Rochester, New York from a height of 10,000 feet (1921)
The latest and greatest achievement in aerial photography. The U S Army Air Service takes another forward step in mapmaking from the air.
Nearly forty square miles of “Camera City” — Rochester, the third largest city of New York State, as photographed from a height of 10,000 feet by two United States Army airmen, Captain Stevens and Lieutenant Potter, one day last October.
It is reproduced from the first aerial mosaic to be made on pan-chromatic film. The original is four feet square, and is made up of the prints from eighty separate negatives in the form of a single strip of film 10 inches wide and 75 feet long, all made in the course of a single flight of an hour and twenty minutes.
The camera used was an Eastman improved mapping camera with self-registering instruments and weighing 250 pounds. Several weeks of painstaking effort were necessary to join and mount these eighty separate photos.
How a city of 300,000 looks to the birdman flying almost two miles above it. Flowing in a deep gorge from south to north and practically bisecting this busy city of Rochester is the Genesee River with its several waterfalls, crossed by a dozen or more bridges and the Erie Canal on an aqueduct — it comes into the mosaic just above the oval reservoir at the lower right, and its course may be traced readily across the city to the upper left of the photograph.
The group of buildings near the river in the upper left corner is the home of the Kodak. To those familiar with the city of Rochester and its over three hundred miles of streets, a number of the city’s twenty parks may be identified, as well as the railway station and other distinguishing landmarks.
Another view: Old Rochester, New York, as seen from the west in 1853
Left side of image (north side)
Right side of image (south side)
Full view of the lithograph from 1853 – facing east
Mid-20th century old Rochester, New York in 1961
MORE: George Eastman House: The Kodak inventor’s mansion & photography museum in Rochester, New York
