Le Roy, the official birthplace of the world-famous gelatin creation, Jell-O! Visit the Jell-O museum for a trip down memory lane.
The following written content by Emily Malkowski
Le Roy is a small, rural town that sits quietly along Interstate 90 in Upstate New York. About halfway between Buffalo and Rochester, it’s passed daily by local drivers and tourists on their way to Niagara Falls.
At first glance, Le Roy may seem pretty insignificant to most, but a single bright yellow billboard clues outsiders in on the town’s little-known claim to fame: It’s the official birthplace of Jell-O, the world-famous gelatin dessert that has become one of the most well-known brands in American history. Travelers will learn all this and more if they follow the billboard’s directions to the Jell-O Gallery, a museum that celebrates Jell-O’s history, its ties with the town, and all of its jiggly, wiggly, fruit-flavored goodness.
I step off of East Main Street and onto the “Jell-O Brick Road” that leads up to the museum’s entrance. It’s covered in white, fluffy snow, but I later learn that each brick along the path is inscribed with the names of former employees at the original Jell-O factory here in Le Roy.
The museum is located inside of a historic building that was once the town’s schoolhouse, and Jell-O fills every possible square inch. Vintage memorabilia, original advertisements, and tchotchkes galore line the walls and hang from the ceiling, and as I move throughout the gallery, each exhibit invites me to further immerse myself in the story of this quintessential American dessert—one bite-sized piece at a time.
The birthplace of Jell-O
Long before Jell-O made its way to Le Roy, it was simply known as gelatin. In its earliest days, gelatin was a symbol of wealth and social status in Europe, mostly because it took hours to prepare and was expensive to store before advanced refrigeration technologies became available to the general public. Serving a gelatin dish at a dinner party—especially in a fancy brass mold—would have been a flashy indicator that you had the means to support a kitchen staff with the skill to create such a complicated dish.
