Queer Places:
The Genesee Country Village and Museum, 1410 Flint Hill Rd, Mumford, NY 14511
George Eastman Museum, 900 East Ave, Rochester, NY 14607
Eastman Business Park, 1669 Lake Ave, Rochester, NY 14652
George
Eastman (July 12, 1854 – March 14, 1932) was an American entrepreneur who
founded the Eastman Kodak
Company and helped to bring the
photographic use of
roll film
into the mainstream. Roll film was also the basis for the invention of motion
picture
film stock in 1888 by the world's first film-makers
Eadweard Muybridge and
Louis Le Prince, and a few years later by their followers
Léon
Bouly,
William Kennedy Dickson,
Thomas Edison, the
Lumière Brothers, and
Georges Méliès.
He was a major
philanthropist, establishing the
Eastman School of Music, and schools of dentistry and medicine at the
University of Rochester and in London
Eastman Dental Hospital; contributing to the
Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and the construction of several
buildings at the second campus of
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on the Charles River. In
addition, he made major donations to
Tuskegee University and
Hampton University,
historically black universities in the South. With interests in improving
health, he provided funds for clinics in London and other European cities to
serve low-income residents.
In his final two years, Eastman was in intense pain caused by a disorder
affecting his spine. On March 14, 1932, Eastman shot himself in the heart,
leaving a note which read, "To my friends: my work is done. Why wait?"[2]
The
George Eastman Museum has been designated a
National Historic Landmark. Eastman is the only person represented by two
stars in the
Hollywood Walk of Fame recognizing the same achievement, for his invention
of roll film.
Eastman was born in
Waterville, New York[3]
as the youngest son of George Washington Eastman and Maria Eastman (née
Kilbourn), at the 10-acre farm which his parents had bought in 1849. He had
two older sisters, Ellen Maria and Katie.[4]
He was largely self-educated, although he attended a private school in
Rochester after the age of eight.[4]
In the early 1840s his father had started a business school, the Eastman
Commercial College in
Rochester, New York. The city became one of the first "boomtowns" in the
United States, based on rapid industrialization.[4]
As his father's health started deteriorating, the family gave up the farm and
moved to Rochester in 1860.[4]
His father died of a brain disorder in May 1862. To survive and afford
George's schooling, his mother took in boarders.[4]
The second daughter, Katie, had contracted
polio when
young and died in late 1870 when George was 15 years old. The young George
left school early and started working to help support the family. 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.[5]
In 1884, Eastman patented the first film in roll form to prove practicable;
he had been tinkering at home to develop it. In 1888, he perfected the Kodak
Black camera, which was the first camera designed to use roll film. In 1889 he
first offered film stock, and by 1896 became the leading supplier of film
stock internationally.[6]
He incorporated his company under the name Eastman Kodak, in 1892.[7]
As film stock became standardized, Eastman continued to lead in innovations.
Refinements in colored film stock continued after his death.
In an era of growing
trade
union activities, Eastman sought to counter the union movement by devising
worker benefit programs, including, in 1910, the establishment of a
profit-sharing program for all employees.[7]
Considered to be a progressive leader for the times, Eastman promoted
Florence McAnaney to be head of the personnel department. She was one of
the first women to hold an executive position in a major U.S. company.
George Eastman never married. He was close to his mother and to his sister
and her family. He had a long
platonic relationship with Josephine Dickman, a trained singer and the
wife of business associate George Dickman, becoming especially close to her
after the death of his mother, Maria Eastman, in 1907. He was also an avid
traveler and had a passion for playing the piano.[4]
The loss of his mother, Maria, was particularly crushing to George. Almost
pathologically concerned with decorum, he found himself unable for the first
time to control his emotions in the presence of his friends. "When my mother
died I cried all day," he explained later. "I could not have stopped to save
my life." Due to his mother's reluctance to accept his gifts, George Eastman
could never do enough for his mother during her lifetime. He continued to
honor her after her death. On September 4, 1922, he opened the Eastman Theater
in Rochester, which included a chamber-music hall, Kilbourn Theater, dedicated
to his mother's memory. At the Eastman House he maintained a rose bush, using
a cutting from her childhood home.[5]
Eastman was associated with the Kodak company in an administrative and a
business executive capacity until his death; he contributed much to the
development of its notable research facilities. In 1911 he founded the Eastman
Trust and Savings Bank.
He was one of the outstanding philanthropists of his era, donating more
than $100 million to various projects in Rochester; Cambridge, Massachusetts;
at two
historically black colleges in the South and in several European cities.[8]
In 1918, he endowed the establishment of the
Eastman School of Music at the
University of Rochester, and in 1921 a school of medicine and dentistry
there.
In 1925 Eastman gave up his daily management of Kodak to become
treasurer.
He concentrated on
philanthropic activities, to which he had already donated substantial
sums. For example, he donated funds to establish the
Eastman Dental Dispensary in 1916. He ranked slightly behind
Andrew Carnegie,
John D. Rockefeller, and a few others in his philanthropy, but did not
seek
publicity for his activities. He concentrated on institution-building and
causes that could help people's health. From 1926 until his death, Eastman
also donated $22,050 per year to the
American Eugenics Society, a popular cause among many of the upper class
when there were concerns about immigration and "race mixing."[9]
Eastman donated £200,000 in 1926 to fund a dental clinic in London, UK
after being approached by the Chairman of the
Royal Free Hospital,
George Riddell, 1st Baron Riddell. Donations of £50,000 each had been made
by Lord Riddell and the Royal Free honorary treasurer. On November 20, 1931,
the
UCL Eastman Dental Institute opened in a ceremony attended by
Neville Chamberlain, then Minister of Health, and the American Ambassador
to the UK. The clinic was incorporated into the Royal Free Hospital and was
committed to providing dental care for disadvantaged children from central
London. It is now a part of
University College London.[10]
Eastman also funded
Eastmaninstitutet, a dental care clinic for children opened in 1937 in
Stockholm,
Sweden.
In his final two years, Eastman was in intense
pain caused by a
disorder affecting his
spine. He had trouble standing, and his walk became a slow shuffle. Today,
it might be diagnosed as a form of
degenerative disease such as
disc herniations from trauma or age causing either painful
nerve
root compressions, or perhaps a type of
lumbar spinal stenosis, a narrowing of the
spinal canal caused by
calcification in the
vertebrae. Since his mother suffered the final two years of her life in a
wheelchair,[5]
she also may have had a spine condition but that is uncertain. Only her
uterine cancer and successful surgery are documented in her health
history.[4]
Eastman suffered from
depression due to his pain, reduced ability to function, and also since he
had witnessed his mother's suffering from pain. On March 14, 1932, Eastman
died by suicide with a single gunshot through the heart. His suicide note
read, "To my friends, my work is done – Why wait? GE."[2]
Raymond Granger, an insurance salesman in Rochester, was visiting to
collect insurance payments from several members of the staff. He arrived at
the scene to find the workforce in a dither. At least one chronicler said that
fear of
senility or other debilitating diseases of old age was a contributing
factor.[11]
His funeral
was held at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Rochester; his coffin was carried
out to
Charles Gounod's "Marche Romaine" and buried in the grounds of the company
he founded, at what is now known as
Eastman Business Park.[12]
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