Car insurance in Gates, New York prices a Monroe County suburb that's easy to drive through without noticing, which is a little ironic given what happened on Elmgrove Road starting in 1967. Eastman Kodak built an 18-building manufacturing complex there on 600 acres, and research inside it eventually helped produce both digital photography and organic LED display technology.

That plant closed in 2000 and the site is now Rochester Tech Park, but Gates itself, at just 15 square miles, remains the smallest town by land area in Monroe County — a fact tied to its own odd history of losing ground to the city next door.

A Plant That Shaped an Industry

Kodak's Elmgrove plant replaced Kodak Camera Works as the company's main U.S. manufacturing site for photographic equipment, and at its peak it employed thousands of workers across the 600-acre campus. Research done there contributed to breakthroughs in digital imaging and OLED technology before productivity declined and Kodak sold the property in 2000.

A real estate trust bought the site and invested more than $10 million rebuilding its roads and infrastructure, replanting roughly 10,000 trees in the process. Today it operates as Rochester Tech Park, home to Kodak Alaris, FedEx, and a mix of other employers that still draw a steady stream of commuter traffic through Elmgrove Road on weekday mornings and evenings.

What New York Still Requires

None of that history changes the legal floor. Gates drivers carry the same 25/50/10 liability minimum as the rest of New York: $25,000 in bodily injury coverage per person, $50,000 per accident, and $10,000 in property damage. Because New York is a no-fault state, every policy here also needs at least $50,000 in Personal Injury Protection per person, plus Uninsured Motorist coverage matching those 25/50 bodily injury limits.

Gates at a glance: 25/50/10 minimum liability · $50,000 no-fault PIP required · population ~29,000 · smallest town by land area in Monroe County (15 sq mi) · former Kodak Elmgrove plant, now Rochester Tech Park · ZIP codes 14606 and 14624.

Nine Annexations and a Shrinking Border

Gates was incorporated in 1813 as the Town of Northampton, before Monroe County even existed, and was soon renamed for Revolutionary War general Horatio Gates. Over the next two centuries, the city of Rochester annexed pieces of the town nine separate times, trimming it down to its current 15 square miles.

That makes Gates the smallest town by land area in Monroe County today, and it means the town shares a longer stretch of border with the city of Rochester, proportionally, than most of its suburban neighbors do — a geographic quirk that has nothing to do with premiums but explains why Gates can feel more tightly wound around the city than towns like Chili or Greece just next door.

A Highway Junction on the Town's Edge

Interstate 490 cuts through Gates and meets Interstate 390 at an interchange in the North Gates area, putting the town at a junction two major highways share. There's no separately published insurance rate for Gates specifically, but one widely cited comparison put the average Rochester-area driver's premium near $1,296 a year — well under New York's statewide minimum-coverage average of $1,821, and a figure Gates likely tracks closer to than the inflated statewide number.

  • Check your ZIP code pricing: 14606 and 14624 don't always quote identically, and 14624 overlaps with neighboring Chili.
  • Ask about commuter mileage discounts: low annual mileage can help if you're not driving Elmgrove Road twice a day.
  • Add SUM coverage: the mandatory $25,000/$50,000 UM minimum is thin against a serious crash with an uninsured driver.
  • Expect interchange traffic: the I-490/I-390 junction in North Gates sees some of the town's heaviest volume.

For more on how much coverage to carry above New York's state floor, see our minimum vs. full coverage guide, and read up on uninsured motorist coverage before assuming the mandatory minimum is enough.

Gates may have given up ground to Rochester nine times over, but the stretch of Elmgrove Road it kept helped shape how the world takes pictures. Between that legacy, a highway interchange on its northern edge, and a town boundary squeezed tighter than any other in Monroe County, Gates has a sharper identity than its small footprint suggests.