The alarm woke me up way too early this morning as there had been a wedding at the hotel I stayed at in Watertown and inconsiderate guests in the corridor kept me awake until 2:30 AM. However, the sky was blue and the two things I did today were my reasons for dropping back into the US and driving south of Lake Ontario instead of going though Toronto and Niagara (both of which I have visited twice before). These were the Erie Canal museum in the heart of Syracuse and the George Eastman House and Museum in Rochester. Both of these represent great successes of the industrial age in New York State that have now been left behind by progress.

The Erie Canal was a massive undertaking which saw the construction of over 360 miles of canals through forests, swamps, mountain passes and across an elevation change of more than 500 feet. Most of the work was done manually, with limited assistance from oxen and horses, and it opened in 1825 just 8 years after groundbreaking. Despite costing 7 million dollars it was so successful that it was fully repaid in less than 9 years by the tolls collected on boats using it. The museum itself is housed in the building where fully loaded vessels were weighed so that the toll could be assessed based on the load they were carrying. After visiting the museum I wandered around the center of Syracuse which has many grand buildings that exemplify the wealth that the canal brought. The present-day canal does not run through the city center but there are a few inches of water along part of Water Street where the canal used to be.

The attraction in Rochester was the Eastman Kodak Museum and House. The successful industrialist incorporated very sophisticated ideas in the house he built such that, in 1903, it was fully electric (having its own generators), it included hidden metal fire doors between each room and it was functionally very efficient. George Eastman used his industrial skills to ensure that efficiency yet it is still a beautifully inviting and livable place  The photography museum was smaller than I expected but did have a great collection of Kodak cameras and also featured their work on Technicolor for movies. A display of the 1,776 chemicals used during the development of Technicolor film shows the complexity of making color film.

Today’s map and video are here. There is a small gap in the route in Syracuse because I forgot to turn the camera on when I left my parking spot

The Erie Canal Museum BuildingSyracuse City HallSyracuse War Memorial and mini-canal along Water StreetKodak’s first camera. It contained enough film for 100 photos and then the whole camera had to be sent to Rochester for processing and refilling. There was no viewfinder until the Model 2 came out a few years later.