Greater Rochester International

George Eastman invented roll film. In 1888 he founded the Eastman Kodak Company in Rochester to manufacture it. By 1900 Kodak was the dominant photographic company in the world. Eastman built a 50-room Colonial Revival mansion on East Avenue in Rochester in 1905 — a 35,000-square-foot personal palace with a conservatory, library, terrace gardens, a working pipe organ, and a billiard room. He had a chauffeur named Solomon, a butler, and a private string quartet that played at dinner. He never married. On March 14, 1932, at age 77, Eastman shot himself through the heart at his home. A note on his nightstand read "To my friends: my work is done. Why wait? G.E." He had been suffering from a degenerative spinal condition that was making his life progressively more painful. He had given away the bulk of his fortune — by his death he had distributed roughly $100 million (in pre-1932 dollars) to MIT, the University of Rochester, Tuskegee Institute, the Hampton Institute, and the Eastman School of Music. He outlived his usefulness on his own terms. The mansion, his fortune's last bequest, became the George Eastman Museum in 1949. It is the oldest photography museum in the world and one of the world's largest. The collection holds over 400,000 photographs (including 12 of Daguerre's original 1839 plates, and a deep run of Civil War, Western expansion, FSA, and 20th-century holdings), 30,000 motion pictures, over a million film stills, and a deep technology archive — every Kodak product back to 1885 plus a working chemistry lab where film preservationists still develop early stocks. Two miles W of the museum, the Genesee River drops 96 feet over High Falls of the Genesee — one of three significant waterfalls within the Rochester city limits. The High Falls Heritage District around the falls is the historic Rochester millworking district; in the 19th century Rochester was the "Flour City" of America (then "Flower City" after the milling industry declined and seed catalog companies took over). The Pont de Rennes pedestrian bridge crosses the gorge directly over the falls.

Darwin D. Martin was a self-made man — orphaned at six, working as a soap salesman by twelve, employee of the Larkin Soap Company by his late teens, then Larkin's secretary and one of its top executives. By 1903 he was rich and looking to build a house in the Parkside neighborhood of Buffalo. His brother William Martin had recently commissioned a young Chicago architect named Frank Lloyd Wright for a house in Oak Park. Darwin asked his brother to introduce him. Wright was 36 years old, several years into the Prairie Style work that would define the rest of his life. The commission Darwin Martin gave him was extraordinary — a 15,000-square-foot main house, a conservatory, a carriage house, a pergola connecting the buildings, a separate gardener's cottage, and a smaller Barton House for Darwin's sister Delta and her husband. Wright designed the complex 1903-1905. He considered it (along with the Robie House in Chicago and the Susan Lawrence Dana House in Springfield) one of the three masterpieces of his Prairie period. He also designed the Larkin Administration Building downtown in 1904 — the office building considered Wright's first masterpiece in any genre — which the company demolished in 1950. After the 1929 crash, Darwin Martin lost his Larkin fortune. He couldn't pay the taxes on the complex. After his death in 1935 the property fell into receivership, the Martin family lost it, and by 1937 the City of Buffalo took it for back taxes. The conservatory, pergola, and carriage house were demolished in 1962. The main house sat empty for years; squatters lived in it. It was used as briefly as architecture offices for the University of Buffalo. By the 1990s it was a wreck. In 1992 the Darwin Martin House Restoration Corporation began a 30-year, $50 million reconstruction. They rebuilt the demolished conservatory, pergola, and carriage house exactly to Wright's original drawings (his drawings still existed). They restored 394 art glass windows. They rebuilt the demolished gardens. The work was substantially complete by 2017. Today the complex is open Wed-Sun for tours and is widely considered the most thoroughly restored Wright Prairie-period complex anywhere. Buffalo also holds Wright's Blue Sky Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Cemetery, the Graycliff Estate on Lake Erie (Isabelle Martin's summer home, also Wright), and the recently completed Filling Station — Wright's only built gas-station design, executed posthumously at the Buffalo Transportation Pierce-Arrow Museum.

The Finger Lakes are eleven long narrow lakes in central New York running roughly N-S, carved by retreating glaciers ten thousand years ago. From altitude they look like a hand laid flat with fingers spread. Seneca Lake is the deepest (over 600 feet) and largest by volume; Cayuga is the longest (38 miles). Together they hold more freshwater than any group of lakes outside the Great Lakes themselves. The microclimate around the lakes — moderated by the lakes' enormous thermal mass — has made the region one of the most important wine-producing areas in the eastern United States. The Finger Lakes are the Riesling capital of America: cool nights, mineral-rich shale soils, and growing seasons just long enough to ripen Vitis vinifera that struggles elsewhere east of the Rockies. Watkins Glen State Park, at the southern tip of Seneca Lake, is the geological signature of the region. The Gorge Trail — 1.5 miles, 832 stone steps, opened to visitors in 1863 — follows Glen Creek through a slot canyon 400 feet deep that the creek has carved into Devonian shale and sandstone. Nineteen waterfalls cascade through the gorge. The most famous, Rainbow Falls, drops 30 feet over an overhanging ledge that visitors walk behind on a stone path. The CCC built the current trail system 1935-1939. National Geographic has named it one of the most beautiful state parks in the United States. Watkins Glen International, two miles south of the gorge, is the racetrack. It opened in 1956, hosted the United States Grand Prix from 1961 through 1980 (the F1 race), and continues to host the NASCAR Cup Series Go Bowling at The Glen annually in August. Before the permanent track was built, sports cars raced on the public streets of Watkins Glen village — the original 6.6-mile road course — from 1948 through 1952. Cornell University is 30 miles N on the south end of Cayuga Lake.

167,000 cubic meters of water per minute plunge over the brink — the mist plume is visible from 30+ miles away. The horseshoe shape of the Canadian falls is best appreciated from directly above. The Niagara River gorge downstream shows the incredible erosion power. The international border runs down the river's center.