George Eastman (1854-1932), founder
of Eastman Kodak Company, spent his early youth in and around this one-and-a-half story
Greek Revival dwelling on Stafford Avenue in Waterville, NY. Eastman’s parents bought
this House in 1849. In 1860 Eastman's father, who had been a nurseryman in Waterville,
moved the family to Rochester, where he founded a business school. At the death of the
elder Eastman, young George and his mother lived for a time on Livingston Park (near the
residence of Dr. Frederick Backus in the house now facing the Genesee Country Village
square), where the widow Eastman took in boarders. They lived in various other Rochester
homes until George Eastman’s East Avenue mansion was completed in 1905. Apparently
though, his childhood home remained fond in his memories because part of the façade of
Eastman’s mansion, designed especially for him, is very similar to his Waterville
home.
The main block of the George Eastman
Birthplace is a clear and compact translation of the Greek temple idiom into the American
vernacular. The essential elements of temple architecture -- the post,the lintel, and the
pediment -- are here scaled down and rendered in wood. The broad porch is the podium of
the temple; four fluted Doric columns carry the wide entablature (horizontal bands above
the columns), which is capped with a fully developed pediment.
In 1954 this house was moved from
Waterville to the George Eastman House gardens on East Avenue in Rochester. In 1979 it was
moved to the Genesee Country Village and Museum where it is open to the public. Note: none
of the furnishings in the Eastman Birthplace were the Eastmans', but have been selected
corresponding to the comfortable circumstances the family enjoyed in Waterville.
