A Literary Walking Tour of Ithaca (Historic Brochure Edition) Preview

1

Site of the former Ithaca Hotel

The Ithaca Hotel was a massive brick Victorian structure that served as an entry point for generations of Ithacans. At the time Schoch's guide was written it was home to the Iszard's department store. E.B. White arrived by train and and checked into a room at the Ithaca Hotel for his first night in Ithaca before starting his freshman year at Cornell University."When I landed in Ithaca, I was a green boy if ever there was one," White wrote in an introduction to his collected letters. He reportedly grew so involved with downtown Ithaca life that he registered late at Cornell.

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2

Offices of the Cornell Daily Sun

Several literary greats got their starts in the Sun newsroom. E.B. White was elected editor-in-chief in his junior year. In a May 1920 editorial, "The King's English," he hinted at the philosophy of language he would later make famous in The Elements of Style, an edited version of grammarian William Strunk Jr.'s privately printed classroom text.Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was the Sun's assistant managing editor in 1942, before leaving Cornell and becoming a best-selling novelist. "Was the Sun any good when I was here?" he asked in a 1980 speech in Ithaca saluting the Sun's centennial. "I don't know, and I am afraid to find out. I remember I spelled the first name of Ethel Barrymore 'E-T-H-Y-L' one time -- in a headline."J. Kirkpatrick Sale, a contemporary of Richard Fariña and now a political and social historian, was editor-in-chief in 1957-58.

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3

Chanticleer Tavern

A leading character plays his saxophone in an upstairs room of the Chanticleer Tavern in the novel Halfway Down the Stairs by Cornellian Charles Thompson.

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4

The Ithaca Journal

The Journal appears in different guises in several Ithaca novels. Fariña dubbed it "The Athene Globe" in his novel, Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me. Alison Lurie called it "The Corinth Courier" in The War Between the Tates. In that book, a compromising photo of the leading male character is run across four columns of the Courier's front page. In Baby, by Robert Lieberman, the Journal produces a page-one banner headline, "60-Year-Old Woman Gives Birth to Child." A character responds, "Ah--The Journal always gets its facts screwed up."

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5

DeWitt Park

DeWitt Park is the site of the first public concert by the amazing singing infant in Robert Lieberman's Baby. This downtown park near the Tompkins County Courthouse was host to many antiwar demonstrations during the Vietnam years. It resembles the small park near a courthouse where characters gather in the finale of The War Between the Tates, carrying a large banner reading "Hopkins County March for Peace."

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6

Birthplace of Alex Haley

Birthplace of Roots author Alex Haley, it was also his home for the first six weeks of his life. Born in Ithaca on August 1, 1921, Haley returned to his mother's hometown--Henning, Tennessee--in September while his father completed a master's degree in agriculture at Cornell.

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7

Cascadilla Gorge/ Cascadilla Falls

This gorge gave its name to "Cascadilla Falls," one of the best-known poems by A.R. Ammons:"...ohI donot know where I am goingthat I can live my lifeby this single creek." Ithaca's spectacular gorges are a major motif in its literature. Two Vladimir Nabokov characters meet in a gorge on an outing to "New Wye Falls." The War Between the Tates notes that "...here in Corinth, because of its unique geological history, the means of suicide are always at hand. Wherever claustrophobia strikes, you are seldom far from the easy way out, the traditional Corinth University way, out."

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City of Ithaca Cemetery

This cemetery was visited by White during his undergraduate days. He wrote to his mother of going to town, "through the torturous graveyard, I'll shamble down" and then blames the phrase on "an overabundance of Browning."Incidentally, cemeteries play a leading role in the work of another author who spent time near this one. Before passing a sabbatical year at 105 Cascadilla Park, William Kennedy began one of his best selling novels with the line: "Riding up the winding road of Saint Agnes Cemetery in the back of a rattling old truck, Francis Phelan became aware that the dead, even more than the living, settled down in neighborhoods."

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9

"U-Halls"

Fariña lived in these red-brick dorms as a Cornell freshman in 1955-56.

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10

Belleayre Apartments

Nabokov lived at Belleayre Apartments from 1954 to 1955. If you continue on Stewart Avenue for another one-quarter mile you will be able to look across the Fall Creek Gorge at the ersatz Egyptian temple-like home of astronomer Carl Sagan. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of celestial matters made his entry into literature in 1985 with the publication of his novel Contact.

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12

Suspension Bridge

This bridge is the scene of a lyrical passage in On a Darkling Plain, Clifford Irving's first novel: "He gazed down from the swaying suspension bridge, the cold wind biting his face, reddening it. A fir tree threw down a clump of snow, whitening his mackinaw. Ah--he smiled happily. Just to have a little attention, even from a fir tree. Nice, very nice. Not a bad world, at that." Irving achieved somewhat greater writing fame in 1971 with a Howard Hughes autobiography that turned out to be a hoax.From the same bridge, two major Fariña characters fling plaster statues from a Christmas creche into the frozen depths of "Harpy Creek," aka Fall Creek.

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13

Libe Slope

This slope was immortalized on the first page of Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49. "...A sunrise over the library slope at Cornell University that nobody out on it had seen because the slope faces west."

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14

Arts Quad

The Arts Quad is the scene of a springtime encounter between Pynchon and Fariña, described in Pynchon's introduction to the 1983 edition of Been Down So Long.

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15

Goldwin Smith Hall

Nabokov worked in Room 278 of Goldwin Smith Hall for many years and taught comparative literature in Lecture Room D. The building contains the offices of several current Ithaca literary figures, including Ammons, James McConkey and Dan McCall. It also houses Epoch, the literary magazine founded by the late poet Baxter Hathaway. The magazine published the early work of many Cornell writers.The Cornell English Department, now on the second floor, was the source of instruction for numerous writers. The late Nobel laureate Pearl Buck earned her master's degree in English from Cornell.It was in Goldwin Smith that White met Professor Strunk. The professor's course, "English 8," "taught [White] precepts he never forgot and may have strengthened his hope to be a writer," according to White's biographer Scott Elledge.The Temple of Zeus, an unusual cafe in the basement, is presumed to be Fariña's Plato Pit. The Green Dragon coffee shop in Sibley Hall at the North end of the quadrangle is believed to be Lurie's Blue Cow coffee shop.

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16

McGraw Hall

McGraw Hall was undoubtedly the model for the college building in The War Between the Tates, from which one of the leading males helped a professor escape from a sit-in by lowering him out the window with a rope.

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17

Uris Library and the McGraw Clock tower

This McGraw clock tower reappears throughout Ithaca literature. Characters check their watches by it, although few Ithacans do; the four faces often register slightly different times. In One Man's Meat, White remembers the night in November 1918 when he woke and heard the tower bells ringing out "The Star Spangled Banner" announcing the end of World War I.The clock tower also appears at the opening and close of The Campus on the Hill, the Ithaca-based poem by W.D. Snodgrass:"Up the reputable walks of old established trees,They stalk, children of the nouveaux riches, chimesOf the tall clock Tower drench their heads in blessing: 'I don't want to play at your house; I don't like you any more.'"Uris Library is where, in Nabokov's Pale Fire, the mysterious Gradus stalks Kinbote through the rare books collection. It also provides the scene for The Widening Stain, the mystery novel by W. Bolingbroke Johnson, a pseudonym of Morris Bishop.

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18

Cornell Law School

Fariña described Cornell Law School in Been Down So Long : the Law School has a "pleasant courtyard, splendid for a duel."

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19

Engineering Quad

Fariña described the 1950s-style engineering quad as "tinted aluminum plates, long sheets of weatherproofed glass, dymaxion torsions; the synthetic content of a collective architectural grab bag. Clean, well lighted, cheap to heat, functional, can be torn down and replaced over a long weekend or transported to Las Vegas by helicopter, demolition incorporated in the structural design. A nod to mortality."

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20

Collegetown

Collegetown was called "Lairville" by Fariña. Student Agencies at 409 College Avenue and its "Student Laundries" across the street in Sheldon Court is where "the ambitious, shorthaired young men scramble(d) about, mixing everyone's wash."

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21

Sheldon Court

Sheldon Court was home to White in 1917 and Toni Morrison in 1955. Morrison came to Cornell in 1953 to do graduate work in English. She said she chose Cornell mainly because she had "nowhere to go." In 1955, after turning in what she described as a "shaky" thesis, she received a Master's degree.

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22

Farina Residence

Fariña lived at 226 Linden Avenue in 1959.

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23

Johnny's Big Red Grill

Johnny's Big Red Grill, at the site of the neon bear, achieved posterity as Guido's Grill in Been Down So Long. Johnny's was operated by the Petrillose family from 1919 to 1981 and it collected scores of would-be writers and musicians. Harry Chapin wiped down tables here. Peter Yarrow sang here before he became one-third of Peter, Paul and Mary.It was the usual nighttime gathering place, Pynchon wrote in the introduction to his comrade's novel. He remembered meeting Fariña here to study for finals over bottles of Red Cap ale. As Been Down So Long described it:"A mammoth red neon bear blinked on their faces.... And bang, he was through the swinging doors, inhaling the familiar fumes of Guido's Grill. Odors always able to hang you up, lay bare the honeycombed cells of nasal memory. Frenchfried onion rings, pizzaburgers, bubbly cooking fat, Breath-O-Pine disinfectant."

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24

Farina Residence - College Avenue

Fariña lived in a first-floor apartment at 301 College Avenue in 1956-57. At the time the guide was written it was a Egan's supermarket parking lot.

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25

Carport

Near the rear of 971 E State Street, Fariña and Pynchon helped install the roof on the redwood carport in 1959, according to McConkey. The professor lived in the adjacent house and was adviser to the two Cornell undergraduates. Part of the carport fell down in a severe storm several years later.

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26

Nabokov Residence

Nabokov resided at 957 E State Street in 1953-54, where he reportedly completed work on Lolita.

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Nabokov Residence

Nabokov resided in this brown-and-white frame house from 1948-51.

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Pynchon Residence

Pynchon lived at 702 E Buffalo St in 1957.

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29

Vonnegut Residence

Vonnegut resided in this nondescript house at 109 Williams St in 1940-41.

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30

Original Hal's Delicatessen

Before urban renewal, Hal's Delicatessen stood here, at 309 E State Street. It was a regular dining spot for Rod Serling. The creator of television's original and now legendary Twilight Zone is said to have favored hot pastrami sandwiches. The shop moved to 115 N. Aurora Street for many more years before closing in 2017.

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