A Tour of George Eastman’s Rochester
This week is Museum Week- seven days of themes that museums use to share their collections and engage their communities around the world.
Today’s theme is City, and for us, that means Rochester, NY. Rochester was important to George Eastman. For him, it wasn’t just important that people survived in the city where they worked; he wanted them to thrive and enjoy living there. With this in mind, he established and helped to established the Eastman School of Music, schools of dentistry and medicine, the Community Chest (now known as United Way), parks, and more.
Grab your bike, or use one from Pace Ride Sharing, and explore George Eastman’s Rochester with us.
Stop A/H: George Eastman Museum (Free Parking)
Begin your tour by parking at the George Eastman Museum. George Eastman purchased property at 900 East Avenue (then 350 East Avenue) in Rochester, New York, and began construction on a new home in 1902. He had the original seven-room house demolished to make room for his much larger plans. The architect of his home was J. Foster Warner and Alling De Forest created the terrace gardens. Mr. Eastman hired the firm of McKim, Mead and White from New York City to do the interior decoration of his mansion. George Eastman greatly assisted the firm in the selection of carvings, wood, marble and textiles used to furnish his home. It took three years to complete the house and gardens.
In 1905, Mr. Eastman and his mother moved into their new home. He resided there until his death in 1932. He bequeathed most of his assets to the University of Rochester, expressing a desire that his mansion serve as the residence for the university president. The large house, measuring 35,000 square feet, proved far too large for this purpose, especially without a large service staff. In 1947, the Board of Regents of the State of New York chartered George Eastman House Inc. as an independent nonprofit educational institution — specifically, a museum of photography and allied pursuits created as a memorial to George Eastman. The next year, the University of Rochester donated Eastman’s mansion and surrounding property to the museum.
Today, the George Eastman Museum is the world’s oldest photography museum and one of the oldest film archives. The museum holds unparalleled collections — encompassing several million objects — in the fields of photography, cinema, and photographic and cinematographic technology, and photographically illustrated books. The institution is also a longtime leader in film preservation and photographic conservation.
Stop B: 13 Arnold Park
George Eastman moved across the city throughout his life. In 1876, Eastman and his mother made the move from their home on Elizabeth Street to 49 Jones Avenue once he was making enough money at the Rochester Savings Bank. It was in this home that he purchased his first camera and his obsession began. In 1885, Eastman’s film experiments were improving and he was brimming with confidence. He moved himself and his mother to 59 Ambrose Street, into a brand new Victorian home. With its fifteen rooms, the house on Arnold Park was large and elaborate, and became their home in 1890. To the rear was the carriage barn.
Stop C: Eastman School of Music and Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre
Eastman’s grand project may have germinated during the 1890s when he first organized trips to the New York Opera and bought Aeolian pianos and organs for his home at the time on 1050 East Ave and Oak Lodge, his vacation home in North Carolina. The Eastman School of Music had conventional precedents in the music conservatories of 19th Century Americas, but the Eastman Theatre, a financial and artistic marriage of his two loves, music and film, was pure George Eastman. In contrast to the 3,500 seat theatre’s lavish magnificence there was an exquisite, intimate, and delicate auditorium seating 500 that would be the setting for chamber music. Eastman called it Kilbourn Hall, in remembrance of his mother.
The school opened its temporary doors to students on the 14th of September in 1921, and the Eastman Theatre opened their doors on the evening of September 2, 1922. Eastman had his reserved seats, front row right in the mezzanine promenade which he always paid for whether he sat in them or not.
At the grand re-opening on January 7, 1972, each and every seat was occupied but one: Eastman’s chair, number 48, restored and recovered but not renumbered. The theater now serves as home of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra.
George Eastman founded the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra in 1922 as the pit orchestra for the Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre. Since that time the RPO has grown into a dynamic professional ensemble recognized nationally for artistic excellence.
Stop D: Eastman Dental Dispensary
Eastman’s favorite project was the establishment of dental clinics to care for the teeth of children of indigent parents up to the age of 16 at the cost to the family of a nickel per visit. The doors opened as the Rochester Dental Dispensary on October 15, 1917. The name would be changed to the Eastman Dental Dispensary in 1947 and renamed the Eastman Dental Center in 1965.
As a young matron, Maria Eastman faced sleepless nights brought on by devastating toothaches. Dentists were itinerant practitioners whose principal work was the excruciating extraction of teeth with turnkeys. In 1888, Maria Eastman sat in her kitchen chair while the toothpuller removed fifteen of her teeth without the aid of any anesthetics. “I never forgot the terrible pain she endured before and after” her son said later. Eastman would broaden the idea to pilot clinics in key cities in Europe, including London, Rome, Stockholm, Brussels, and Paris to demonstrate the importance of early dental care.
Stop E: United Way of Greater Rochester
The United Way began on May 7, 1918 as the Rochester Patriotic and the Community Fund, Inc., commonly called the War Chest, by George Eastman, Hiram Sibley, and Roland Woodward of the Chamber of Commerce. “The principal advantage I see in bunching all the charity funds is that it is bound to get interested a great number of people who do not now subscribe to any of the charities,” Eastman wrote Col. Strong. At war’s end, the War Chest became the Community Chest, a title coined, according to Rochester tradition, by Eastman himself, as was the slogan “Suppose Nobody Cared’.
Stop F: Memorial Art Gallery
George Eastman was a life member of the board of managers of the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester from their inception in 1912 until his death in 1932. He was not heavily involved in the gallery as far as collections or exhibitions were concerned, but he did bequeath his art collection of some sixty paintings and prints to the University and hence to the gallery. The George Eastman Museum today contains facsimiles of the many of the paintings Eastman collected, but you can see the real ones at the Memorial Art Gallery where they are part of the permanent collection.
Stop G: Wilson Soule House (1050 East Ave)
In 1892 the house (400 East Avenue at the time) was completed and occupied by Wilson and Fanny Soule and their children. In 1894, Mr. Soule having died, the house sold to George Eastman who lived there with his mother until 1905 when he moved into his mansion on 900 East Ave. The house probably stood vacant for two years.
