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George Eastman House
The George Eastman House in
Rochester, New York is the oldest museum in the world that is
dedicated to photography, housing one of the world's oldest film
archives; and was opened to the public in 1949. The museum has
become known the world over for its magnificent motion picture and
photograph archives, and a leader in film preservation and
photograph preservation; offering the finest education to
conservators and archivists across the globe. The museum also houses
the Dryden Theater, which seats 535 people and is a repertory
theater. The museum is situated in the house that George Eastman
constructed, as well as around it, and made a National Historic
Landmark in 1966. Eastman was the founder of the world famous
Eastman Kodak Company that still operates from Rochester. The letter
K had always been one of Eastman's favorite letters, quoted as
having said, "it seems a strong, incisive sort of letter", so he and
his mother came up with the name Kodak with an anagram set. George
stated that he had used three important principles when he created
the name; "it should be short, one cannot mispronounce it and it
could not resemble anything or be associated with anything but
Kodak." So that is how the company name, as well as the camera would
be named Kodak. When Eastman passed on, his entire estate, was left
to the University of Rochester, which were then occupied by the
university's presidents for ten years, until after WWII, when the
university transferred the estate to a board of trustees. The George
Eastman House Museum of Photography would be chartered in 1947, and
now the museum's complete name is the George Eastman House
International Museum of Photography and Film; with its main mission
is to collect, preserve and present the amazing and exciting history
of film and photography. It opened in 1949, where it would showcase
the nucleus of its collections in the Eastman House, and these
included; Eastman Kodak Company's historical collection, the Medicus
collection of Civil War photographs by Alexander Gardner and the
huge Gabriel Cromer collection that came from France. It would be
augmented over the years with numerous outstanding collections, with
corporate collections, artists' lifetime portfolios and entire
archives, along with rare ephemera and motion pictures. By 1984, the
impressive collection were believed to be the best in the world,
with the collections continuing to grow at a rapid pace, which
eventually would cause some concern as the museum was becoming
overstuffed with too much. In January, 1989, a new facility would
open, and in 1996, it had to open the Louis B. Mayer Conservation
Center in Chili, NY that was close by. It is only one of four in
this country, housing rare 35mm prints that had been made on
cellulose nitrate. The same year, the Eastman would launch the first
school of film preservation in the country so that they could teach
preservation, archiving of motion pictures and restoration. The L.
Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation would then be supported
by a grant from the Mayer Foundation, and in 1999, the museum began
the Mellon Advanced Residency Program in Photograph conservation,
which was made possible by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation; training the best photograph archivists and conservators
from across the globe. The incredible permanent collection contains
over 400,000 photographs and negatives that date from the early
invention of photography to the current day; 43,000 publications,
over 25,000 objects of technology and 23,000 films and numerous
millions of film stills. The house itself is a 35,000 square foot 50
room Colonial revival mansion, constructed between 1902 and 1905
with 10.5 acres of working farm land, stables, barns, formal
gardens, pastures, greenhouses, and the most modern conveniences
available. The house contained an electrical generator, a central
clock network, marvelous pipe organ, a built-in cleaning system,
elevator and an internal telephone system that had 21 stations.
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Susan B. Anthony House
 The
Susan B. Anthony House in Rochester, New York was her home while she
lived as a national figure involved in the women's rights movement,
arrested in her front parlor after trying to vote in the 1872
Presidential Election, and lived here until her passing. In 1965, it
would become a National Historic Landmark and a year later be listed
on the National Register of Historic Places. The house is used today
as learning center and museum open to the public for tours and
special programs, with a visitor center and museum shop situated in
the historic house next door, that had been owned by Hannah Anthony
Mosher, Susan and Mary Anthony's sister. The main mission of the
museum and house is to continue Susan's vision alive and relevant,
especially as it relates to the women of the world today. Susan was
also very involved and interested in equal rights for everyone,
since they should be. Some of the fascinating programs offered by
the museum are geared towards girl scouts, cub and boy scouts,
neighborhood connections, lunch and lecture series, women's
initiatives, professional development, inspiring one another,
healthy aging seminars and so many others worthwhile projects that
strive to bring equality for all of the world's peoples. Susan was
many things to many organizations, that worked as an abolitionist,
suffragist, temperance worker, educational reformer and labor
activist, always aspiring to raise her fellow workers to a better
place and circumstances; perhaps one of the most courageous women in
our short history. Susan was born in Adams, Massachusetts in 1820
and raised as a Quaker, in a family that already had a long
tradition of being active in various struggles of the American
peoples; which is how she would become endowed with such a strong
sense of justice and moral zeal. She began teaching, and after 15
years, she started becoming involved in the temperance movement,
although she would be barred from speaking at any of the rallies.
Because of this experience and others during her early life, she
would meet and join with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in the women's
rights movement in 1852. It wouldn't be much later when she decided
to dedicate her life to women's suffrage, also campaigning for the
abolition of slavery, women's rights to their own property and
earnings as well as women's labor organizations. She would persuade
the University of Rochester to accept women in their curriculum in
1900, and although she never married, she would continue to be
aggressive and compassionate, with an excellent mind and a wonderful
ability to inspire; continuing in her causes until she passed on in
1906. Her story is a long and difficult journey of a woman led by
determination and the ability to inspire, there is so much more to
be said, to be written, but that is why her house museum is such an
interesting and exciting place to visit. You can spend all the time
you like, learning more about this extraordinary woman and the many
people, both men and women that she would help during her lifetime.
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Car Rentals
Rochester
The
Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, New York is a civic art center
that began in 1913 and is now part of the University of Rochester,
situated on the southern half of the former Prince Street campus. It
has grown into the pinnacle of fine arts activity in the area,
hosting such yearly events as the Clothesline Art Festival and the
Rochester-Finger Lakes Exhibition. It is a memorial to James George
Averell, the grandson of Hiram Sibley, an entrepreneur,
industrialist and philanthropist, who died of cholera at the young
age of 26. His mother, Emily S. Watson, the wife of James Sibley
Watson, would spend quite a few years trying to discover some unique
way to publicly commemorate him. During that period, the president
of the University of Rochester, Rush Rhees, had been looking for
benefactors to help him add more to the university's Prince Street
campus in Rochester. Hiram had already given funds to construct the
university's library some thirty years before, and had shown
Sibley's art collection on the top floor for a while, but Rhees
wanted a dedicated art gallery. The Rochester Art Club that had been
the focal point of the region's art patrons as well as exhibiting
and teaching art venues, would give the manpower to staff the
gallery, so Rhees chose a board of managers, that included the art
club's president, George L. Herdle, during November of 1912, and by
the next October, he would be presiding over the opening. The
initial exhibition would be of paintings from various dealers that
wanted to sell them, with the gallery getting a 10% commission, so
the richest families would immediately donate their purchases to the
gallery so they could begin a nucleus for its permanent collection.
The exhibits that were shown in the early years of the gallery's
start, would be loans from the private collections of such wealthy
patrons as George Eastman, the Watsons, Sibleys and other important
families that lived in the city. The permanent collection houses
about 11,000 which the majority of had been donated by affluent
citizens, although there were some acquisitions that would be
financed by the Marion Stratton Gould fund. These include; Milton
Avery's Haircut by the Sea, Jean-Leon Gerome's Interior of a Mosque,
William Congdon's Eiffel Tower #1, Egyptian and Eastern
Mediterranean antiquities from the collection of Herbert Ocumpaugh,
a 19th century businessman, Woman in Red by Maud Humphrey, whose
son, Humphrey Bogart, would loan two of her sketches to a 1952
exhibit, Near East antiquities from the collection of Edwin Barber
Morgan's son, Portrait of Colonel Nathaniel Rochester by John James
Audubon, English and continental silver from the 17th century to the
19th century from the collection of Ernest Woodward, the Jell-O
fortune heir, El Greco's The Apparition of the Virgin to St.
Hyacinth and George Eastman's collection of some 60 old master,
Dutch, English, French Barbizon School and American paintings.