Hangar Theatre
The Thomas brothers—W.T. Thomas and Oliver W. Thomas—came to Ithaca in 1914 and set up an aviation company. According to pilot and longtime aviation buff Charles L. Smith, they established a landing field on what was once a peach orchard on the west shore of the lake near the Inlet in 1916, making it the second-oldest airport in New York State. They ran a flying school from the field, which at that time was laid out as an aerodrome without any laid-out runways. By the 1920s, the field had become the Ithaca Municipal Airport. During the Depression, a Civil Works Administration project expanded the airport with asphalt runways and a two-story glass, steel, and cinder-block hangar. Huge crowds attended the September 17, 1934 opening of the airport, celebrated with fireworks and parachute jumps. The Hangar Theatre opened in this converted municipal airport hangar in 1975.The Hangar Theatre continues to celebrate the building’s aeronautical past in many ways, from the name of our volunteer corps, PROPS, to the photo of Amelia Earhart in the theatre’s lobby. The Hangar’s logo features a red flag, the international navigational symbol for the letter “B” or “Bravo,” echoing the cries of delighted theatre audiences.In addition to the Brindley Street plant, the city gave the Thomas brothers use of the area that is now Cass Park as a flying field. Many Thomas airplanes were tested there. When the Thomas-Morse Scout went into production, every tenth airplane was test flown from the runway in Cass Park.
Aeroplane Factory
The 1882 bird’s eye map of Ithaca shows an extensive complex of multistory factory buildings and smokestacks at the site now known as the Aeroplane Factory. The Thomas Brothers Aeroplane Company began renting a factory at this site in December 1914, according to Ithaca Journal news articles announcing the move to Ithaca of the aviation company. According to deed records, the Thomas-Morse Aircraft Corporation owned the factory at this site from 1918 to 1923. During its tenure operating the factory, the company got the order for the Tommy plane from the Army in 1917, and the plane was manufactured in part there. “The Inlet plant, of frame construction covering 60,000 square feet,” explained a 1919 Aircraft Yearbook article, “is busy with the manufacturing of airplane parts, especially those requiring hand work.” Today the Aeroplane Factory buildings house an office park.The Ithaca Board of Trade recruited the company, from Bath, NY. They offered them space in what had been the Wycoff poultry incubator plant on Brindley Street, recently vacated. There were two buildings, one of which still stands. The other was a wooden building that was located where a parking lot is now.
Significant Elements and Historic Ithaca
The three-story frame building that now houses Significant Elements architectural salvage warehouse was built in 1888. It was originally a factory for the Electric Seamless Hosiery Company. The factory used knitting machines to produce cotton and wool hose. At the time, the tracks of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad ran just south of the building's Center Street location. By the early 1900s, a carriage manufacturing business operated by James Pritchard was located in the building, the precursor to Pritchard & Son auto dealers. The Burns Brothers blacksmith shop later took over the building. Then, from about 1917 to 1919, the Thomas-Morse Aircraft Corporation leased the building, along with its neighbor, and made experimental engines at 210 and 212 Center Street. A 1919 Aircraft Yearbook trade magazine article explained that “under its monstrous elms the Experimental Plant, with 10,000 square feet of space, houses the company’s designers.”[1] Later, the building became a corset factory, a storage facility for Rothschild’s department store, a private storage facility and moving company, a paper company, and a furniture store.A mural on the side of the building was completed in 2011 by local artist Mary Beth Ihnken to celebrate the many different histories of the buildings use. The mural includes a Tommy Plane on the top left remembering the buildings history as a warehouse space during WWI for the Thomas Morse Aircraft Company. [1] Manufacturers Aircraft Association, Aircraft Yearbook 1919 (New York: Manufacturers Aircraft Association, 1919)[2] HIstoric Ithaca's Plain St. Mural - photograph by Zoe Van Nostrand, Fall 2020
Morse Chain Factory
In 1906, the Morse Chain Company built an 80,000-square-foot plant on this site on South Aurora Street. Between 1914 and 1916, the factory quadrupled in size. In 1916, the Thomas-Morse airplane division, the Thomas-Morse Airplane Corporation, was created. The company built the Thomas S-4 Scout for the U.S. Army. The next year the company designed the MB-3 fighter plane, the first of its kind designed in the United States. (Unfortunately, the company didn’t win the contract to produce the model.) The Morse Chain Company occupied the factory buildings on this site until 1928, at which point it became known as BorgWarner. BorgWarner stayed at the plant until 1982, when it moved to its current location on Warren Road. Emerson Power Transmission used the factory from 1983 until the plant closed in 2011. As of 2024 the site is currently in the process of being converted to a multi-use development called the Chain Works District.
Thomas Morse S4-B Scout - The History Center in Tompkins County Exhibit Hall
The Thomas-Morse Scout on display in The History Center was donated to the Ithaca Aviation Heritage Foundation (IAHF) in 2010 by Dr. William Thibault. It was restored by volunteers over ten years under the direction of the IAHF, and flew an celebratory 100-year flight over Ithaca on September 28th 2018. The plane was moved into the Tompkins Center for History and Culture during the spring of 2019 and is on permanent loan from IAHF to The History Center in Tompkins County. A single seat biplane, the Scout served as an advanced trainer for students graduating from dual control trainers. Students nicknamed it the "Tommy." The Scout on display is serial number 4358, production number 183. Designed as an advanced pursuit trainer the S4 Scout was used extensively by the Army Air Corps as a trainer for those pilots going "over there" to fly in World War I. Nearly 600 were manufactured in Ithaca during the War years.
Barton Hall
Architect Lewis F. Pilcher designed the Gothic Revival New York State Armory and Drill Hall, and it was completed in 1917. It served as a military drill hall for the Department of Military Science and functioned as an airplane hangar during World War I, when Army School of Aeronautics instructors taught students military aviation science. In 1940, the drill hall was named Barton Hall for Colonel Frank A. Barton, an 1891 Cornell graduate of the Military Science program who went on to serve in the U.S. Army, as Cornell professor of Military Science and Tactics, and as Cornell's first ROTC commander.
Ruth Carol Taylor - Mohawk Airlines Flight Attendant in 1957
In 1957, Ruth Carol Taylor made aviation history by becoming America’s first African American flight attendant.Born in Boston, Massachusetts, and raised in upstate New York, Taylor grew up on a farm and graduated from Trumansburg High School. She went on to study at Elmira College and became a registered nurse in 1955 when she graduated from Bellevue School of Nursing in New York City.Wanting to break the color barrier in the airline industry, Taylor applied to become a flight attendant for Trans World Airlines in 1957 but was rejected due to her skin color. After filing a complaint with the New York State Commission of Discrimination, TWA faced no consequences; however, other airlines began to reconsider their discriminatory hiring policies.In December of 1957, Taylor was hired by Mohawk Airlines, where she was selected out of a competitive pool of 800 applicants.On February 11th, 1958, Ruth Carol Taylor made aviation history by becoming America’s first African American flight attendant. Her first flight on the job took off in Ithaca, New York, from the Ithaca Tompkins International Airport with a destination of JFK in New York, New York.
Tommy Plane - 2018 Centennial Flight
After a ten year restoration project by the Ithaca Aviation Heritage Foundation (IAHF), the Thomas-Morse S4-C Scout made a public flight on September 29, 2018, at the current Tompkins County airport. The plane, and original "Tommy Scout" manufactured in Ithaca in 1918, had been donated to IAHF by Dr. William Thibault, and restored to full flight worthiness by a dedicated team of volunteers. Most of the fuselage is original, while the wings are new construction. It was part of the first batch of 100 airplanes ordered by the Army. We know this because it is the early ‘B’ model which was replaced by the more common ‘C’ model in the next order. IAHF believes it was the 91st S-4B produced.For its centennial flight in the skies of Tompkins County, Tommy was flown by pilot Ken Cassens from the Rhinebeck Aerodome.A crowd of hundreds gathered below to watch the flight. See the youtube.com/@TompkinsHistory for videos of the flight.
Tommy Plane - 2018 Centennial Flight
After a ten year restoration project by the Ithaca Aviation Heritage Foundation (IAHF), the Thomas-Morse S4-C Scout made a public flight on September 29, 2018, at the current Tompkins County airport. The plane, and original "Tommy Scout" manufactured in Ithaca in 1918, had been donated to IAHF by Dr. William Thibault, and restored to full flight worthiness by a dedicated team of volunteers. Most of the fuselage is original, while the wings are new construction. It was part of the first batch of 100 airplanes ordered by the Army. We know this because it is the early ‘B’ model which was replaced by the more common ‘C’ model in the next order. IAHF believes it was the 91st S-4B produced.For its centennial flight in the skies of Tompkins County, Tommy was flown by pilot Ken Cassens from the Rhinebeck Aerodome.A crowd of hundreds gathered below to watch the flight. See the youtube.com/@TompkinsHistory for videos of the flight.
