Yesteryear's Place
Ithaca lives its history through architecture
On the third floor Common Council Chambers of Ithaca City Hall, important business is taking place on this chilly, autumn Wednesday night.
“It’s green.”
“Ah ha.”
“Yeah, it’s the same green as the dance club. This awning company must be doing hot business these days.”
Leslie Chatterton, 57, and George Holets, 60, both of Ithaca, are discussing the color of an awning that’s going to be built onto Moosewood, a restaurant on North Cayuga Street. The awning is an issue because Moosewood lies in the DeWitt building, a historic piece of Ithaca property. But things aren’t always mundane.
“Sometimes we get some pretty controversial cases,” says Chatterton.
As the secretary of the Ithaca Landmarks Preservation Commission, she helps to monitor the wellbeing of Ithaca’s ancestral treasures. The board members range from historians, to cultural connoisseurs, to artists. Holets knows how important these landmarks are.
“One needs to keep these things intact; we can’t just throw them out. We tend to live in the moment—we’re such a ‘now’ generation.”
But there are plenty of places that have been kept pristine. The City of Ithaca has six historic districts, each attractive and intriguing in their own right. A favorite among the commission?
“The Cornell Arts Quad. It’s just spectacular,” says Chatterton.
A leisurely stroll around the quad is like a trip into the past. The oldest buildings on campus lie here, and together Morrill, McGraw, and White halls comprise “Stone Row,” named for their gray silt stone exteriors. All were built in the late 1860s.
With leaves crunching underfoot, students rush past each architectural masterpiece, on their way to class or perhaps the basement of Goldwin Smith Hall, a 1904 Neoclassical-style structure, where a small café—Temple of Zeus—percolates with co-ed energy. They sip chai or enjoy the soup du jour (cream of broccoli) in a National Historic Landmark.
Back in town, the DeWitt Park area was Ithaca’s first local historic district. The park’s northwestern edge is flanked by the First Baptist and First Presbyterian churches and the Old Courthouse, all constructed around the turn of the century and rich in history.
The First Presbyterian Church’s historian, Florence Emery, 81, bustles around the basement history center, organizing old records. A former history teacher, she’s overjoyed to be co-chairing the archives committee at the church.
“It’s just very natural kind of thing,” she says. “Probably because of my love for history.”
By 1800, Simeon DeWitt, New York State’s Surveyor General, owned much of the Ithaca’s land. He sold the area that is now the park to the church for a bargain—$500—in 1826 and on May 9, 1900, the Ithaca Daily Journal reported a huge turnout for the laying of the corner stone for the construction of the new church:
“The audience was seated on chairs and campstools on the church floor. Hundreds of people stood below on the ground and sidewalk and sat in carriages on Cayuga Street.”
Congregants sang “How Beautiful on the Mountains” that day to celebrate the commencement of what is now an Ohio Sandstone building in the Italian style with Red Medina stone steps.
A few quick blocks away from the church is the Boardman House, the original site of the Ithaca Conservatory of Music founded in 1892. Built in 1864, the Italian Villa-style house’s deep mahogany trim and evergreen walls will lead a willing visitor up several flights of a steep, creaking spiral staircase whose low ceilings take by surprise anyone taller than five feet.
But the creaky steps and occasional spider web in the Boardman house aren’t nearly as frightening as the Clinton House on Buffalo Street.
“Some people, myself included, believe that Simeon DeWitt haunts the Clinton House,” says George Holets.
“He died here, in a room on the third floor. Room 309.”
The House, built in a Greek Revival style in 1829, was one of the most deluxe hotels between New York City and Chicago back in the mid-1800s. In the corner of the lobby rests the inn’s original safe, where another ghost allegedly resides.
“The day the hotel closed, the night clerk disappeared,” says a suspicious Holets.
But, haunted or not, all of these structures are testaments to the history of Ithaca, to a time when people rode around in carriages and stayed in grand hotels.
Back at the meeting, the commission has decided that the green awning will do just fine. And with that, their business is done for the evening.
From awnings to architectural masterpieces, it’s all part of the job for Holets and the commission.
“We have to keep these things up. It’s a responsibility we have to the past.”
On the third floor Common Council Chambers of Ithaca City Hall, important business is taking place on this chilly, autumn Wednesday night.
“It’s green.”
“Ah ha.”
“Yeah, it’s the same green as the dance club. This awning company must be doing hot business these days.”
Leslie Chatterton, 57, and George Holets, 60, both of Ithaca, are discussing the color of an awning that’s going to be built onto Moosewood, a restaurant on North Cayuga Street. The awning is an issue because Moosewood lies in the DeWitt building, a historic piece of Ithaca property. But things aren’t always mundane.
“Sometimes we get some pretty controversial cases,” says Chatterton.
As the secretary of the Ithaca Landmarks Preservation Commission, she helps to monitor the wellbeing of Ithaca’s ancestral treasures. The board members range from historians, to cultural connoisseurs, to artists. Holets knows how important these landmarks are.
“One needs to keep these things intact; we can’t just throw them out. We tend to live in the moment—we’re such a ‘now’ generation.”
But there are plenty of places that have been kept pristine. The City of Ithaca has six historic districts, each attractive and intriguing in their own right. A favorite among the commission?
“The Cornell Arts Quad. It’s just spectacular,” says Chatterton.
A leisurely stroll around the quad is like a trip into the past. The oldest buildings on campus lie here, and together Morrill, McGraw, and White halls comprise “Stone Row,” named for their gray silt stone exteriors. All were built in the late 1860s.
With leaves crunching underfoot, students rush past each architectural masterpiece, on their way to class or perhaps the basement of Goldwin Smith Hall, a 1904 Neoclassical-style structure, where a small café—Temple of Zeus—percolates with co-ed energy. They sip chai or enjoy the soup du jour (cream of broccoli) in a National Historic Landmark.
Back in town, the DeWitt Park area was Ithaca’s first local historic district. The park’s northwestern edge is flanked by the First Baptist and First Presbyterian churches and the Old Courthouse, all constructed around the turn of the century and rich in history.
The First Presbyterian Church’s historian, Florence Emery, 81, bustles around the basement history center, organizing old records. A former history teacher, she’s overjoyed to be co-chairing the archives committee at the church.
“It’s just very natural kind of thing,” she says. “Probably because of my love for history.”
By 1800, Simeon DeWitt, New York State’s Surveyor General, owned much of the Ithaca’s land. He sold the area that is now the park to the church for a bargain—$500—in 1826 and on May 9, 1900, the Ithaca Daily Journal reported a huge turnout for the laying of the corner stone for the construction of the new church:
“The audience was seated on chairs and campstools on the church floor. Hundreds of people stood below on the ground and sidewalk and sat in carriages on Cayuga Street.”
Congregants sang “How Beautiful on the Mountains” that day to celebrate the commencement of what is now an Ohio Sandstone building in the Italian style with Red Medina stone steps.
A few quick blocks away from the church is the Boardman House, the original site of the Ithaca Conservatory of Music founded in 1892. Built in 1864, the Italian Villa-style house’s deep mahogany trim and evergreen walls will lead a willing visitor up several flights of a steep, creaking spiral staircase whose low ceilings take by surprise anyone taller than five feet.
But the creaky steps and occasional spider web in the Boardman house aren’t nearly as frightening as the Clinton House on Buffalo Street.
“Some people, myself included, believe that Simeon DeWitt haunts the Clinton House,” says George Holets.
“He died here, in a room on the third floor. Room 309.”
The House, built in a Greek Revival style in 1829, was one of the most deluxe hotels between New York City and Chicago back in the mid-1800s. In the corner of the lobby rests the inn’s original safe, where another ghost allegedly resides.
“The day the hotel closed, the night clerk disappeared,” says a suspicious Holets.
But, haunted or not, all of these structures are testaments to the history of Ithaca, to a time when people rode around in carriages and stayed in grand hotels.
Back at the meeting, the commission has decided that the green awning will do just fine. And with that, their business is done for the evening.
From awnings to architectural masterpieces, it’s all part of the job for Holets and the commission.
“We have to keep these things up. It’s a responsibility we have to the past.”
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4:20 PM
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