MEANS RESTRICTION PROJECT,
CORNELL UNIVERSITY
HISTORIC RESOURCES REPORT
Bero Architecture PLLC, 32 Winthrop Street, Rochester, NY 14607
11150
Historic Resources Report
Means Restriction Project
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY
May 26, 2011
Prepared for:
David Cutter
University Landscape Architect
Prepared by:
John Bero
and
Katie Eggers Comeau
of
Bero Architecture PLLC
32 Winthrop Street
Rochester, NY 14607
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................................... 1
PURPOSE .......................................................................................................................... 1
METHODOLOGY............................................................................................................. 2
HISTORIC OVERVIEW ............................................................................................................. 4
INTRODUCTION.............................................................................................................. 4
1865-1880: FOUNDING OF THE UNIVERSITY ........................................................... 4
1880-1900: INFORMAL PLANNING AND THE PICTURESQUE AESTHETIC ........ 9
1900-1940: BEAUX-ARTS PLANNING AND COLLEGIATE IDEALS .................... 14
1940 - 2000: POST-WAR EXPANSION, MODERNISM, AND THE POSTMODERN ERA ......................................................................................................... 24
CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................ 29
BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................................... 31
Cornell University
Means Restriction Project Historic Resources Report
INTRODUCTION
PURPOSE
The Means Restriction Project involves the modification of seven bridges crossing the
Cascadilla and Fall Creek gorges, on and adjacent to Cornell University’s central campus,
in order to prevent suicides.
Figure 1: Map showing the location of the seven bridges included in this project. Map courtesy of
NADAAA.
The goal of this report is to identify, describe, and investigate the history of the bridges
that will be affected. This information will be used to evaluate the impact of the project
on historically significant bridges. The report includes a brief history of the Cornell
campus, particularly the gorges and bridges, documents the area’s extant landscape and
architectural elements, and assesses the historic and/or architectural significance of
individual resources.
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METHODOLOGY
To determine the significance of the bridges, Bero Architecture PLLC staff toured the
seven bridge sites, identified extant features, and researched the history of the bridges.
The bridges were evaluated by applying the eligibility criteria for the National Register of
Historic Places, a nationwide standard for assessing historic resources. Properties that are
more than 50 years old, retain a sufficient level of integrity1, and possess architectural or
historical importance are eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places.2
The following Criteria for Evaluation have been developed by the National Park Service
to provide a standardized method for determining significance:
The quality of significance in American history, architecture, archaeology,
engineering, and culture is present in districts, sites, buildings, structures,
and objects that possess integrity of location, design, setting, materials,
workmanship, feeling, and association, and:
1) That are associated with events that have made a significant
contribution to the broad patterns of our history; or
2) That are associated with the lives of persons significant in our past; or
3) That embody the distinctive characteristics of a type, period, or
method of construction, or that represent the work of master, or that
possess high artistic values, or that represent a significant and
distinguishable entity whose individual components may lack
distinction; or
4) That have yielded, or may be likely to yield, information important in
prehistory or history.3
Listing a property in the National Register requires an extensive documentation and
approval process. If a property is not listed but appears to meet the eligibility criteria, it
may be referred to as “potentially eligible.” The actual determination of a property’s
eligibility is made by the regional National Register representative of the New York State
Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation (OPRHP). If OPRHP staff
determines a property eligible, the property is referred to as “deemed eligible.”
1
Integrity is defined by the National Park Service in National Register Bulletin 16A as the
“authenticity of a property’s historic identity, evidenced by the survival of physical characteristics
that existed during the property’s historic period.” A “high level of integrity” is a prerequisite for
National Register Listing.
2
Properties under 50 years old, or those that have achieved significance in the last 50 years, can
also be eligible if they possess “exceptional significance.”
3
Code of Federal Regulations, Title 36, Part 60.
2
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As of May 2011, the OPRHP database indicates two bridges have been deemed eligible:
the Thurston Avenue and Stewart Avenue bridges over Fall Creek.4 The National
Register nomination for the Cornell Heights Historic District, which is adjacent to the
Stewart Avenue Bridge over Fall Creek, states that “the current Stewart Avenue Bridge is
a modern replacement and is excluded from the Historic District.”5 City of Ithaca records
indicate the bridge is in the locally and National-Register listed Cornell Heights district.6
None of the other bridges have been evaluated for eligibility. The Stone Arch Bridge was
designated a New York Historic Civil Engineering Landmark in 1981,7 prior to extensive
modifications made in 1987. This is an honorary designation recognizing historically
significant civil engineering projects.
This historic resource inventory follows the National Park Service’s guidelines for
historic resource documentation. Terminology, classification, and format standards have
been established by the Park Service to ensure consistency in the evaluation of historic
properties.
The documentation text of this report is divided into two sections:
The Historic Overview chronicles the historic development of the Cornell
campus, with a focus on the gorges and bridges, and the relationship between
these areas and important themes of Cornell University, the city of Ithaca, and the
nation.
The Inventory describes each bridge including its setting, associated landscape
features, and other physical characteristics. Known changes or alterations are
described. Each bridge inventory form includes a significance section describing
its architectural and historical importance, the quality of design present on the
property, and notes about important persons associated with the property. Also
included is a discussion of the historic integrity of the resource.
4
Phone conversation with Tony Opalka, OPRHP, 18 May 2011.
Kathleen LaFrank, National Register Nomination, “Cornell Heights Historic District,” 1989.
6
Phone conversations with Leslie Chatterton, Preservation Planner for the City of Ithaca, May
2011.
7
Andre P. Martecchini et al., “Reconstruction of the Central Avenue Bridge,” Paper presented at
the 5th Annual International Bridge Conference, 13-15 June 1988.
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HISTORIC OVERVIEW
INTRODUCTION
The central Cornell Campus is bounded by Fall Creek on the north and Cascadilla Creek
on the south. Each creek is spanned by several vehicular and pedestrian bridges. This
project involves seven bridges: three crossing the Cascadilla Creek (Stewart
Avenue/Cascadilla, Stone Arch and Trolley bridges), and four spanning Fall Creek
(Stewart Avenue/Fall Creek, Suspension, Thurston Avenue, and Beebe Dam bridges).
The bridges range in age from the late 19th to the early 21st century and represent a
variety of nineteenth and twentieth-century bridge construction types. Other bridges on
and adjacent to campus are not included in this report because they are not part of the
Means Restriction Project.
1865-1880: FOUNDING OF THE UNIVERSITY
Cornell University was founded in the mid-19th century during a period of higher
education reform in the United States. Until that time, most American colleges and
universities focused on education of theologians, teachers and lawyers. Much of the
general population viewed the traditional college as elitist, while some writers, educators,
and politicians attacked it as “irrelevant to contemporary needs.”8
The movement to “democratize” higher education culminated with Congressional
passage of the Land Grant College Act, also known as the Morrill Act, in 1862. This act
gave each state in the Union a share of western government lands, which were to be sold
to fund the establishment of agricultural and engineering colleges. The land-grant
colleges that arose from the act promoted practical education, the right of all social
classes to higher education, and freedom for students to choose their courses of study.9
In New York State, the availability of land-grant money spawned fierce competition
among higher learning institutions. To help settle the issue, State Assemblyman Ezra
Cornell offered to donate a personal endowment of $500,000 if the entire land grant was
used to fund a new university in Ithaca. With the aid of his fellow legislator, Andrew
Dickson White, Cornell drafted legislation creating Cornell University that passed the
State Legislature on April 27, 1865.10
8
Paul Venable Turner, Campus, an American Planning Tradition (Cambridge, Massachusetts:
The MIT Press, 1984), 129.
9
Ibid., 140.
10
Carol U. Sisler, Enterprising Families, Ithaca , New York, Their Houses and Businesses
(Ithaca, NY: Enterprise Publishing, 1986), 57.
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From the time of its inception, Cornell was shaped and enriched by the contrasting
philosophies espoused by its founder and benefactor, Ezra Cornell, and its first president,
Andrew Dickson White. Cornell, a successful, self-made entrepreneur, with a Quaker
background, embraced the ideals of the land-grant movement. Believing in universal
practical education, Cornell favored economical utilitarian facilities, and championed the
study of science and technology. White, a patrician academic, was interested in
architecture, art, philosophy, political science, and had a different vision of the new
university. White advocated a grand quadrangle lined with durable stone Gothic
buildings fulfilling the ideals of the architectural theorist Charles Ruskin. White felt the
base of East Hill would provide the most pragmatic and convenient location for the new
campus, while Cornell, recognizing the value of the magnificent view from the crest of
East Hill, insisted the university be located there. Cornell, who donated 200 acres of his
East Hill farm for the site of the new school, eventually prevailed and the first buildings
were erected along the west-facing crest of the hill.
In 1865, an appointed building committee began planning the first building program.
The origin of today’s Arts Quad can be traced to the adoption of a quadrangular campus
plan in which academic buildings would surround a 15-acre square with each side
measuring one thousand feet. As the first phase in the development of the campus, three
buildings would be erected. The first two buildings would each contain a block of lecture
rooms sandwiched between dormitory rooms. The plan was based on recent buildings at
Yale and was conceived so the dormitory rooms might eventually be converted to
classrooms. The third building of the group was to contain a library and museum.
Four architecture firms were invited to submit designs. Following additional research,
intensive review of the submitted designs, and a spirited debate over style, the building
committee selected the Buffalo architecture firm of Porter and Wilcox. Porter and
Wilcox’s Italianate design offered “the obvious economies of using the mansard roof and
raised basement to provide inexpensive extra floors.”11 The building’s conservative,
restrained exterior conformed to Ezra Cornell’s pragmatic concerns while the
arrangement of the buildings on the site and the rusticated and quoined stone exteriors
appeased White’s tastes and desire for permanence. “The balance of ruggedness and
elegance in the walls of these buildings seems to symbolize the balance of practical and
academic education the founders wanted at Cornell.”12 The stone for the first buildings
was quarried from a pasture on the slope of East Hill, which today is part of Library
Slope.13 Ezra Cornell personally supervised the construction of “the Stone Row.”
Following the advice of Frederick Law Olmsted, the first two, nearly identical buildings,
Morrill and White halls, were aligned in plan and elevation.
Only Morrill Hall was completed when the university opened in 1868. White Hall was
completed the following year. The unexpectedly large number of students immediately
created a need for additional classroom space. A two-and-one-half-story wood building,
11
Kermit Carlyle Parsons, The Cornell Campus, a History of Its Planning and Development
(Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1968), 45.
12
Ibid., 45.
13
Sisler, 57.
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housing classrooms and laboratories, was constructed in the center of the proposed
quadrangle in 1869. Despite A. D. White’s protests regarding the location and
appearance of the structure, the building represented the first of the many no-frills,
utilitarian, accessory buildings on the campus over the years. Although intended to be
temporary, the building remained in use for 24 years until its site was needed to provide
space for a permanent stone building facing the quadrangle. McGraw Hall and Sibley
Hall were completed during the next two years using funds donated by John McGraw of
Dryden and Hiram Sibley of Rochester. Archimedes Russell of Syracuse was the
architect for both buildings. McGraw Hall, housing a library, a museum of scientific
collections and classrooms, was envisioned as the centerpiece of the group of buildings
defining the west side of the proposed large square quadrangle.
The original Sibley Hall, constructed in 1870 to house the Sibley College of Mechanic
Arts, constitutes the western nine bays of the building existing today. Russell continued
to employ the Second Empire style and primary design elements used in the three original
buildings. Although a story less in height than nearby White Hall, Russell used the
higher grade elevation at the site of the new building and increased the height of the first
story to align the cornice and roof of Sibley with the buildings of the original stone row.
White, in his position as president, was keenly interested in the aesthetic development of
the new campus, and interviewed Frederick Law Olmsted in the late 1860s regarding
design of the new campus. Olmsted urged the university to abandon the quadranglebased campus plan in favor “of a freer disposition of the buildings more in keeping with
the rugged topography of the site and the unforeseeable demands of later generations.”14
White oversaw the grading and landscaping of the quadrangle during the 1870s.
Although Olmsted’s suggestion for a great terrace west of the Stone Row never
materialized, the view of the lake and valley was recognized by the university
administration as an important attribute from the beginning of the university’s existence.
While White remained committed to the development of the “stone” quadrangle, he also
supervised the development of the area immediately south of the Arts Quadrangle, a part
of the campus devoted from the earliest years to non-academic college facilities. The
original buildings in this part of the campus were the “informal group” or “red brick
group” consisting of Sage College (1872) and Sage Chapel (1873), both designed by
Charles Babcock, the University’s first Professor of Architecture, and both built with
donations by Cornell trustee and benefactor Henry W. Sage. The Ruskinian Gothic Sage
College (now Sage Hall), sited on the hilltop of the near south campus at some distance
from the Old Stone Row, was conceived as a residence for women students, to
complement Cascadilla Hall, a former water cure spa south of Cascadilla Gorge which
had been converted to a residence for male students and faculty. Sage Chapel was sited
roughly midway between Sage College and Morrill Hall. While one of the original
founding principles of Cornell was the “unsectarian education”, not dominated by any
religious sect, Mrs. Sage convinced her husband to donate funds for a chapel upon noting
the lack of religious facilities in Sage College. These polychromatic brick High Victorian
14
6
Parsons, 48.
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Gothic buildings were sited picturesquely between small ravines, following the more
naturalistic planning philosophy advocated by Olmsted.
The 1870s also saw the development of private homes for faculty members along the east
side of East Avenue, an area known as “Faculty Row,” and along the west side of Central
Avenue. Only the A.D. White House on East Avenue survives.
Early attention to the architectural development of the campus did not extend to
landscape improvements. Accounts of the university’s first years consistently
emphasized the physical hardships involved in getting to, from, and around campus on
poor or nonexistent roads, walks, and bridges. Many students and faculty lived in
Cascadilla Hall or other lodgings south of campus, and had to cross Cascadilla Creek to
get to classes. A description of the challenges of access appeared in The Cornell Era in
1879:
At first there was no way of crossing Cascadilla gorge except by a small footbridge which was much lower than the present one. To get to this those primitive
heroes had to clamber down a unique combination of ladder and stairs. Then,
poor souls, they crawled up a rugged steep on the other side, which has been
much changed by grading since then. Afterwards following an ancient board
fence across what was open field, after many ups and downs, they reached the
South Building.15
The sole bridge over the Cascadilla in the vicinity of campus, the “small foot-bridge” on
the site of the present Stone Arch Bridge, had been completed only the day before classes
started.16 The journey from the west was also challenging, involving a steep hike up East
Hill, through a cemetery (the “Bone-Yard Cut”) and cow pastures. These conditions
were relieved somewhat in the mid-1870s when an omnibus provided service between the
village flats and Cascadilla Hall.17 While the problems of access were ameliorated, the
condition of campus roads, walks, and bridges remained regular sources of complaints
into the early decades of the 20th century.
15
16
17
“Early Days of the University,” The Cornell Era XI, No. 19 (28 February 1879), 345.
Ronald Ostman, Cornell Then and Now (Ithaca: McBooks Press, 2003), 117.
Ostman, 104, 117.
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Figure 2: The first bridge over the Cascadilla Creek in the location of the
present Stone Arch Bridge. From Young, p. 10.
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1880-1900: INFORMAL PLANNING AND THE PICTURESQUE
AESTHETIC
After a period of declining enrollment and financial difficulty in the 1870s, Cornell
University entered a sustained period of growth in the 1880s. The university’s
enrollment expanded from less than 400 in 1880, to over 1500 students in 1891,18 while
its physical plant doubled in size. During this period several important new buildings
were added to complete three sides of the Arts Quadrangle. For the northwest and
northeast corners of the quadrangle Charles Babcock designed the 1881 Franklin Hall
(now Tjaden Hall) and the 1888 Lincoln Hall, both in the Richardsonian Romanesque
style. The engineering complex at Sibley Hall was expanded several times, using the
original Second Empire West Sibley design as a template. At the south end of the
Quadrangle, William Henry Miller designed two of his campus masterpieces – Uris
Library (1891) and Boardman Hall (1892), which effectively divided the Arts Quad and
the near-south campus into separate outdoor spaces – one a formal academic preserve and
the other an informal grouping of residential and student service buildings. Miller’s
design for the Uris Library fused elements of Henry Hobson Richardson’s19 architectural
vocabulary and elements from a preliminary scheme by distinguished Boston architect
Henry Van Brunt to produce a building of outstanding functional and aesthetic design.
Viewed by many as Miller’s best work and an outstanding example of the Romanesque
style, the building, with its elegant McGraw Tower, has become one of the most widely
recognized symbols of Cornell University.
The 1893 Dairy Building, along with Lincoln Hall, began the completion of the east side
of the Arts Quadrangle. This two-story, hip-roof, rock-face ashlar stone building for
Cornell’s agriculture program was intended to be the north wing of a large building
facing the quad. A decade later when Liberty Hyde Bailey, dean of the College of
Agriculture, instituted a massive expansion program for the department, agricultural
college functions were moved to a new larger area at the east edge of the campus and the
Dairy Building was incorporated into the design of Goldwin Smith Hall.
Increased attention to the design and condition of the campus landscape was evident in
this era as roads and walks were gradually improved. Andrew Dickson White advocated
for campus beautification, particularly at the entrance to campus:
The grounds of Cornell University, already becoming well known throughout the
country for their exceeding beauty, afford many opportunities for enrichment …
The present entrances, north and south, are utterly unworthy of such an institution
and of its beautiful Campus. Moreover, other very striking opportunities are
presented: for, say, ten thousand dollars a beautiful bridge of stone might be
18
Parsons, 177.
Henry Hobson Richardson was one of the best known and most creative American architects
practicing during the fourth quarter of the 19th century. Richardson’s work was largely
responsible for the popularization of the Romanesque Revival style during the 1880s and 1890s.
19
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thrown over Cascadilla Gorge where the main avenue of approach to the
University crosses it by the present temporary iron bridge. A single stone arch
spanning the Gorge at this point above the Falls, would be not only of high use for
centuries, but would be a most beautiful object in the landscape, attracting the
admiration of all visitors.20
In 1896, a gift from William H. Sage enabled the University to construct a stone arch
bridge as Dickson had envisioned, designed by William H. Miller. This was part of a
general beautification of the south entrance area, including new walks and the Eddy
Gate.21
Figure 3. A trolley passing the “Eddy Gate.”
From Parsons p. 184.
20
Andrew Dickson White, “A Plan of Development. What Cornell University Now Needs,” September
1891; cited in Parsons, 296.
21
Parsons, 183; “Campus Improvements,” The Cornell Era XXVIII (1896), p. 345.
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Figure 4. A turn-of-the-century view of the Stone Arch Bridge and south approach to campus.
From Cornell Then & Now, p. 104.
As this primary connection between town and campus was improved, others were added.
In 1892-93 an extension to the existing street railway lines, active in downtown Ithaca
since the mid-1880s, brought the trolley up East Hill. With construction of a bridge in
1893 in the location of the present Trolley Bridge, the line was extended across
Cascadilla Creek to a point on campus near the old Armory (now the vicinity of the
Engineering Quad). The line was further extended along South and East avenues in
1894.
In 1898, Edward G. Wyckoff purchased the electric railway company and began
extending the line across a newly built bridge (the Thurston Road or Triphammer Bridge)
to enhance his development of the picturesque Cornell Heights residential neighborhood
immediately north of campus across Fall Creek. Wyckoff completed the transit loop in
1900, building the Stewart Avenue Bridge over Fall Creek. Upon completion of the
transit connection, the Cornell Heights area developed as a picturesque suburb, home to
many members of the Cornell faculty and staff; the street railway and associated bridges
influenced the development of the greater Cayuga Heights area, further north, as well.
Although Wyckoff intended to exclude students from his Cornell Heights subdivision,
fraternities and sororities began buying and renting houses there before 1910.
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The street railway system would have a significant impact on the development of both the
campus and the surrounding community in the early 20th century. The presence of the
railway line, which mitigated the challenges posed by difficult terrain, facilitated
residential and academic development beyond the confines of the original central
campus.
Figure 5: This 1903 campus map shows the electric railway line along East, Stewart, and Thurston
avenues, with the Cornell Heights subdivision laid out north of Fall Creek. From Parsons, p. 189.
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Figure 6. An electric trolley car crossing Fall Creek on the original Stewart Avenue Bridge. From
Young, p. 73.
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1900-1940: BEAUX-ARTS PLANNING AND COLLEGIATE IDEALS
Popularized by the success of the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the BeauxArts Movement facilitated orderly planning on a grand scale through the incorporation of
disparate buildings within a hierarchical unified pattern.22 After 1900, the Beaux-Arts
system of planning was widely adopted by American educational institutions. A parallel
movement in architecture swept away the eclectic Picturesque styles of the late
nineteenth century and replaced them with a new academic architecture, “whose styling
showed, by a new sense of restraint and discipline of ornament, the results of systematic
training in professional academies of art and architecture.”23 Rather than achieving a
consensus in style, the “academic” movement applied a similar approach to a diverse
group of historically based styles ranging from Beaux Arts classicism to Collegiate
Gothic.
During the first decade of the 20th century, Cornell was strained by over-burdened
facilities and expanding programs. To ease the situation, the university constructed a
number of new academic buildings and significantly increased the size of the campus
through the purchase of land to accommodate future growth. The Arts Quadrangle was
completed, and the faculty homes that had occupied East Avenue were demolished to
accommodate new academic buildings for the sciences and the agriculture programs.
New York architects Carrère and Hastings were engaged to develop a new master plan
for the campus; they also completed the designs for the 1903 Goldwin Smith Hall and the
1904 Rockefeller Hall. The 1903 Stimson Hall, designed by William Henry Miller as a
home for Cornell’s new medical college, completed the southeast corner of the
quadrangle, while the 1902 Sibley Dome linking East and West Sibley Hall, designed by
Miller-trained Arthur Gibb, lent a Beaux Arts touch to the north end of the quad. The
Sibley engineering complex located at the north end of the quadrangle was expanded a
final time with the construction of the more utilitarian Rand Hall in 1912, to house
machine shops, pattern shops, and electrical laboratories.
The Beaux-Arts master plan developed by Carrère and Hastings was criticized by former
president White and others because it proposed constructing a building across the center
of the university’s main quadrangle, and because it seemed to ignore the campus’s hilly
terrain. A new debate arose over how the campus might be expanded. Out of the debate
emerged a consensual recognition that the existing quadrangle and Library Slope should
be reserved as open space. These concepts were incorporated into a subsequent campus
plan prepared by landscape architect Charles Lowrie of New York in 1903. Lowrie’s
plan recognized the campus’s spectacular vistas and used existing landmarks such as
McGraw Tower to define new axes. Lowrie’s tempered version of Beaux Arts planning
extended existing circulation routes in a block-like pattern and took advantage of
Cornell’s dramatic topography, emphasizing the preservation of the gorges as
22
Turner, 167.
Alan Gowans, Styles and Types of North American Architecture, Social Function and Cultural
Expression (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1992), 211.
23
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undeveloped scenic assets. His plan heavily influenced campus planning for the next
fifty years.24
Figure 7: 1903 campus development plan for landscape improvements. From Parsons, p.199.
While Cornell was rapidly expanding its academic facilities, responsibility for the
residential side of campus life was mostly left to the private sector. Other than Sage
College for Women and the aging Cascadilla Hall for men, the University had no
accommodations for students. Fraternal organizations addressed this need by building
residences along streets south and west of the campus. Several clustered on the north rim
of the Fall Creek Gorge in the Cornell Heights neighborhood. Another group developed
on the former Fiske estate, located between University Avenue and Fall Creek. The
Fiske mansion was occupied by the Chi Psi fraternity until it burned in 1906. Chi Psi
built a new house on the same site. The remainder of the property was subdivided into
smaller lots, many of which were purchased by other fraternities. Two of the earliest
fraternities established in the area were the imposing ca. 1902 Neoclassical Phi Sigma
Kappa house and the ca. 1900 Italian Renaissance style Alpha Tau Omega house. By
1914, forty-one fraternities had been established at Cornell.25
Concurrent with the emergence of Beaux-Arts planning, an educational reform
movement developed that attempted to reestablish traditional collegiate values at higher
learning institutions. As universities like Cornell became larger and more complex,
educators promoted a return to intimate communities composed of students and teachers,
sharing intellectual and social values, and emphasizing the development of character and
24
Parsons, 199.
“Delta Kappa Epsilon House” 26 February 1990. National Register of Historic Places
Inventory Form (draft). Prepared for the New York State Department of Parks, Recreation, and
Historic Preservation, Field Services Bureau.
25
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culture more than the learning of trades.26 The motives behind the movement ranged
from the desire to improve academic standards to nostalgia for gentlemanly elitism. The
tradition of English education, including the system of individual colleges within a
university was a strong influence during the period.
The Collegiate movement affected both educational practices and campus planning. The
English residential quadrangle had been used as a model for new residential colleges at
the University of Chicago, Princeton University, and the University of Pennsylvania
during the 1890s. During the first decades of the twentieth century, architect Ralph
Adams Cram became a fervent advocate of “the revival of the medieval English
quadrangle as an expression of English traditionalism.”27
Until his death in 1918, former university president Andrew Dickson White remained a
trustee and an influential presence at Cornell. White, who had always favored Gothic
architecture, was impressed by the residential colleges at Oxford and Cambridge as well
as the new complexes at Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania. White felt similar
facilities were needed at Cornell.28 In 1911, the university contracted with the wellknown architectural firm of Cram, Goodhue, and Ferguson, architects of new Collegiate
Gothic residence halls at Princeton and West Point Academy, to develop a general
landscape plan for men’s residence halls on the slope of East Hill below the Stone Row.
Rather than constructing the residence halls on Library Slope, as had been suggested in a
1910 campus plan, Cram’s plan located new buildings on the west side of West Avenue.
This created a clear physical distinction between the academic and residential quadrants
of the campus, preserved the unobstructed view from the Stone Row, and recognized
Library Slope as an important landscape feature of the campus.
During the first decade of the twentieth century, Cornell University acquired additional
lands to accommodate future growth. Included in the university’s purchases was a 14acre parcel, located between Stewart and West Avenues. In 1912, the architecture firm of
Day and Klauder was hired to provide construction drawings for the residence halls. Day
and Klauder’s design was divided into small housing units, with each unit
accommodating sixteen to thirty students. The design embodied the ideals of the
Collegiate movement and allowed for phasing of construction as funds permitted.
Designed in the Collegiate Gothic style and incorporating indigenous stone laid in a
coursed square rubble pattern, the buildings defined intimate courtyards that constitute
some of Cornell’s finest exterior spaces. The architects designed an overall plan for the
fourteen acres of land purchased from Franklin Cornell in 1902. Construction of the first
unit, Founders Hall, began in 1914 and Baker Court was completed in 1916. A
corresponding residential initiative for women students resulted in the construction of
Risley Hall in 1913 and the Balch Halls of the 1920s on the North Campus. Both the
North and West Campus development initiatives were facilitated by the transportation
links created by the electric railway line, which remained in operation until 1935: the
26
Turner, 215.
Ibid., 217.
28
Parsons, 48.
27
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women’s residences on North Campus were just north of the Thurston Avenue Bridge,
and West Campus was adjacent to the line along Stewart Avenue.
Figure 8. Balch Hall under construction. From Cornell Then & Now, p. 64.
Another priority that emerged in the early 20th century, particularly among many alumni,
was the development of new athletic facilities. Since 1890, athletic events had been held
at Percy Field, at the foot of Fall Creek, requiring participants and spectators to travel up
and down East Hill. Informal facilities for sports and recreation had also developed at
Beebe Lake, where students skated, sledded, and swam.
To provide more easily accessible facilities for organized sports, a group of alumni
petitioned for the creation of athletic fields in open land south of Tower Road and east of
faculty housing on East Avenue. The same land, however, was also desired by the
College of Agriculture, which was then housed in a complex of new buildings on the east
side of East Avenue north of Tower Road and had a barn in the present-day location of
Comstock Hall, east of Garden Avenue and south of Tower Road. This conflict was
settled in 1910 by a compromise that effectively designated Tower Road as the
delineation between the College of Agriculture, to the north, and athletic facilities, to the
south.29
29
Parsons, 205-212; Ostman, 34; “Background to Controversy,” Cornell Alumni News 50, No. 12
(15 March 1948).
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Figure 9: The first phase of athletic facilities developed in the 1910s: the original Schoellkopf stands,
with automobile viewing area on top; Schoellkopf Memorial Hall; and Bacon Cage, the pyramidalroofed building at right. From Cornell Then & Now, p. 84.
Barton Hall, across Campus Road from Hoy Field, was also constructed during this
period. By the terms of the Morrill Act, Cornell was required to provide military
training, a mandate that was taken more or less seriously in various eras. In 1907,
Cornell president Jacob Gould Schurman began lobbying the state to allocate funds for a
new drill hall. In 1914, the state appropriated $350,000 “for the purpose of enabling
Cornell University adequately to discharge its obligations to give instruction in military
science” and construction of the new drill hall began, designed by State Architect Lewis
F. Pilcher. The chosen site was east of faculty houses lining East Avenue; when
constructed, the massive drill hall dominated its sparsely developed surroundings.
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Figure 10: Barton Hall in an early postcard view. From Todd, p. 238.
Completion of the drill hall came at a fortuitous time, as it proved a necessary facility for
the training of military officers during World War I. It remained the primary location for
indoor training for both University academic programs in military science and ROTC,
and was the state’s central armory and training facility; its massive drill hall also came to
be used as a gymnasium and for University functions such as commencements, reunions,
and dinners. In 1940, the building was named for Col. Frank A. Barton, a member of the
class of 1891 who served as Commandant of the Cadet Corps from 1904 to 1908 and
commandant of ROTC from 1917-1921. The state turned the facility over to the
University in the 1980s.30
30
Laws of New York, 1914, chapter 237; Cornell Alumni News, 1 February 1940; both in “Barton
Hall” folder in the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections; see also Nancy L. Todd, New
York’s Historic Armories: An Illustrated History (Albany: State University of New York Press,
2006), 238.
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Figure 11: Barton Hall interior during World War I. From Cornell Then & Now, p. 88.
In his annual report of 1919-20, President Jacob Gould Schurman noted the importance
of acquiring the lower portions of the two gorges, then privately owned, to ensure their
protection as scenic assets. He also advocated keeping them “in their wild natural
condition” and opening selected vistas through removal of trees, so that “members of this
university community while going to and fro on the Campus are not to be shut out from
the wondrous beauty by which they are encompassed and which in previous years it was
our good fortune to enjoy.”31
Donations from University trustees Henry W. Sackett and Robert H. Treman ensured
protection of parts of the gorges and made possible efforts to build stairways and trails
facilitating safe public access in the 1920s; this work was halted after the 1929 stock
market crash but resumed, under the auspices of the Civilian Conservation Corps, in the
mid-1930s.32
31
Annual Report of President Jacob Gould Schurman for the Academic Year 1919-1920,
excerpted in Parsons, 308-311.
32
Jeanette Knapp, “Trails and Tribulations,” Cornell Alumni News, November 1984.
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After a World War I delay, building activity on the Cornell campus resumed. The
buildings constructed on campus between the wars were characterized by careful study,
resulting in excellence of design, fitness to the site, and attention to detail. The University
Plan Committee was formed in the mid-1920s to guide the planning and architectural
development of the campus. The series of campus plans developed during the 1920s and
1930s retained courtyard-based plans for extending the men’s residence hall area. Bryant
Fleming, one of the planners hired by the university during this period, explained the
rationale for the tempered formal planning style adopted by Cornell as follows:
The beauty of the Cornell campus is its admixture of extreme natural and a semisense of formality. Were the campus plan to be completely and architecturally
formalized, its primary value, its extreme natural beauty, would be suppressed to
a point of eradication.33
The plans produced during the period recognized the value of the campus’s natural assets
and included recommendations to further enhance their aesthetic quality.
The goals of enhancing natural assets and controlling traffic converged in a reenvisioning of the southern connection between campus and town. The 1925 plan
proposed conversion of the Stone Arch Bridge into a pedestrian bridge connecting to the
“Broad Walk,” a wide pedestrian walkway replacing the southern part of Central Avenue.
Vehicular traffic was to be carried on a bridge east of the Stone Arch Bridge in the
vicinity of the existing trolley bridge. This would create a direct route from College
Avenue to East Avenue, which linked at the north end to the Thurston Avenue Bridge
and the Cornell Heights neighborhood. Through traffic would thereby be channeled into
a single, more direct route, allowing other parts of campus to be reserved for internal and
foot traffic. This concept, although repeated in other plans, was not implemented, and the
Stone Arch Bridge remains the primary vehicular access to Central Campus from the
south with the former Trolley Bridge a pedestrian connection.
33
Bryant Fleming. “Report to Accompany a Tentative Plan for the Development of Cornell
University Property Bounded by East Avenue, University Avenue, Cascadilla Creek, and
Interrelated Areas.” 16 June, 1930, 2-4.
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Figure 12: 1925 “General Plan for Cornell University.”
From Parsons, p. 236.
In 1931, a new phase of the men’s residence hall complex was completed following the
master plan for the area developed in the mid 1920s. The new section, designed by
architect Charles Z. Klauder, incorporated two seven-story towers linked by a one-story
arcade and a memorial to the 263 Cornellians who died in World War I. The new
complex was centered on a formal axis originating from McGraw Tower on top of the
hill and at the center of campus.
After the ambitious building plans of the twenties, campus plans were stalled by the
economic depression of the 1930s and World War II. An exception was the great
Collegiate Gothic law school building made possible by a gift from Myron C. Taylor. In
its massing, detailing and somber dignity, the building embodied the design ideals of the
period. Constructed around a sunken court, the building’s massive central tower was
intended to establish a secondary east/west axis on the campus, complementing the
existing axis of McGraw Tower.34 The building’s main entrance, located at the base of
tower, incorporated a grand terrace and stair oriented toward the view of the valley to the
west.
In 1919, under Cornell University President Schurman, the Sibley College of Mechanical
Engineering was consolidated with the College of Civil Engineering to form the College
34
Ibid.
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of Engineering. At the same time, Schurman called for new engineering facilities that
would replace Franklin and Lincoln Halls. In 1925, the architecture firm of York and
Sawyer drew plans for a massive Collegiate Gothic engineering complex that would have
wrapped around the north end of the quad and that would have replaced all of the existing
engineering buildings, except the oldest two sections of Sibley Hall and Rand Hall. After
more than a decade of discussion, the University Plan Committee in 1938 abandoned this
plan in favor of a new engineering complex on the south campus, which would allow for
the expansion of other academic programs into the Arts Quadrangle buildings vacated by
the engineering programs.
Figure 13: 1942 plan showing engineering complex at south campus.
From Parsons, p. 252.
During the first 40 years of the 20th century, the planning efforts of Cornell University
recognized the value of the campus’s natural assets and focused on enhancing the
aesthetic quality of the campus through both building and landscaping improvements.
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1940 - 2000: POST-WAR EXPANSION, MODERNISM, AND THE
POST-MODERN ERA
Campus planning underwent a drastic transformation after World War II. Ballooning
enrollments, limited funds, changing patterns of education, the need to accommodate
automobile movement and parking, and the emergence of research and development as
an important component of the university mission, led to rapid abandonment of the
Beaux-Arts model of planning. Universities and colleges, facing increasingly complex
and contradictory programmatic needs, gradually abandoned the comprehensive campus
plans popular during the first half of the century. Formal master plans, with axial
arrangements of classical buildings, might have been successful if planners had been able
to predict the future needs of institutions, but these plans proved impossible to complete
because of rapid changes in the demands on colleges. They have been replaced with
informal arrangements that allow growth and change by providing an infrastructure that
accommodates unforeseen buildings, creation of entirely new disciplines, and the influx
of automobiles.
Cornell’s campus grew dramatically in this period, accommodating growing student
populations, new and expanding disciplines, and the automobile. While the Cascadilla
Gorge remained the southern boundary of campus, the campus increasingly spanned the
Fall Creek gorge. The transition during the 1930s and 1940s to the automobile, which
had resulted in the gradual phasing out of the trolley line, also resulted in changes to the
nature of the roadways and bridges across the gorges. The Stewart Avenue/Fall Creek,
Stewart Avenue/Cascadilla Creek, and Thurston Avenue Bridges, all associated with the
development of the street railway and the Cornell Heights subdivision, were rebuilt in
this period (1942, 1962, and 1960, respectively); the Beebe Dam Bridge was built in
1960 to take pedestrian traffic off Thurston Avenue Bridge and provide a more direct link
between North Campus and the Colleges of Home Economics and Agriculture on the
central campus. The Suspension Bridge was rebuilt in 1962 to provide a wider and safer
pedestrian connection between Central and North Campus.
This transition to the automobile also affected plans for areas of the campus – the Stone
Arch Bridge continued to remain a vehicular bridge, and the phasing out of the trolley
line allowed the development of the new Engineering Quad. The former trolley bridge
was converted to a pedestrian-only connection between the campus and Collegetown to
the south.
Modern architecture theories, rejecting revivals of historic precedents and emphasizing
functionalism, were introduced in America during the 1930s. Classical precedents did
not exist for many of the needs of the day and proponents of new styles began to attack
classical and Gothic revival buildings as intellectually bankrupt and functionally
obsolete.35 By the end of the 1950s, Modernism had become the predominant style for
new buildings on most college campuses.
35
Turner, 251.
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The introduction of modern architecture came gradually, beginning with the construction
of Olin Hall in 1941-42, designed by Shreve, Lamb, and Harmon. Olin Hall, the first
building to be constructed under the plan for the new engineering complex, employed an
Art Moderne style that made careful use of brick and stone to complement its revivalstyle neighbors.
The rest of the complex followed in the post-war period, when the increasing need for
research and expanded engineering facilities made development of the Engineering Quad
a priority. Architectural fashion and the need for efficiency ensured a more thorough
embrace of the International Style. Shreve, Lamb, and Harmon designed Kimball and
Thurston Halls (1953) at the south end of the Engineering Quad. The other main
buildings on the Quad were designed by Perkins and Will: Phillips Hall (1954), Carpenter
Hall (1957), Upson Hall (1958), Grumman Hall (1958), Hollister Hall (1959), the nuclear
reactor building (1963), and Bard Hall (1964). These buildings employed a distinctive
1950s-60s International-Style modernism, featuring sleek glass-and-aluminum curtain
walls, flat roofs, and avoidance of historically derived ornamentation.
Figure 14: The Engineering Quad seen from Campus Road, May 1958; Phillips Hall is at left and
Upson Hall is in the background. Photograph courtesy of the Division of Rare and Manuscript
Collections.
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Just north of the Engineering Quad, Statler Hall was constructed in 1950 to house the
quickly growing hotel management program, now the School of Hotel Administration.
As the world’s first college-level hotel management program, the department was quite
innovative, and considerable care went into the planning of a building that would house
its multiple functions: the building needed lecture halls and classrooms, a working inn,
kitchens both for teaching and for professional food preparation, and a faculty club. The
original building, designed by Holabird & Root & Burgee in an understated modernism,
has been significantly expanded several times to accommodate the School of Hotel
Administration’s growth and the expanding needs of a working hotel.36
As engineering and the sciences migrated to newer up-to-date facilities, the original
quadrangle was available for the arts and humanities departments and assumed the name
of the “Arts Quad.” In 1960, Civil Engineering vacated Lincoln Hall and the Department
of Music moved in the following year. As part of the changes, Morse Hall and the shops
north of Franklin (Tjaden) and Sibley Hall were demolished in the late 1950s and the
College of Architecture relocated from White Hall to renovated space in Franklin and
Sibley Halls in 1959. The unified College of Architecture, Art and Planning was created
in 1967. The Department of Architecture began to occupy Rand Hall in 1974.
The physical changes wrought by post-war campus growth occasionally brought into
question design practices in which the satisfaction of modern programmatic needs
outweighed the architectural and historic significance of the existing campus. A dramatic
example was the replacement of functionally obsolete Boardman Hall with Olin Library
in 1959—the only modern structure defining the original campus quadrangle. Although
the design of the new library building deferred to the form of its neighbors and respected
the axial view from the A. D. White House, it resulted in the loss of the historic Law
School building. To address concerns, the Buildings and Properties Committee of the
Board of Trustees adopted a policy to promote compatible new design that would respect
the existing campus. The policy states, “older buildings, the spectacular gorges, the
views across the town to the west, of the lake to the north, of the valley to the south, the
symbolism of the Library Tower, must not only be recognized but embraced by the
architect.”37
On December 21, 1965, 100 years after the establishment of the university, Morrill Hall,
the first building erected on the campus, was designated a National Historic Landmark.
Several years later, considerable debate ensued when a new art gallery was proposed on
campus. The university’s art gallery had been housed in the A. D. White House. To
provide greater and more suitable space, located closer to the Department of Art’s
36
“Statler Hall,” A Reprint from The Hotel Monthly, August 1950; “Statler Hall, Cornell
University,” dedication brochure; Statler Hall folder, Division of Rare and Manuscript
Collections, Cornell University.
37
Cornell University Board of Trustees, Buildings and Property Committee, “A Policy for Architectural
Design at Cornell,” 11 June 1966.
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facilities, the internationally prominent architect I. M. Pei38 designed a 10-story, 61,000
square-foot building located just west of Franklin Hall (renamed Tjaden) overlooking
Library Slope. The building was both criticized because of its large scale and modern
form and praised for the way its massing deferred to the spatial organization of its
neighbors. Over time, the building has become one of the university’s distinctive icons
and most easily recognized landmarks. The Johnson Museum, which received the
National Honor Award of the American Institute of Architects in 1975, is viewed by
many as one of the campus’s most significant works of architecture.
Figure 15: Johnson Museum under construction (1972). From Kammen, p. 186.
Paralleling a national trend, during the last decades of the 20th century, building
construction received increasing scrutiny from environmental and historic preservation
interest groups. In 1990, the City of Ithaca designated the Arts Quadrangle Historic
District, including nine Cornell University buildings. The City also designated four other
university buildings, the Foundry and the “informal group” of buildings south of the Arts
Quad, as individual local landmarks.
38
I. M. Pei, whose well-known international work includes the famous pyramidal entry pavilion at the
Louvre, is probably the best-known international practitioner of Modernist architecture. He won the
highest award granted in the field of architecture, the Pritzker Prize, in 1983. Other well-known work in
the Unites States includes the East Building at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.
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Figure 16: Local historic district and individual listings of Cornell properties. From Ithaca
Department of Planning and Development, www.ci.ithaca.ny.us.
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CONCLUSION
Cornell University’s campus has evolved over a period of 135 years. Today, the campus
is a diverse collection of landscapes and buildings encompassing a broad range of size,
style, and quality. Buildings of each era of construction reflect the ambitions, budgets,
educational philosophies, and aesthetics of their particular time.
The relationship between the campus community and the rugged Fall Creek and
Cascadilla gorges has changed over the years, as the gorges have functioned as campus
boundaries, treacherous obstacles, scenic assets, recreational facilities, and safety
hazards. As an article in the Cornell Alumni News noted in 1984, “The Cascadilla and
Fall Creek gorges that form the south and north boundaries of the main campus have long
been recognized both as valuable scenic assets and expensive maintenance and safety
problems.”39 Until the early 20th century, the gorges, and the dearth of crossings, posed
challenges to students and faculty who lived off campus but also contributed to the hilltop
campus’s picturesque beauty and pleasant separation from urban life. The advent of
electric railway service and construction of additional bridges increased physical ties to
adjacent neighborhoods and affected development patterns on and near campus. In the
early 20th century, development of trails and other recreational opportunities made gorge
access a regular feature of campus life.
In the mid- to late-20th century, storm damage to the trail system, development of yearround indoor facilities to replace seasonal water and ice sports on Beebe Lake, and safety
concerns resulted in restricted access to the gorges and the early-20th century trail system.
Although portions of the lower trails are temporarily closed for repairs, the gorges remain
distinctive features of Cornell’s campus. The bridges spanning the gorges on and around
campus have provided links between Cornell and the greater community, transitional
spaces between campus and city, and viewing points for gorge scenery.
39
Knapp, “Trails and Tribulations.”
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