George Eastman's Home

I went to George Eastman House, as I have called it, since going there for the first time in 1960, as a freshman at RIT.  The name has changed to better reflect what it is these days and it is now the Eastman Museum, just to set the record straight.  I go there to see the photographic exhibits on display as well as seeing some of the cameras they have on display as well, some types of which I have owned in my career.  But for some reason yesterday, I decided to walk around the house itself where the photographs used to be on display.  They have since built an entire new museum and research center behind, and connected, to the house that George Eastman lived in.  I was taken to stop in each of the rooms I visited, and tried to imagine what it was like when George Eastman lived there.  It was a very relaxing time for me and I enjoyed carefully observing the furniture and paintings in each of the rooms.  This is the amazing conservatory where George Eastman had breakfast every morning while an organist played music for him on one of the two pipe organs built into the house!

This is a view of the "oculus," an eye-shaped window in the ceiling of the third floor of the home.  Don't you just love the elegant curved railings everywhere?

Here is his desk in the living room of the home.  Fresh flowers from the large gardens on the property at the time, were  throughout the home.

When George was growing up, his father's health started deteriorating, the family gave up the farm they were running and moved to Rochester.  His father died of a brain disorder. To survive and afford George's schooling, his mother took in boarders.  As Eastman began to have success with his photography business, he vowed to repay his mother for the hardships she had endured in raising him.  She came to live with him in his home where George took great care of her.  This is her closet, just outside her bedroom where she lived until she died.

This is the magnificent garden as seen from his mother's bedroom window.  It has just been completely restored after a project lasting a few years.  I can't wait to see this when it is in bloom. 

And this is the coolest thing.  It is a "camera obscura" and it is a small, completely darkened room with a lens in the blocked off window which, as you get used to the dark, projects a view of the scene outside the window, upside down, because that's what lenses do.  You have to sit on a bench inside and let your eyes grow accustomed to the dark, and then you begin to see the scene outside..  These are only a few random photographs from visiting the house - there are so many more, but I hope this piques your interest, should you have a chance to visit Rochester, NY one day.