multiuse fields, an amphitheater and tennis courts. Corbett’s Glen Nature Park off Glen Road is a 52 acre parcel with about two miles of eight foot trails, a boardwalk and a deck overlooking Postcard Falls; parking is at the top of Glen Road and there are no restrooms in the park. Brighton Town Park on Westfall Road has the Carmen Clark Lodge, two pavilions and a nature path beside a twelve acre pond, on land owned by New York State. Persimmon Park is a ten acre wooded parcel at Highland Avenue and South Clinton Avenue. The Brighton Brickyard Trail, opened in 2016 in the Sandra L. Frankel Nature Park, is a 0.8 mile shared use path linking Town Hall on Elmwood Avenue to Buckland Park on Westfall Road, built partly on the narrow gauge railbed that once hauled clay from the old brickyards. The Erie Canalway Trail crosses the town, and Genesee Valley Park extends into Brighton for 44 of its nearly 700 acres. Town parks are open from 7am to 10pm.

Town government and services. Brighton is governed by a five member Town Board: the Town Supervisor, elected to a two year term, and four Councilmembers elected at large to four year terms. The Brighton Memorial Library is a municipal library within the Monroe County Library System. Town Hall’s mailing address is 2300 Elmwood Avenue, but while that building is being renovated the town’s departments are at a temporary location at 680 Westfall Road, so check the town website before going in person. Refuse collection works differently here than in some neighboring towns: see how trash pickup is organized in Brighton, Pittsford and Irondequoit.

Comparing Brighton with other Rochester suburbs. Brighton, Pittsford and Penfield are often shortlisted together, and they differ in tax structure, housing age and commute. Pittsford vs Brighton on taxes and commute sets two of them side by side. For a wider view see places to live around Rochester, or the town pages for Pittsford and Penfield.

Buying or selling in Brighton. If you are buying, the complete Rochester buyer guide walks through preapproval, offers, attorney approval, inspection and closing in order. For county level context see the Rochester housing market page and how Monroe County median prices are measured. Any market figures displayed elsewhere on this page come from Lofty’s market module and are separate from the editorial content written here.

Sources: Town of Brighton, Historic Brighton, Monroe County, New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, New York State Education Department, New York State Department of Transportation, Regional Transit Service, the National Park Service and the US Census Bureau. Every figure above carries the year and the survey it comes from. Updated October 6, 2026.