225 Fall Creek Drive
This Colonial Revival home is one of the oldest buildings in the district. It was built in 1901 for David Hoy, Cornell University registrar and the person referred to in the song Give My Regards to Davy. The house was designed by Clarence Martin, a professor in Cornell's School of Architecture.Many early homes in the district, including commissioned houses and houses built on spec, were large, showcase homes designed by architects.Clarence Martin, Clinton Vivian, and William H. Miller designed several homes in the district that were built between 1899 and 1906.Many of the early houses were in the Colonial Revival style and featured, like this house, a prominent central entry porch rising to a bay window on the second floor and a gabled dormer above. Classical detailing, such as the Doric columns supporting the portico of this house and the Palladian window in the dormer, are typical of the style. The combination of a shingled second story above a clapboard first story appears throughout the district.LISTEN HERE
302 Fall Creek Drive
This Tudor Revival home is one of the more recent homes in the district. Built in 1929 for George Coleman, an instructor at Cornell, it is typical of the so-called "Stockbroker Tudors" popular in the 1920s, which, despite their modest scale, conveyed an Old World cachet that was sought after by middle class homeowners.This house features steeply pitched cross gables and a low-hanging, multicolored slate roof. The cladding is stucco, with rustic wood siding in the front gable. The front windows and entrance are framed with irregular brick quoining and rustic wooden lintels. Other decorative features include copper downspouts and a metal lantern over the main entrance.LISTEN HERE
124 Roberts Place
Nature book publisher John Henry Comstock had this Craftsman-style house built in 1914, not as a residence, but as the headquearters of his lucrative business, Comstock Publishers. He and his wife, naturalist Anna Botsford Comstock, lived across the road at 123 Roberts Place. Number 124 Roberts Place is the only structure in the district that was built for commercial use.Despite its intended use, the building was designed to conform to the neighborhood’s residential character in accordance with deed restrictions enforced by the Cornell Heights Land Company. Many of the Craftsman buildings in the district are clad in stucco, like this one, or a combination of stucco and clapboard, with Tudor-inspired false half-timbering. This building also features a Swiss balustrade at the second story and multi-paned lead glass windows with shutters.Comstock bequeathed his publishing company and his home to Cornell University upon his death in 1931. The company was eventually absorbed into Cornell University Press, which used the building for a number of years.LISTEN HERE
201 Wyckoff Avenue
This Queen Anne-inspired house was built in 1904 for Louis Agassiz Fuertes, renowned artist, naturalist, and bird illustrator.Considered by many to be the foremost American illustrator of birds--surpassing even John James Audobon--Fuertes was born in Ithaca in 1874 and named after the great nineteenth-century naturalist, Louis Agassiz. He graduated from the College of Architecture at Cornell, but rather than pursue an engineering career as his father had hoped, he went on to study art with Elliot Coues and New England portrait painter Abbot Thayer.Fuertes returned to Ithaca after marrying and commissioned this house, which the family occupied through the 1940s. His studio was originally on the top floor. After his painting materials caused two fires, he built a separate studio next door (at No. 201½).Fuertes illustrated numerous books, pamphlets, and magazines including National Geographic and painted murals for displays of habitat groups for the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. He is best known for his series of illustrated plates, The Birds of New York.LISTEN HERE
534 Thurston Avenue
Fraternity and sorority houses now abound in Cornell Heights in spite of the fact that developer Edward Wyckoff was intent on maintaining the area as a "placid, family-oriented residential suburb without the encroachment of commercial interests or students."Wyckoff hoped that putting deed restrictions on properties would preclude such encroachment, but his partners were less interested in enforcing deeds than in selling property. Furthermore, the rapid growth of the university around the turn of the century meant a swelling population of faculty and students and a pressing need for housing.In 1906, one property owner in the Heights sold his home to a fraternity. Wyckoff was furious, but as pressure to accommodate student housing increased, he succumbed to the point of selling his own house, a Colonial Revival mansion on Thurston Avenue, to Phi Kappa Psi fraternity in 1915. (The house was destroyed in the 1960s.)This Tudor Revival residence was built in 1930 for Theta Xi fraternity.LISTEN HERE
319 Wait Avenue
This striking house is a good example of the stylistic eclecticism found throughout the district. Built around 1912, it exhibits features of the Craftsman style, such as low-hanging, open eaves, but does not feature the exposed roof rafters so typical of the style. The low, horizontal perspective and banded windows suggest a Prairie influence.The majority of Craftsman-style homes in the area are covered with stucco, and many have Tudor-inspired false half-timbering on the upper stories.These buildings permeate the district.Many early residents of Cornell Heights were important figures in the history of Cornell University, particularly in the expansion of the State Agricultural College. James Rice, whose contributions to the field of poultry science are commemorated in Rice Hall, lived for many years at 308 Wait Avenue, across the street from this house.LISTEN HERE
216 Wait Avenue
About ten percent of Colonial Revival homes have gambrel roofs. Most, like this one, are one-story homes with steeply pitched gambrels containing almost a full second story of floor space. Many have separate dormer windows or a continuous shelf dormer with several windows. This house and its neighbor at 214 Wait Avenue are examples of the subtype, called Dutch Colonial.This house was built in 1925 for J. Birdsall Calkins, a mechanical engineer. Subsequent occupants included Robert Lewis, extension professor of plant breeding, and M. L. Wolfram Laistner, professor of history.LISTEN HERE
114 Kelvin Place
Construction in Cornell Heights proceeded in stages. It began slowly, with twenty houses built between 1899 and 1903. Construction flourished between 1904 and 1916, in keeping with the rapid expansion of the university which, by the end of the period, was the second largest university in America.The peak year of activity in the district--1916--saw the construction of a dozen homes. By then more than half of the 150 buildings in the district had been completed. The mid 1920s saw another building spurt, with nearly 40 homes built between 1920 and 1927.The rest of the district was gradually filled in during the decades before World War II.This Prairie-style home was built in 1916 and was briefly occupied by Anna Smith, widow of Harry Smith, professor of music at Cornell. It became a fraternity house in 1917 (Alpha Phi) and housed the Phi Beta Phi society throughout the 1920s and 30s. It is now a private residence.LISTEN HERE
116 Kelvin Place
A comparison of this house with its neighbor across the street (121 Kelvin Place) reveals the limitations of using conventional style labels in attempting to describe the appearance of a particular structure.This house, built in 1907, can be considered a Craftsman-style house on the basis of its low-pitched roof, widely overhanging eaves, and exposed rafters. And yet it seems to have less in common with the house at 319 Wait Avenue, which also bears the Craftsman label, than it does with its Colonial Revival-style neighbor across the street.Simply stated, both of these houses are two-story, side-gabled boxes with symmetrically balanced facades and an accentuated front door. One notices these similarities of shape and symmetry right away.One needs to look again and study the details, however, to discern how the buildings differ. Consider for example how the windows are clustered and the number of panes in the windows: Colonial Revival-style windows are typically multi-paned, double-hung sashes and are sometimes grouped in adjacent pairs. The windows of this house are single paned and grouped in two and threes.The home was built for Abram T. Kerr, professor of anatomy and former secretary of the Cornell Medical College. For many years, Cornell had a two-year medical program in Ithaca in addition to its principal medical school in New York City.LISTEN HERE
121 Kelvin Place
In keeping with the Colonial Revival style, the doorway of the house at 121 Kelvin Place features a porch with Doric columns and an arched pediment--classical details that are notably absent on the house across the street at 116 Kelvin Place. The sidelights framing the doorway are also typical of the Colonial Revival style.Looking at the roofline of this house, one sees eaves that only slightly overhang the wall surface, and the rafters are not visible at all.The home at 121 Kelvin Place was built in 1923 for Henry H. Wing, professor of animal husbandry at Cornell and assistant director of the New York Agricultural Experiment Station. (Wing Hall is named for him.)LISTEN HERE
125 Kelvin Place
This house provides another example of the stylistic eclecticism so common in the district. It was built in 1903.The accentuated doorway and balanced symmetry of the house's facade suggest something of the Colonial Revival style, which was popular at the time and which is well represented in several other houses in the district (225 Fall Creek Drive, for example). Unlike those houses, however, this one lacks the classical detailing and window features that distinguish the style. There is an emphasis on horizontal lines in this house--expressed by the flared, overhanging eaves and by the low-pitched roofs and window clusters on the porch and dormer--that suggest a Prairie influence. The exposed roof rafters, which are false, suggest a Craftsman influence.This house was built for H. Wade Hibbard, professor of mechanical engineering at Cornell. The family of Albert Faust, professor of German, lived here from 1909 through the 1950s.LISTEN HERE
126 Kelvin Place
This large Dutch Colonial Revival home was built in 1909 for Gilbert D. Harris, professor of geology and paleontology at Cornell and founder of the Paleontological Research Institution (PRI). Harris lived here through the 1950s, and the home remained in the family through the 1970s.Harris operated PRI from his home for many years. In 1932, the cornerstone was laid for a new PRIlaboratory at 109 Dearborn Place, next door to Harris' home. That building (a nondescript aluminum-sided structure visible from the road) was completed around 1942 and housed PRI until the late 1960s, when the institution moved to its present location near the Cayuga Medical Center.LISTEN HERE
403 Wyckoff Avenue
This stately Colonial Revival home was built in 1907 for Adam Capen Gill, professor of mineralogy and petrography at Cornell. Set on a rise, well back from the roads on a large, well-landscaped corner lot, the house conveys an air of dignified prosperity and aloofness, or exclusivity, which was exactly the tone that the developers of Cornell Heights had in mind for their new neighborhood.The Gill family lived here through the 1930s.The house was occupied for more than fifty years by the family of Joseph N. Frost, a physician.LISTEN HERE
419 Wyckoff Ave
This house was built in 1908 and combines features of the Queen Anne and Colonial Revival styles. Queen Anne elements include the asymmetrical facade with corner tower and wrap-around porch, and the stained glass on some of the first story windows. Colonial Revival elements include the Palladian window on the dormer and the slender Doric columns on the porch.The house was built for Mrs. Esther E. Cornell, widow of Alonzo B. Cornell. (Ezra Cornell, the founder of Cornell University, was Alonzo's father.) Mrs. Cornell lived here until about 1920.The house was subsequently occupied during the 1920s, 30s, and 40s by the family of Harry J. Van Valkenburg, a proprietor of the Ithaca Engraving Company.LISTEN HERE
125 Heights Court
This house is an excellent example of a California Craftsman bungalow, with its projecting single-story wings, low-pitched roofline, widely overhanging eaves, and exposed rafters.It was built in 1922 for Leon Rothschild, president and secretary of Rothschild Brothers Department Store. The family lived here through the 1930s.Rollin "Stork" Sanford, head crew coach at Cornell, lived here during the 1940s, 50s, and 60s.Proponents of the Craftsman style included the architectural firm of Greene & Greene of Pasadena, California, and designer Gustav Stickley of East Aurora, New York. Though it varied in detail regionally, the style is characterized by its use of natural materials, horizontal orientation, and emphasis on hand-crafted components.Like vernacular examples of the contemporaneous Prairie style, the Craftsman style was quickly spread via pattern books and popular magazines, and from about 1905 through the early 1920s, it was the dominant style for smaller houses built throughout the United States.LISTEN HERE
120 Heights Court
Heights Court does not appear on the original street plan for the district. It was probably created around 1910, when this house was built. Most of the houses on the street date from 1914 to the late 1920s and are noticeably smaller and more closely spaced than those elsewhere in the district. This house--with its simple square plan, low-pitched hipped roof, and symmetrical facade--belongs to a subtype of the Prairie style called American Foursquare or Prairie Box. The Mission-inspired tiled roof is characteristic of the style.The house was built for the family of Clarence B. Burling, who operated the Imperial Stationery Company. The family lived here through the 1970s.LISTEN HERE
116 – 116 ½ Heights Court
Now used as student apartments, this double house was built in 1916 as a residence for businesspeople, professionals, and faculty.Early occupants included Edwin G. Boring, who went on to teach psychology at Harvard University, and Karl M. Dallenback, professor of psychology at Cornell who conducted studies on the perceptions of the blind.Nobel laureate James B. Sumner lived across the street at 119 Heights Court. Sumner was a professor of biological chemistry at Cornell. He won a Nobel Prize in 1946 for devising a general method to isolate and crystallize enzymes, which he did in 1926. "I went to the telephone and told my wife that I had crystallized the first enzyme," he later noted, though chemistry colleagues were slow to recognize the achievement.LISTEN HERE
110, 112 Heights Court
This unusual structure was originally the barn on Edward Wyckoff's estate on Thurston Avenue. Built in 1898, it was moved to its present location around 1912 and remodeled into apartments for businesspeople and professionals. As reported in an article in the Ithaca Daily Journal, written when the building was under construction, the barn measured fifty feet by sixty-seven feet and contained a basement and sub-basement. The basement was intended as a horse room with four single stalls, four box stalls, a heating room, and a carriage house. The sub-basement was to be used for cows. In harmony with the Wyckoff mansion, the upper part of the barn was to be designed in the Colonial Revival style and was to contain a parlor, three bedrooms, a kitchen, and a bathroom--all presumably for the stable hands. The rear part was designed to be used as a hay loft.LISTEN HERE
1 Lodge way
This is another building from the original Wyckoff estate. It was built in 1900 as a gatehouse and had a large greenhouse connected to it at the northwest elevation. The building was probably dissociated from the estate and remodelled for residential use around 1912. The first residents included Ellen Canfield, an instructor of physical education at Cornell, and John Stambaugh, a student.The windows are among the most interesting features on this eclectic building. They include a combination of casements, bay windows, and Palladian windows all with quarrels (small diamond-shaped panes).A walk along Lodge Way reveals other remnants of the Wyckoff estate. The small house at the corner of Lodge Way and Heights Court (at 10 Lodge Way) was originally a tool shed for the estate. At 8 Lodge Way, well-hidden in the summer time behind foliage and fencing, is a small Classical Revival home that was formerly a carriage house.Wyckoff sold the main house--a large Colonial Revival mansion--to the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity in 1915. The building was sold in the 1960s to the Highland Building Company, which demolished it and built the brick apartment complex one sees on the site today.LISTEN HERE
110 Highland Avenue
This house was built in 1936 for Cora Perry Morse, widow of industrialist Frank L. Morse, president of Morse Chain Company. It was designed by Carl Tallman and built on a large lot that the Morse family had owned for several years, stretching between Highland and Ridgewood roads.Frank Morse and his brother Fleet, an inventor, were born and raised in Ithaca. Their father, Ben Morse, ran a mill on East Hill and was a principal founder of the local Unitarian Church.Fleet conceived his first invention--an improvement on the horse-drawn hay rake--when he was sixteen. Royalties from this invention helped pay for his tuition at Cornell. By 1890 he was manufacturing and selling equalizing springs for horse-drawn carts in a factory in Trumansburg.Soon thereafter he invented an improved bicycle chain based on a rocker joint, which became the basis for the Morse Manufacturing Company. By 1897 he had adapted the rocker joint to the arch link and formed a new company--Morse Chain--to manufacture chains for bicycles and for the general transmission of power. By 1906, the company had outgrown its plant in Trumansburg and moved to Ithaca, to a large new concrete factory building on South Hill.Known primarily as producers of chain for the front-end drive mechanisms of automobiles, the Morse Chain Company also produced airplanes. In 1917 Frank Morse solidified a merger with the Thomas brothers (originally from England, they had ended up in Bath, New York) who were producing a biplane in Ithaca called the "Scout." By April 1917 the Thomas-Morse Aircraft Company employed 2,000 men in the production of planes and chains.Frank Morse assumed presidency of the company upon Fleet's death in 1913. That same year, he commissioned a large home at 55 Ridgewood Road, where he and his wife lived for many years.LISTEN HERE
150 Highland Avenue
In 1926, Morse Chain Company owner Frank Morse had the small Craftsman style home at 150 Highland Avenue built for his personal chauffeur, C. Lynn Hausner.LISTEN HERE
201 Highland Avenue
This large, Prairie-style home was built in 1916, the busiest year of building activity in Cornell Heights. Occupied briefly as a private residence, it housed various fraternities, including Beta Samach, Phi Gamma Delta, and Theta Kappa Phi during the 1920s and 30s. Since then it has been used as an apartment building.One striking feature of this house is its boxy, cubic form. Another is the wrap-around porch, whose massive square pillars are typical of the Prairie style.LISTEN HERE
110 Westbourne Lane
This house is a hybrid, like many in the district, combining features of the Prairie and Craftsman styles. It was built in 1912 for Frederick W. Owen, professor of mathematics at Cornell, and was occupied from the 1930s through the 1980s by the family of Samuel Whitman, an engineer for the Cayuga Rock Salt Company.A one-story wing projecting from the rear facade features a glass-enclosed greenhouse. The front facade is striking for its banded window clusters, particularly the multi-pane leaded glass casement windows set high on the wall adjacent to the main entrance.LISTEN HERE
55 Ridgewood Road
This large Tudor-influenced home was designed for Frank L. Morse by Walter Burleigh Griffin, a prominent Chicago architect and former assistant to Frank Lloyd Wright. Built in 1913, the year Morse assumed presidency of the Morse Chain Company, it was Morse's second home in Ithaca and was known as Greentrees. (His first home was on Edgewood Place, east of the Cascadilla Gorge.)The house was constructed of local stone and roofed with thick, square-cut slates. The garage/servant quarters' wing is connected to the main block by an arched tunnel, which opens on the backyard. Griffen landscaped the grounds, which extended to Highland Avenue and included a lovely, wooded glen.Soon after the house was completed, it was used as a setting for a locally produced silent film, The Ruby Kiss of Death. It was depicted as a den of thieves.After Morse died in 1935, the house was sold to the Cerberes Fraternity for $60,000, and Morse's widow moved into a new house built for her at 110 Highland Avenue. The former Greentrees is now owned by Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity.LISTEN HERE
40 Ridgewood Road
Two different houses have existed on this property. The first was a small, stucco-covered dwelling built around 1909 for George F. Atkinson, professor and head of the Department of Botany at Cornell.That house was demolished and replaced by this large Colonial Revival-style home, which was built as a fraternity probably in the mid 1920s. It is currently the home of Phi Sigma Epsilon.Atkinson's legacy to the district included the installation of nearly 10,000 trees and shrubs in a "wild garden" he created on the property over several years. The garden was described in the Ithaca Daily Journal of 5 May 1907:“Professor G. F. Atkinson's three-acre lot on the Heights, which he started planting eight years ago . . . is beginning now to attract notice. . . . The different varieties are planted in masses and appear to have been set out in purely haphazard fashion, unless one has the eye of an expert landscape architect. . . . The high banks along the roadside are planted with several thousand trailing roses, which flower profusely in June and July.”It was the site of frequent class excursions in botany, landscape gardening, and drawing.LISTEN HERE
2 Ridgewood Road
From the early days of the university, the number of fraternities at Cornell has been exceptional--a result of an early administrative decision by university president and co-founder, Andrew Dickson White, that the university not provide dormitory facilities for men. The Albany Argus, in a special supplement on Cornell fraternities published in 1899, noted that “Probably at no college or university in the country are Greek letter fraternities more numerous than at Cornell, numbering with the sororities about thirty.” This unusual, Moorish-influenced house was built in 1921 for Phi Delta Theta fraternity, which has occupied it ever since.LISTEN HERE
101 Thurston Avenue
This Swiss Chalet-style house, with its jerkinhead, or clipped, gable and Swiss balustrade, was built in 1914 for W H. Austen, an assistant librarian at Cornell.Austen lived there only briefly, and the house was vacant for much of the time between 1915 and 1925. From the 1930s through 1960s it was the home of Richard Baker, city forester and superintendent of city public buildings and grounds.Chalets were a popular variant of the early twentieth-century Arts and Crafts movement.LISTEN HERE
105 Needham Place
This Tudor Revival-style house was built in 1907 for Professor James G. Needham. Needham taught the first course in limnology at Cornell and established a department that became world famous. Limnology is the scientific study of ponds and lakes.The street on which this house was built was named for Needham some years after the original street plan was laid out. It shows up as Thurston Avenue on a map from 1903.LISTEN HERE
900 Stewart Avenue
This building, the so-called "Sphinx Head Tomb," was built in 1926 by the Sphinx Head Society, an honorary organization for male undergraduates at Cornell.Originally built as a single, windowless room, it was designed in the Egyptian Revival style and was intended to resemble an Egyptian tomb. It is one of only two Egyptian Revival style buildings in Ithaca. The other is the Masonic Temple on North Cayuga Street.J. Lakin Baldridge, a Sphinx Head alumnus and member of the Cornell Class of 1915, designed the building, which was used by the society until 1969. Cornell design instructor Stephen Mensch bought the building in 1978 and spent three years converting it into a private residence. The house was occupied for many years by noted astronomer Carl Sagan and his wife and co-author, Ann Druyan.The house sits below street level on the edge of Fall Creek gorge and is hidden by foliage throughout much of the year. It is best viewed from across the gorge, at the south end of the Stewart Avenue bridge.LISTEN HERE
109 Barton Place
This house, which combines Colonial Revival and Queen Anne-style features, is one of the earliest houses in the district. It was built on speculation as residential rental property sometime between 1899 and 1902. It was designed by Clinton Vivian, one of Ithaca's leading residential architects and a social friend of many of the district's early residents.The family of Frank A. Barton occupied the house from sometime after 1909 through the 1950s.Barton--for whom this street and Barton Hall at Cornell were named--was a professor of military science and tactics.LISTEN HERE
212 Fall Creek Drive
This eclectic house was built in 1909, probably as residential rental property. Distinctive features include the double-pitched hipped roof with flared eaves, Prairie-style windows, and Craftsman-inspired porch.The house's first occupant was John Bergen, a salesman, who lived there through the 1920s. It was later a sorority house for the Rho Psi and Alpha Epsilon Phi societies. Professor George Lauman, who founded the department of rural, or agricultural, economics at Cornell, lived here during the 1940s.LISTEN HERE
