The Vintage Variety: The House that George Built

Hello Everyone, Isaiah the Classic Historian here and Welcome to The Vintage Variety.

The final blog for the #OffTopicDay event is a 3 in 1 topic. Part Biography, Part History Lesson, and Part Museum Tour. All about one man, his company, his home, and later on a dedicated museum to not just his legacy but to the history of both photography and filmmaking.

I would say what they are but I’ll let the main blog and title do the talking.

This is The House that George Built.

___________________

Introduction

In every area of art, whether it be its vast history or technique, there can often be a museum based on either the method mentioned earlier, a wide range of art, or dedicated to a single individual. There are many examples of memorial-type art museums worldwide and even more so in the United States alone. Among the most well-known of these kinds of museums is in Rochester, New York.

Rochester is home not only to the famous Kodak factory that makes film products and photography but also to the home and museum of its founder George Eastman. Otherwise known nowadays as simply The George Eastman Museum or The International Museum of Photography and Film, the museum is often considered one of the oldest museums about photography and film.

It is also home to one of the oldest archives dedicated to film in the world. Founded in 1947 and later opening to the public two years later, The George Eastman Museum is a vast treasure trove of all thing’s photography and motion picture film. While the outside of the main building appears to be a huge yet impressive mansion, there is more than meets the eye for what is inside.

A lot within not only has the original mansion, but it also contains a vast history of photography and motion picture mediums. Not only that, it honors not just two mediums of art, but also the man who serves as one of the major pioneers of photography and the motion picture through its film stock.

That man is George Eastman, who helped push the photography medium forward. The George Eastman House offers visitors a wide variety of not just the history of the man who founded Kodak, but also the history of two visual mediums that span within the historic mansion grounds.

The Story of George Eastman

The history of the mansion itself where the George Eastman House stands can be traced back to the early 20th Century. As for the man on whom the museum is based, George Eastman himself, it goes even further back.

On July 12th, 1854 in Waterville, New York, George Eastman was born to George Washington Eastman and Maria Kilbourn, later changed to Maria Eastman. Both parents came from large families as the two were the youngest in their respective families. George was the youngest of three children, and he had two older sisters, Ellen and Kate. Aside from being the further pioneer of photography and film, George Eastman was also an Around the same year that he was born, George’s father founded Eastman’s Commercial College in Rochester, NY.

At the age of six years old in 1860, the Eastman family later moved to Rochester. However, things did not last for good within the family as two years later, George Washington Eastman suddenly ed away. Because of the father’s sudden death, the family was left in financial struggles. Not helping is that the college that George’s father founded became a complete failure. This resulted in George leaving school when he was 14 years old to help his family. He did several jobs to help his family, mainly as a messenger for an insurance company at first and then later on working as an office clerk at the Rochester Saving Banks. When George was in his 20s, a colleague suggested he bring a camera while on vacation, from that moment on, getting the camera ultimately changed George Eastman’s life.

The Camera equipment that Eastman bought for the trip was a wet-plated camera. The trip itself did not go anywhere, however, but that did not stop Eastman from trying out the camera. Soon became an amateur photographer. While using the camera itself, he noticed several flaws while using it. Primarily for how awkward and the bizarre weight the camera itself was. So much so that it needed a tripod, which was heavy too.

Then there were the exposures for the camera. It was a whole other process entirely. The camera and equipment used glass plates and plate holders, while also using an assortment of chemicals to get a good exposure. As a result, Eastman decides to take lessons on how to use these kinds of processes to get a better understanding of photography.

He found his answer with two photographers, which were George Monroe and George B. Selden. The two men taught Eastman on how to do photography by using the wet plate process. In an interview with Eastman, he described the Wet plated process like this:

We used the wet collodion process, taking a very clean glass plate and coating it with a thin solution of egg white. This was to make a subsequent emulsion stick. Then we coasted the plate with a solution of guncotton and alcohol mixed with bromide salts.

In addition to the teachings, Eastman also decided to buy a subscription that was dedicated to photography, it was called the “British Journal of Photography” in February of 1878. The magazines on top of the teaches from both Monroe and Selden, made Eastman go from Wet Plate Photography to more superior Dry-Plate Photography. The dry-plate emulsion process was developed by Charles Bennett.

After two years of training and being an amateur photographer, George Eastman decided to resign from his job at the Rochester Saving Bank and start his own company fully dedicated to photography in January of 1881. His new business would be known as The Eastman Dry Plate Company. With the new company under his belt, Eastman sold dry plates to customers. This was all thanks to a machine that he invented that could manufacture these plates without having the photographer coat the glass plates by hand.

However, the goal that Eastman wanted to achieve was to bring the photography medium to many new people. The rise of new amateur photographers growing with each year ing by, resulted in Eastman developing new products. This led to one of the greatest accomplishments that Eastman developed. During his time, when the Eastman Dry Plate Company was still active, Eastman began to experiment; Mainly with collodion, a mix of nitric acid and cotton cellulose. Once he mixed them all, he coated the mixture onto glass and paper while also adding a coat of photographic emulsion.

Through a couple of more scientific steps in place, including a layer of gelatin, he invented the idea of flexible film. Eastman patented the idea in 1884. As the years went by, he went on to improve the process to make it look perfect. That same year, Eastman formed a partnership with William Hall Walker and formed the Eastman Dry Plate and Film Company. Walker, like Eastman left school at a young age to help a family member.

In addition like Eastman, Walker was also into the photography business as he sold small cameras to amateur photographers, however, it did not last long. This new company had a good run for a few years as the new duo went on to invent the Eastman-Walker Roll Holder. This new invention allowed photographers at the time to roll out paper film through the camera without the use of camera plates.

Because of the Roll Holder, it went on to become the standard for future cameras. One of which became a landmark for the company’s little breast camera, later known as the Kodak camera, coined by Eastman himself in 1887. As a result, 5 years later, Eastman’s company ultimately went under one final name change, one which remained to this very day, which is called The Eastman Kodak Company.

The new Kodak cameras later in 1888, received a change within the film as it went from paper film to celluloid film. While the invention of celluloid itself was invented by John Wesley Hyatt in 1869, Eastman and chemist Henry Reichenbach went on to improve it by combining the celluloid process with his film process. Which worked well, so much to the point that in 1889, Thomas A. Edison and W.K.L Dickson utilized the celluloid film to finalize their apparatus for the newly created motion pictures, otherwise known as the movies.

The film is went into a size of 35mm, which ultimately became the standard from 1889 to this very day. Which not only put Eastman on the map for photography but also on the map for the eventually growing movie industry. As the years go by, Eastman and his Kodak company continue to develop new inventions and products for the photography world.

One of these included the famous Brownie Camera in 1900; The camera that ultimately cost a single dollar back then. The Brownie Camera helped push the amateur photography scene even further up to the millions. While he was hard at work with his company and gained a lot of success, Eastman was also a well-known philanthropist as he help contributed to various organizations and institutions.

However as the 1920s, came into the scene, things eventually became harder for Eastman’s life. In 1924, he was diagnosed with an irreversible spinel disease, which resulted in Eastman using a wheelchair for the remainder of his life. In March of 1932, Eastman committed suicide at the age of seventy-seven. He left behind a major legacy in not just pushing the continuous development of photography, but also served a major part within the motion picture industry.

From Home to Museum

15 years would go by after George Eastman’s death. After his death, a memorial monument was made to honor him in 1934. His mansion stuck around for a little while.

The mansion itself was built in 1905 and Eastman lived at the vast estate until he died in 1932. The mansion itself was constructed by J. Foster Warner, while the landscape and the settings around the mansion were done by Alling S. DeForest, Eastman, and Warner. He left the mansion to his close friend, Rush Rhees, who later became the president of the University of Rochester for 3 years.

Later on, the Valentine Family took up the mansion for several more years. However, the entire building ultimately got a new lease on life in the late 1940s. In 1946, a board of trustees known as the Board of Regents of the State of New York decided to take George Eastman’s home and convert it into a non-profit museum and memorial to honor one of photography’s greatest pioneers. The name of the museum was originally chartered as The George Eastman House Museum of Photography in 1947.

However as the years went by, it went under several different name changes. Once it was known as The International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, later, it was renamed to the International Museum of Photography and Film. Eventually, it goes under simply as either The George Eastman House or more commonly, The George Eastman Museum.

The museum's mission is to present, preserve, study, and collect the history of photography and motion picture film. Using the mansion as a base of operation, which the University of Rochester donated to the Board of trustees after the Second World War, the museum soon later opened its doors to the public in 1949. It was considered one of the first museums in the US to have both a photography department and a film department. Several of the former public rooms inside the George Eastman House were used to display some of its core collections. Two years later in 1951, the museum opened up its movie theater, otherwise known as the Dryden Theatre.

The theatre can accommodate up to five hundred people and exhibit different kinds of films. The museum’s main curators each had their visions of what the museum could be like. The original curator staff consists of George C. Pratt, Beaumont Newhall, Nathan Lyons, Philip Condax, Rudolf Kingslake, and James Card. Much of the mansion remained when the museum was opened to the public in 1949. Several decades later in the 1980s, a separate building is constructed to house its vast collection of photographs and motion picture film prints. In addition to being a new home for its collection, the new building also houses galleries, offices, libraries, and labs dedicated to film preservation. The museum gained another building for two main reasons.

The first reason was the museum’s various collections were growing at a rapid rate as well as the items must be stored at the right conditions and temperature. The second reason is that in 1978, the George Eastman house suffered a vault fire that damaged some of their collection and several buildings. The most that got destroyed were several nitrate negatives of films and cartoons that originally belonged to MGM, most of which were originally released before 1951. However, both the Mansion itself and the Dryden Theatre remained unharmed from the innocent.

The Collections

At first, when the museum first opened, it only had a handful of collections when it first opened to the public. There was the historical collection containing records of George Eastman’s life that belonged to the Eastman Kodak Company, the giant collection of Gabriel Cromer that originated from , and the Medicus Collection of Civil War Photographs which were done by Alexander Gardner.

However, as the years went by the collection eventually expanded. The collections in the photography medium at the museum eventually expanded into over 40,0000 images from a wide range of regions and photograph types ranging from the earliest daguerreotypes from 1839 to the most well-known important photographs from the 20th Century. Sometimes they included their original negative and the final printing of the photograph itself.

However, it is not just with photography but with Cinema as well. The museum’s cinema collection and archives are often considered as one of the oldest and largest in the world. The film collection and the museum’s motion picture department were assembled and founded by film preservationist and historian James Card, one of the museum’s core curators back when the museum first opened.

The movie collection ranged the complete history of the motion picture medium from the more obscure to Avant Garde to the mainstream dating back from the Silent Era and early experiments of Edison and the Lumiere Brothers to the current day. The collection, more known as the moving image collection, is split into sections. The first portion of it is of Card’s collection of films that are from three different eras of cinema: the silent era, German cinema during the Silent Era, and Hollywood’s Golden Age.

The second portion holds the possession of several personal collections of well-known filmmakers including Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, Cecil B. DeMille, and Ken Bruns. The third portion holds a collection of original Technicolor negatives that once belonged to famous studios of the past and even contains a ton of records, posters, and stills that once belonged to several known titles. Some of the museum's rarer titles are kept in a separate building known as the Louis B Mayer Conservation Center in New York because some of them are produced on the highly flammable nitrate film stock.

Nitrate film stock was commonly used in film production during the first half of the 20th Century until safely positive negatives and prints replaced it. If the nitrate film stock is not stored properly then the film either could decay or even catch fire at a rapid rate. This is why nowadays, that kind of film stock is kept at cooler temperatures.

Another highlight of the various collections at the George Eastman Museum is their technology and camera collection. The technology collection is considered the largest of its kind and contains over seventeen thousand different items. Most of these are different kinds of cameras ranging from the early known cameras of the 1830s to the smaller cameras that both professionals and amateurs largely used to the digital cameras of the present day.

The earliest known item in the technology collection is an 1839 Giroux Daguerreotype camera, which was designed by Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre of Paris, . In 1973, a century's worth of cameras from the museum’s technology collection was written and documented by Eaton S. Lothrop Jr in print form known as “A Century of Cameras from Collection of the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House.

Visitors who visit the museum can have access to the technology collection via by appointments. They also have access to viewing the collection by visiting the museum’s website.

Inside of The Museum

The museum itself is a hybrid of what Eastman left behind within his mansion and what the museum itself presented within the history of both photography and film. The mansion remains the same just as how George Eastman left it. The mansion features several key components that can be seen as a head of its time such as an elevator, a vacuum system, telephones, and even a pipe organ.

Additional sitings that can interest viewers is Eastman’s full library with built-in bookcases and an indoor conservatory with a mounted elephant head, caught by Eastman himself as he was once a hunter. Outside of the main exhibits shown in different rooms of the mansion, the museum has a wide range of activities for visitors to check out. There is a tour of the historic mansion itself as well as three separate gardens located on both sides of the mansion.

The museum’s Dryden Theater is open for film screenings of various films of yesteryears and today. In addition to the regular film screening, a special film festival event is often held once a year at Dryden known as the Nitrate Picture Show. As the theater is one of the few in the world to have projectors that can handle nitrate film stock, the festival is dedicated to preserving and protecting film stock.

The main reason why there is a massive leap in film preservation is because tons of films of the past are no longer around due to either vault fire or mishandling film prints which can often lead to film in poor condition. This is why, inside the museum was the first school completely dedicated to film preservation known as The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation, first established in 1996.

While at the museum itself, The Moving Image department has a dedicated program for restoring films back to good quality again. Among the noteworthy titles restored by the Moving Image Department are silent titles by filmmaking masters Georges Melies and Cecil B. DeMille, the discovery of the once-lost film by Orson Welles called Too Much Johnson from 1938, and the first feature film by Stanley Kubrick, Fear and Desire from 1953.

There are workshop labs in the lower depths of the museums, otherwise known as the Kay R. Whitmore Conservation Center. Both the labs and the center itself also take care of the preservation; however, this one takes care of the photography in various forms. Inside the main museum in three separate halls, three exhibits are often shown simultaneously in different parts of the year. The exhibitions are often dedicated to photography or cinema or, at other times, both simultaneously. Sometimes, the exhibits are usually up for most of the year, while others are up for a couple of months with a shorter time. One of the major highlights in of exhibits at the George Eastman Museum is the Technicolor 100 exhibit back in 2015 from January to April. Made to celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the Technicolor Corporation since it was first founded in 1915.

Since 2009, the museum had the historical Technicolor corporate archives and what was contained from the archives was a wide range of material that was put out on display when the Technicolor 100 exhibition came in. Among the items on display at the exhibit were various notes, technical drawings that were later used in productions, journals, film tests, posters, costumes, and clips of various films shot in Technicolor.

The main highlights of the exhibition are several cameras and printing equipment that were from the Technicolor Corporation including the Two Color Technicolor camera, the famous three-strip Technicolor camera as well as its soundproof blimp, a modified three-strip camera made for Technicolor’s own widescreen process Technirama, and pieces of machinery of the famous Dye Transfer Printing process.

Several events also took place while the museum's main exhibit was going on. Among them was a series of special screenings that took place at the Dryden Theatre with 35 different Technicolor films were screened for several months. In addition to the main exhibition and events, The George Eastman House also released a special book called “The Dawn of Technicolor: 1915-1935” written by James Layton and David Pierce.

The book covers not just the history of the Technicolor Corporation just before its famed Three Strip process took off, but it also has a vast filmography that covers just about every film and animated cartoon that was made using the two-color process, whether it is in a segment or throughout the main feature. It also featured many illustrations that came from original prints in their original two-color Technicolor look.

Conclusion

The George Eastman House can offer visitors a vast treasure trove of not just the history of George Eastman himself, who founded Kodak, but also the history of two well-known visual mediums that span within the historic mansion grounds.

The history behind George Eastman himself is a worthwhile study as to why he is considered one of the most notable faces in the history of both photography and motion pictures. Even with his famous Kodak company, it still stands the test of time. With its historical home now converted into a museum, it can offer people what photography and films were like long ago before the advent of digital photography and filmmaking was ever a thing.

The addition of other parts of the original historic mansion and even the gardens being available for visitors to look at makes The George Eastman House a smorgasbord for everyone’s viewing experience. Considering it is also one of the oldest museums dedicated to photography and film, it speaks volumes about how popular and historic the George Eastman House can be. Which continues the legacy to this very day.

___________________

Resources

George Eastman: A Biography By Elizabeth Brayer

A Century of Cameras from the Collection of the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House By Eaton S. Lothrop

The Film Encyclopedia: The Most Comprehensive Encyclopedia of World Cinema in a Single Volume By Ephraim Katz (2nd Edition)

The Film Encyclopedia : The Complete Guide to Film and the Film Industry by Ephraim Katz and Ronald Dean Nolen (7th Edition)

The Dawn of Technicolor: 1915-1935 By James Layton and David Pierce

Colorama: The World's Largest Photographs From Kodak and the George Eastman House Collection by Alison Devine Nordström and Peggy Roalf

Magazine Antiques

Who’s Who of Victorian Cinema

Atlas Obscura

Grove Art Online

Gregory Couch - History

The New York Times

Rochester Business Journal

PSA Journal

Journal of Film Preservation

Kodak

The George Eastman Museum

Technicolor 100 - The George Eastman Museum YouTube Page

Photographic Processes Series - The George Eastman Museum YouTube Page

Based On Both The Essay & PowerPoint of the same name.

___________________

Dedicated to

George Eastman

(1854-1932)

And the People Who Made The Museum become a reality.

___________________

And with that said, it’s time to end today’s blog as well as this trilogy of blogs for Off Topic Day. Originally I had a fourth one too which has The Cartoon Revue, but considering it’s more on topic, it’ll be posted on the weekend. So Stay Tuned for that.

I have to be honest, some of these blogs for this event have to be some of my favorites to put out. Not to mention some of my favorite essays that I ever wrote. Although there was another one that involves a certain civil right leader that would’ve been not only another favorite but an ambitious one too. But until the next off topic day event comes around you’ll have to wait and find out.

For More Information on The Vintage Variety, visit the Cinema Revue Productions wiki or the wiki of the same name.

Thanks for Reading, Everyone and I will see you in the next blog with both The Vintage Variety and The Cartoon Revue.

Bye for Now and Isaiah out!