“From Main to the Kicking Tree: Daily Walks in Aurora, ca. 1905”

Experience Aurora around the turn of the last century in the show at Patrick Tavern, 302 Main  St. From Wells College’s opening in 1868 for many decades, students were required to walk about a mile each day. The most usual walk began at Main Building and went north to a big elm tree on the west side of the street, not quite opposite Sherwood Rd., which came to be called the Kicking Tree.

From about 1905 to 1910, Henry A. Morgan (a son of Edwin B. Morgan, and in his turn a community leader) had photographed and printed a series of postcards of Aurora, offered both in black and white and hand-colored. A few years earlier, the Kodak Brownie camera had made photography accessible to anyone, and Wells students took to it enthusiastically. Some of their scrapbooks of candid photos joined the Wells yearbook, The Cardinal, as a record of their times.

This show combines formal postcards and informal snapshots for a glimpse of the daily walks along Aurora’s Main Street, and some other popular destinations, from the shoreline to the waterfalls. The display is self-guided, free, and accessible to all.