Lenses for railroad lanterns, cut glass for the White House table, Thomas Edison's first light bulb-the glass for all of these was made in Corning, the glass capital of America, the Crystal City. From 1880 to World War I, newfound wealth sparked a spending and building boom that shaped the city. Corning recaptures the city's gilded age, the boom days when tax-free fortunes could be made-and lost-overnight. Vintage photographs show elephants and buffalo parading down Market Street, the Drake family giving recitals on its home pipe organ, churches and public buildings rising, carriages giving way to motorcars, and huge summer homes springing up on the Finger Lakes.

Charles R. Mitchell, a professional photographer who is retired from Corning Inc., is curator of the Oliver House Museum in Penn Yan. Arcadia has published three of his books: Keuka Lake, Penn Yan and Keuka Lake, and Hammondsport and Keuka Lake. Kirk W. House, formerly director of the Glenn Curtiss Museum in Hammondsport, is a member of the Corning-Painted Post Historical Society and the Steuben County Historical Society. House and Mitchell collaborated on two earlier Arcadia books: Glenn H. Curtiss, Aviation Pioneer and Flying High: Pioneer Women in American Aviation. The images in Corning are drawn entirely from the archives of the Corning-Painted Post Historical Society, particularly from the extensive collection of photographer Isabel Walker Drake.