Rochester - George Eastman House and Lilac Festival

Meeting my friends Kathy and John at the George Eastman house.  Plus we get to see another really good friend, Cheri who is an archivist  there.

The Beech Tree out front is beautiful

As is George's modest little home.  The house was built by Architect J. Foster Warner and gardens designed by landscape architect Alling S. DeForest,  creating an urban estate complete with working farm, formal gardens, greenhouses, stables, barns, pastures, and the 35,000-square-foot, fifty-room Mansion.  It was completed in 1905 and rests on 8.5 acres.

 So many film colors to choose from

 The current exhibits have the theme of Cinema and the tables inside are all decorated with a movie theme.

Ascot Opening Day from My Fair Lady

 Alice in Wonderland

 and Father of the Bride are just a few

 The Study

 Library

 Let's wander upstairs

 A good view of the Conservatory below and the Aeolian pipe organ - He added the Opus 1416 - in 1917 to the original one doubling the size to132 ranks of pipes (a rank is a grouping of a particular sound, each rank has a pipe for every key on the keyboard rank is usually 61 Pipes).   49 of the ranks were in the string family.  It was designed to make it sound like a real orchestra.  A Duo-art paper roll player mechanism to controlled it all. The pipes are installed in 9 separate divisions surrounding the conservatory.

Upstairs houses some of the photography collections

 Including a room-size camera obscura  projecting a view of the West Garden on the room's walls

Gary and John have a nice discussion in George's Sitting Room

 Then Gary has a little talk with George

 A great view from one of the Bedrooms

 We take a tour outside.  

George Eastman spent $335,000 (around $9 million today) to build the mansion.  In 1919 he decided to enlarge the conservatory in order to make the space oblong rather than square. To add 18" to the middle of the mansion cost $750,000 and took approximately three months.  You can just barely see the slight discoloration above the closest upper window on the short square section of the building

 Everything is just starting to flower.  

The Schuyler C. Townson Terrace Garden

Rock Garden and Grape Arbor

 The West Garden

We head over to the Lilac Festival to catch a quick view the first day.  It takes place in Highland Park which was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted a completely planned—and planted—arboretum or “tree garden.” In addition to over 1200 lilac shrubs planted in 1890, the park has Japanese Maple collection, 35 varieties of sweet-smelling magnolias, a barberry collection, a rock garden with dwarf evergreens, 700 varieties of rhododendron, azaleas, mountain laurel and andromeda, horse chestnuts, spring bulbs and wildflowers and a large number of trees.

The park’s pansy bed features 10,000 plants, designed into an oval floral “carpet” with a new pattern each year.

It is the largest collection of Lilacs in the world