I spent the morning in Buffalo and the afternoon in Rochester as I continued my tour of upstate New York.
Buffalo’s City Hall has an outdoor observation deck on the 28th floor. Unfortunately it was pouring rain and the glass partitions had raindrops all over them so my pictures are streaky – you can see one. Then I visited the house where Teddy Roosevelt was sworn in as president after William McKinley was assassinated while attending the 1901 Pan American Exposition in Buffalo. We listened to actual audio of the proceedings. Then I went to the Buffalo History Museum, in the only building still standing from the 1901 Fair. There is a room devoted to favorite son Tim Russert, longtime host of Meet the Press.
George Eastman invented the process of developing film from a camera away from the location where the photo was taken. Then he started the company that made a fortune doing the development. He came up with the name Kodak because he liked the letter K, so Eastman Kodak was born. He travelled all around the world expanding the business, never married, built a mansion and a photography museum which I toured today and donated huge sums of his money to the University of Rochester Medical, Dental and Musical Schools; a place with the acronym MIT and all kinds of buildings and parks.
Cross town is another, less fancy house of someone else who stayed single. After all, Susan B. Anthony was much too busy advocating abolition with Frederick Douglass, temperance from drinking and of course her life work of granting women the right to own and inherit property, attend colleges, gain custody of their children and – oh yes – vote. I learned that she traveled constantly around the world, gave an annual address to a joint session of Congress and was arrested and convicted of voting in the 1872 presidential election. Her last speech, at age 86, was like Martin Luther King’s last speech in Memphis – she told her fellow suffragettes that she wouldn’t get to vote but that they would get to the promised land. And they did in 1920.
The song of the day is Paul Simon’s “Kodachrome” in honor of George Eastman.
George Eastman’s mansion 
Susan B Anthony’s more modest home 
Susan B Anthony’s bedroom and black dress 
The Eastman garden 
George Eastman’s office 
Eastman and his friend Thomad Eduson worked on film soundtracks 
A tribute to Tim Russert 
The Parthenon style Buffalo History Museum 
A cherry tree garden at the History Museum 
The house where Roosevelt was sworn in 
Posters from the 1901 exhibition 
A column for William McKinley and Buffalo City Hall 
A view of Buffalo’s lakefront through the raindrops
Mark's cross-country trip 