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Chapter 9 - Western Erie Canal

George Eastman House, Rochester, NY

              

All sites in this chapter:
  : Genesee Country Village and Museum,
       Mumford
  : Alexander Town Hall, Alexander
  : Richardson’s Canal House, Pittsford
  : Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester
  : George Eastman House, Rochester
  : City Hall, Rochester
  : Morgan-Manning House, Brockport
  : Cobblestone Church, Childs


 

G eorge Eastman (1854-1932)––founder of the great photographic enterprise, Eastman Kodak Company––built his dream house at 900 East Avenue in 1905. It is a 35,000-square-foot mansion in Georgian Revival style with 37 rooms, 13 baths, and 9 fireplaces. The baronial edifice is the largest single-family house in Monroe County and is as close to what the English call a “stately home” as it gets in these parts. Inspired by the Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893, architecture in America returned to more classical models during the first decade of the 20th century, and the preëminent creator of classical architecture in America at the time was the prestigious firm of McKim, Mead & White in New York City. They––in association with the prominent Rochester architect, John Foster Warner––designed Eastman’s vast house in which he lived as a bachelor, although he entertained regularly. Eastman had at his disposal a huge music room/conservatory with a giant Aeolian pipe organ, an elegant dining room with a beautiful silver chandelier, a billiard room with a raised platform from which guests could watch games, a cozy library for intimate conversations, a sprawling living room where musical ensembles delivered concerts, a spacious entrance hall with a grand staircase, and other rooms, all on the first floor. Guests would arrive at the porte cochere on the west side of the mansion, and the women would be whisked upstairs to shed their coats and check their makeup before descending the grand staircase to meet their escorts awaiting in the entrance hall. It was an impressive scene, reminiscent of 19th-century European balls. When Eastman moved in, he noted that the conservatory seemed too square and that the proportions should be made more rectangular, so he ordered that the house be cut in half and the rear part moved back nine feet. The effort cost more than the original house itself, and his architect, J. Foster Warner, noted, “I learned a lesson in proportions.” Today, the meticulously restored house is a National Historic Landmark.