The
city of
Ithaca, (named for the Greek
island of
Ithaca
), sits
on the southern shore of Cayuga Lake
, in Central
New
York
, USA. It is best known for being home to Cornell
University
, an Ivy League school
with almost 20,000 students (most of them studying on Cornell’s
Ithaca campus). Ithaca College
is located just south of the city in the town of Ithaca
, adding to Ithaca’s “college town” focus and
atmosphere.
The city
of Ithaca is the center of the Ithaca-Tompkins County metropolitan area (which also contains the
separate municipalities of Ithaca
town, the village of
Cayuga
Heights
, the village of Lansing
and other towns and villages in Tompkins
County
). The city is the
county seat of Tompkins County. In 2000, the
city's population was 29,287, and the metropolitan area had a
population of 100,135. 2004 estimates puts the city population at
29,952, an increase of 2.3%.
Namgyal Monastery in Ithaca is the
North American seat of
Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai
Lama.
History
Early history
The inhabitants of the Ithaca area at the time Europeans began
arriving were the
Saponi and
Tutelo Indians, dependent tribes of the
Cayuga Indians who formed part of the
Iroquois confederation.
These tribes had been
allowed to settle on Cayuga-controlled hunting lands at the south
end of Cayuga
Lake
as well as in Pony (originally Sapony) Hollow of
Newfield, New
York
, after being forced from North Carolina
by European invasion. They were driven from
the area by the
Sullivan
Expedition which destroyed the Tutelo village of Coregonal,
located near the junction of state routes
13 and
13A just south of the Ithaca city
limits. Indian presence in the current City of Ithaca was limited
to a temporary hunting camp at the base of Cascadilla Gorge. The
destruction of
Iroquois confederation power
opened the region to settlement by people of European origin, a
process which began in 1789. In 1790, an official program began for
distributing land in the area as a reward for service to the
American soldiers of the Revolutionary War; most local land titles
trace back to the Revolutionary war grants. Lots were drawn in
1791; informal settlement had already started.
Partition of the Military Tract
As part of this process, the
Central New York Military
Tract, which included northern Tompkins County, was surveyed by
Simeon DeWitt. His clerk
Robert Harpur
had a fondness for ancient Greek and Roman history as well as
English authors and philosophers (as evidenced by the nearby
townships of Dryden and Locke). The Commissioners of Lands of New
York State (chairman Gov.
George Clinton) followed
Harpur's recommendations at a meeting in 1790.
The Military Tract
township in which proto-Ithaca was located he named the Town of
Ulysses
, the Latin form of the Greek Odysseus from Homer's Odyssey. A few years
later DeWitt moved to Ithaca, then called variously "The Flats,"
"The City," or "Sodom," and named it for the Greek island home of
Ulysses (still the surrounding township at
the time — nowadays Ulysses is just a town in Tompkins County).
Contrary
to popular myth, DeWitt did not name many of the classical
references found in Upstate New
York such as Syracuse
and Troy
; these were
from the general classical fervor of the times. The Odyssey is routinely taught to elementary
school students in the Ithaca area.
The growth of Ithaca, village and city

State Street in Ithaca, ca. 1901
In the 1820s and 1830, Ithaca held high hopes of becoming a major
city when the primitive Ithaca and Owego Railway was completed in
1832 to connect the
Erie Canal navigation
with the Susquehanna River to the south. In 1821, the village set
itself off by incorporation at the same time the Town of Ithaca
parted with the parent town of Ulysses. These hopes survived the
depression of 1837 when the railroad was re-organized as the Cayuga
& Susquehanna and re-engineered with switchbacks in the late
1840s; much of this route is now used by the
South Hill
Recreation Way. However, easier routes soon became available,
such as the Syracuse, Binghamton & New York (1854).
In the
decade following the Civil War railroads were built from Ithaca to
all surrounding points (Geneva, New York
; Cayuga, New
York
; Cortland, New York
; Elmira, New
York
; Athens, Pennsylvania
) mainly with financing from Ezra Cornell; however, the geography of the
city has always prevented it from lying on a major transportation
artery. Nevertheless, the village of Ithaca became a
chartered city in 1887.
When the Lehigh Valley Railroad built its main
line from Pennsylvania to Buffalo in 1890 it bypassed Ithaca
(running via eastern Schuyler County
on easier grades), as the Delaware, Lackawanna
and Western Railroad had done in the 1850s. Ithaca
became a city in 1888 and remained a small manufacturing and retail
center until the recent education boom. In 1891, the Rev. John M.
Scott and
a local druggist, Chester Platt, invented the ice
cream sundae in Ithaca, though other cities, such as Two Rivers,
Wisconsin
, make the
same claim.
Local Industry
Ithaca was nationally known for the
Ithaca Gun Company, makers of
highly-valued shotguns, and
Ithaca Calendar Clock Company.
The largest industry was the Morse Chain company, still active in
Lansing, New York, as
Borg Warner Automotive and on South
Hill as
Emerson Power
Transmission. In the post-World War II decades,
National Cash Register and the
Langmuir Research Labs of
General Electric were also major
employers.
Higher education
Cornell
University
was founded by Ezra
Cornell in 1865. It was opened as a
coeducational institution, which was extremely
unusual at the time; women first enrolled in 1870. Ezra Cornell
also established a
public
library for the city.
Ithaca College
was founded as the Ithaca Conservatory of Music in
1892.
The film industry
During the early 20th century, Ithaca was an important center in
the
silent film industry. The most
common type of film produced was the
cliffhanger serial.
These films often featured the local natural scenery.
Many of these films
were the work of Leopold Wharton and
his brother Theodore Wharton in
their studio on the site of what
is now Stewart
Park
. Eventually the film industry centralized in
Hollywood
, which offered the possibility of year-round
filming, and film production in Ithaca effectively ceased.
Few of the silent films made in Ithaca are preserved today..
Geography and climate

Hemlock Gorge along Fall Creek before
emptying into Beebe Lake on Cornell's Campus.
The valley in which Cayuga Lake is located is long and narrow with
a north-south orientation. Ithaca is at the southern end (the
"head") of the lake, but the valley continues to the southwest
behind the city. Originally a river valley, it was deepened and
widened by the action of Pleistocene ice sheets over the last
several hundred thousand years. The lake, which drains to the
north, formed behind a dam of glacial
moraine. The rock is predominantly
Devonian and, north of Ithaca, is relatively fossil
rich.
Glacial erratics can be found
in the area. The world renowned
fossils found
in this area can be examined at the
Museum of the Earth.
Ithaca was founded on flat land just south of the lake — land that
formed in fairly recent geological times when silt filled the
southern end of the lake. The city ultimately spread to the
adjacent hillsides, which rise several hundred feet above the
central flats: East Hill, West Hill, and South Hill. Its sides are
fairly steep, and a number of the streams that flow into the valley
from east or west have cut deep
gorges,
usually with several
waterfalls.
Ithaca experiences a moderate
continental climate, with cold, snowy
winters and sometimes hot and humid summers. The valley flatland
has slightly milder weather in winter, and occasionally Ithacans
experience simultaneous snow on the hills and rain in the valley.
The phenomenon of mixed precipitation (rain, wind, and snow),
common in the late fall and early spring, is known
tongue-in-cheek as
ithacation to
many of the local residents.
[2007]
The natural vegetation of the Ithaca area, seen in areas unbuilt
and unfarmed, is northern
temperate broadleaf
forest, dominated by
deciduous
trees.
Due to
the microclimates created by the impact
of the lakes, the region surrounding Ithaca (Finger Lakes
American
Viticultural Area) experiences a short but adequate growing
season for winemaking. As such the region is home to many
wineries.
Education
Ithaca is a major educational center in
Central New York.
The city is home to
Ithaca
College
, situated on South Hill, and Cornell
University
which overlooks the town from East Hill. The
student population is very high, as
almost 20,000 students are enrolled at Cornell, with an additional
6,300 students at Ithaca College.
Tompkins Cortland Community
College is located in the neighboring town of
Dryden, New York, and has an extension
center in downtown Ithaca.
Empire State College
offers non-traditional college courses to adults in
downtown Ithaca.
The
Ithaca City School
District, which encompasses Ithaca and the surrounding area,
enrolls about 5,500 K-12 students in eight elementary schools, two
middle schools, Ithaca High School
, and the Lehman Alternative Community
School, which provides its students wide-ranging freedom to
choose their own curriculum. There are also several private
elementary and secondary schools in the Ithaca area, including
Immaculate
Conception School and the
Cascadilla School.
Economy
The economy of Ithaca is based on education and manufacturing with
high tech and tourism in strong supporting roles.
As of 2006, Ithaca
remains one of the few expanding economies in economically troubled
New York State outside of New York City, and draws commuters from
the neighboring rural counties of Cortland
, Tioga
, and Schuyler
, as well as from the more urbanized Chemung
County
.
With some
level of success, Ithaca has tried to maintain a traditional
downtown shopping area that includes the Ithaca Commons
pedestrian mall and Center Ithaca, a small
mixed-use complex built at the end of the urban renewal era.
Some in the community regret that downtown has lost vitality to two
expanding commercial zones to the northeast and southwest of the
old city. These areas contain an increasing number of large retail
stores and restaurants run by national chains. Others say the chain
stores boost local shopping options for residents considerably,
many of whom would have previously shopped elsewhere, while
increasing sales tax revenue for the city and county. Still others
note that the stores, restaurants, and businesses that remain in
downtown are not necessarily in direct competition with the larger
chain stores. The tradeoff between sprawl and economic development
continues to be debated throughout the city and the surrounding
area. (Another commercial center, Collegetown, is located next to
the Cornell campus.
It features a number of restaurants, shops,
and bars, and an increasing number of high rise apartments and is
primarily frequented by Cornell University
students.)
Ithaca has many of the businesses characteristic of small American
university towns: used bookstores, art house cinemas, craft stores,
and vegetarian restaurants. The collective
Moosewood Restaurant, founded in 1973,
was the wellspring for a number of vegetarian cookbooks;
Bon Appetit magazine ranked it among the
thirteen most influential restaurants of the twentieth
century.

An aerial view of Stewart Park as
6,000 Ithaca residents set the unofficial world record for the
largest human peace sign in June, 2008.
Culture
Ithacans support the
Ithaca
Farmers Market, professional theaters (
Kitchen Theatre,
Hangar Theatre,
Icarus Theatre), a civic
orchestra, much parkland, the
Sciencenter, a hands-on science museum for
people of all ages, and the
Museum
of the Earth. Ithaca is noted for its annual artistic
celebration of community: The
Ithaca
Festival (and its parade), the
Circus Eccentrithaca. The
Constance
Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts provides grants and Summer
Fellowships at the
Saltonstall
Arts Colony for New York State artists and writers. Ithaca also
hosts what is described as the third-largest
used-book sale in the
United States.Other festivals occur annually, with music and food.
These include The Apple Festival in the fall, with many different
varieties of apples and apple products; Chili Fest in February, a
local contest involving many local restaurants who compete to make
the best chili in several different categories.
Ithacans are widely considered to be oriented towards peace. In
June 2008, local peace activist Trevor Dougherty led almost 6,000
members of the Ithaca community in forming a giant human peace
sign. This event took part during the Ithaca Festival, making
Ithaca the unofficial home of the world's largest human peace
sign.
Ithaca has also pioneered the
Ithaca
Health Fund, a popular cooperative health insurance. Ithaca is
also home to one of the United States' first
local currency systems,
Ithaca Hours, developed by
Paul Glover (building on the pioneering work of
Ralph Borsodi and
Robert Swann).
Music and Musicians
Ithaca is known for its resident musicians and their performances.
Traditional music, modern influences and experimental qualities
combine to create a unique musical experience that has become known
as "The Ithaca Sound". It can be heard at the root of any of the
dozens of performers or groups that have emerged from Ithaca and
the surrounding communities. These musicians have come from many
backgrounds to pursue their careers in Ithaca. The School of Music
at Ithaca College attracts talented musicians, some of whom retain
their residence in Ithaca after graduating and take up work as
performing musicians or in the sound engineering field. Several
notable musicians have relocated from other countries to Ithaca in
order to begin their careers, most notably
Samite of Uganda,
Mamadou Diabaté of Mali and Malang
Jobateh of Senegal. In the nearby village of Trumansburg, the
Finger Lakes
Grassroots Festival of Music and Dance is held every third week
in July. Initiated as a benefit for Aids research at the State
Theater in Ithaca by the band
Donna
the Buffalo, it has successfully occurred every year for the
past 18 years. The Grassroots Festival has brought thousands of
bands through the region, further enriching the local musical
palate with every new introduction of musical style and culture.
Several local bands call it home as either a figurative birthplace
or a nurturing environment within which to develop new forms of
music. Other notable local music festivals include the Ithaca
Festival, Musefest, the Summertime Block Party, the Juneteenth
Celebration and Rock the Arts. Other regionally, nationally and
internationally known performers and musical groups that call
Ithaca home include:
Johnny Dowd,
John Brown's Body,
The Sim Redmond Band,
Donna the Buffalo,
Who You Are,
The
Burns Sisters, Willie B, and
Kevin
Kinsella.
Media
The dominant
local newspaper in
Ithaca is a morning daily, The
Ithaca
Journal, founded 1815. The paper is owned by
Gannett, Inc., publishers of
USA Today. The
alternative weekly newspaper
Ithaca Times has a larger
circulation , though it should be noted that the Times is
distributed free of charge. Other area publications include
Tompkins Weekly, the
Ithaca Community News
the
Cornell Daily Sun,
the
Ithacan, and the
Tattler. (The latter three
are run by student staffs at Cornell University, Ithaca College,
and Ithaca High School, respectively.)
Ithaca is also home to several
radio
stations.
WVBR
is run by
Cornell
University
students, but is an independent, commercial station
in the rock format, playing a mix of
modern and classic rock during the week and specialty shows on the
weekend. WICB
is a
non-commercial student-run station, run by communications students
at Ithaca
College
. The Cayuga Radio Group, a subsidiary of
Saga Communications, Inc.,
owns Q-Country and Lite Rock 97.3, a country and soft rock station,
as well as I-100, a classic rock station and located in Cortland
, and The Wall, based in Auburn
, has a transmitter in Ithaca.
Politics
Politically, the city's population has a significant tilt towards
liberalism and the
Democratic Party.
A
November, 2004 study by ePodunk lists it as
New
York
's most liberal town. This contrasts with the
more
conservative leanings of
the surrounding
Upstate New York
region, and is also somewhat more liberal than the rest of
Tompkins County. In 1988
Jesse Jackson received the most votes in
Ithaca in the Democratic Presidential primary. In 2000
Ralph Nader received more votes for President
than
George W. Bush in the City of Ithaca, and 11%
county-wide. In 2008,
Barack Obama,
running against New York State's Senator Hillary Clinton, won
Tompkins County in the Democratic
Presidential Primary, the only county that he won in New York
State.
Local government
The name
Ithaca designates two governmental entities in the area, the
Town of
Ithaca
and the City of Ithaca
.
The Town of Ithaca is one of the nine towns comprised by
Tompkins County. (Towns in New York are
something like townships in other states; every county outside New
York City is subdivided into towns.) The City of Ithaca is
surrounded by, but legally independent of, the Town.
The Town of Ithaca
contains the Village of
Cayuga Heights
, a small
incorporated upper-middle class suburb located to the northeast of
the City of Ithaca.
The City of Ithaca has a
mayor-council government. The
charter of the City of Ithaca provides for a full-time
mayor and city judge, each independent and elected at
large. Since 1995, the mayor has been elected to a four-year term,
and since 1989, the city judge has been elected to a six-year term.
Since 1983, the city has been divided into five wards, each
electing two members to the
city
council, known as the Common Council, for staggered four-year
terms.
The Town government consists of an executive, the Town Supervisor,
elected to a four-year term, and a Town Council of three members
also elected for terms of four years.
The majority of local property taxes are actually assessed by an
entirely independent agency with entirely different borders, the
Ithaca City School
District.
City-Town consolidation
In December 2005, the City and Town governments began discussing
opportunities for increased government consolidation, including the
possibility of joining the two into a single entity. This topic had
been previously discussed in 1963 and 1969.
The possibility of consolidation is controversial for Town
residents who could be forced to pay higher taxes as they help
shoulder the higher debt burden that the City has taken on. Some
Town residents also worry that consolidation could lead to
increased sprawl and traffic congestion. However, most of the
Town's population is already concentrated in
hamlets in
proximity to the City's borders and Town residents take advantage
of City amenities. Mayor
Walter Lynn of
the Village of Cayuga Heights (a wealthy Ithaca suburb located in
the Town) called consolidation discussion a "waste of time."
Gallery
Image:Hdr-Ithacafalls2.jpgImage:HDR-Ithacafalls.jpgImage:IthacaDiner.jpgImage:CornellSunset.jpgImage:BW-IthacaAlley.jpg
Greater Ithaca
The term "Greater Ithaca" encompasses both the City and Town of
Ithaca, as well as several smaller settled places within or
adjacent to the Town:
Municipalities
Census-designated
places
Demographics
[[Image:Ithaca-Cortland CSA.png|thumb|right|300px|Location of the
Ithaca-Cortland CSA and its components:]]
Ithaca is
the larger principal city of the Ithaca-Cortland CSA
, a Combined
Statistical Area that includes the Ithaca
metropolitan area
(Tompkins County) and the Cortland
micropolitan area
(Cortland County), which had a combined population
of 145,100 at the 2000
census.
As of the
census of 2000, there were 29,287
people, 10,287 households, and 2,962 families residing in the city.
The
population density was
5,360.9 people per square mile (2,071.0/km²). There were 10,736
housing units at an average density of 1,965.2/sq mi
(759.2/km²). The racial makeup of the city was 73.97%
White, 6.71%
Black or
African American, 0.39%
Native American, 13.65%
Asian, 0.05%
Pacific Islander, 1.86% from
other races, and 3.36%
from two or more races.
Hispanic or
Latino of any race were 5.31% of the
population.
There were 10,287 households out of which 14.2% had children under
the age of 18 living with them, 19.0% were
married couples living together, 7.8% had a female
householder with no husband present, and 71.2% were non-families.
43.3% of all households were made up of individuals and 7.4% had
someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average
household size was 2.13 and the average family size was 2.81.
In the city the population was spread out with 9.2% under the age
of 18, 53.8% from 18 to 24, 20.1% from 25 to 44, 10.6% from 45 to
64, and 6.3% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was
22 years. For every 100 females there were 102.6 males. For every
100 females age 18 and over, there were 102.2 males.
The median income for a household in the city was $21,441, and the
median income for a family was $42,304. Males had a median income
of $29,562 versus $27,828 for females. The
per capita income for the city was
$13,408. About 13.2% of individuals and 4.2% of families were below
the
poverty line.
Infrastructure
Transportation
Ithaca is
in the rural Finger
Lakes
region about 250 miles to the northwest of New York City
; the nearest larger cities, Binghamton
and Syracuse
, are an hour's drive away by car, while Rochester
is about two hours away.
Ithaca is
served by Ithaca Tompkins Regional
Airport
, located about three miles to the northeast of the
city center. US Airways
Express offers flights to New York LaGuardia
and its hub at Philadelphia
using a mixture of small jets and propeller
craft. Delta Airlines
provides twice-daily jet service to its hub at Detroit
Metro
airport and Continental Connection offers three
daily turboprop flights to Newark
Liberty International Airport
. Many residents choose to travel to Syracuse
Hancock International Airport
, Greater Binghamton Airport
, Elmira-Corning Regional
Airport
or Greater
Rochester International Airport
for more airline service options.
Ithaca lies at over a half hour's drive from any
interstate highway, and all car trips to
Ithaca involve at least some driving on two-lane state rural
highways. The city is at the convergence of many regional two-lane
state highways: Routes
13,
13A,
34,
79,
89,
96,
96B, and
366. These are usually not
congested except in Ithaca proper.
There is frequent intercity bus service
by Greyhound Lines, New York
Trailways, and Shortline (Coach USA), particularly to Binghamton
and New York
City
, with limited service to Rochester
, Buffalo
and Syracuse
, and (via connections in Binghamton
) to Utica and Albany. The bus station
serving all these companies is the former Delaware, Lackawanna
& Western
railway station on
Meadow St. between W State and W Seneca streets, about a kilometer
west of downtown Ithaca.
Ithaca is
the center of an extensive bus public transportation system —
Tompkins Consolidated Area
Transit
(TCAT) — which carried 3.1 million passengers in
2005. TCAT was reorganized as a non-profit corporation in
2004 and is primarily supported locally by Cornell University, the
City of Ithaca and Tompkins County. TCAT operates 39 routes, many
running seven days a week.
It has frequent service to downtown,
Cornell, Ithaca College, and the Pyramid Mall in the neighboring
Town of Lansing, but less frequent
service to many residential and rural areas, including Trumansburg
and Newfield
. Chemung
County Transit runs weekday commuter routes into Schuyler
and Chemung
counties, and Tioga County Public Transit runs
weekday routes into neighboring Tioga
, primarily to serve Cornell employees who prefer to
live in these rural counties, or are forced to because of the high
house prices near Ithaca.
GADABOUT Transportation Services, Inc. provides demand-response
paratransit service for seniors over 60 and people with
disabilities.
Ithaca Dispatch and Finger Lakes Taxi provide local
and regional taxi service. In addition, Ithaca Airline Limousine
connects to the airport.
In July of 2008, a non-profit called
Ithaca
Carshare began a
car-sharing service
in Ithaca. Ithaca Carshare has a fleet of 13 vehicles shared by
over 800 members as of December 2009 and has become a popular
service among both city residents and the college communities.
Vehicles are located throughout Ithaca both downtown and at Cornell
University and Ithaca College. With Ithaca Carshare as the first
locally run carsharing organization in New York State, others have
since launched in Buffalo and Syracuse.
Norfolk Southern freight trains reach
Ithaca from Sayre,
Pennsylvania
, mainly to deliver coal to the Milliken Power
Station and haul out salt from the Cargill salt mine, both on the
east shore of Cayuga Lake. There is no passenger rail service
anymore, although from the 1870s through the 1930s there were
trains to Buffalo via Geneva, New York
; to New York City via Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania
(Lehigh
Valley Railroad) and Scranton, Pennsylvania
(DL&W); to
Auburn, New
York
; and to the US northeast via Cortland,
New York
; service to Buffalo and New York City lasted until
1961. The Lehigh Valley's top New York City-Ithaca-Buffalo
passenger train,
The Black
Diamond, was one of railroad history's classic expresses, and
was often referred to as 'The Handsomest Train in the World'. It
was named after the railroad's largest commodity, anthracite
coal.
Ithaca also was one of the first communities in the nation to build
a trolley system.
As a growing urban area, Ithaca is facing steady increases in
levels of vehicular traffic on the city grid and on the state
highways. Outlying areas have limited bus service, and many people
consider a car essential.
However, Ithaca is a walkable and bikeable community for others.
One positive trend for the health of downtown Ithaca is the new
wave of increasing urban density in and around the Ithaca Commons.
Because the downtown area is the region's central business
district, dense mixed-use development that includes housing may
increase the proportion of people who can walk to work and
recreation, and mitigate the likely increased pressure on already
busy roads as Ithaca grows. The downtown area is also the area best
served by frequent public transportation. Still, traffic congestion
around the Commons is likely to progressively increase.
Unlike most urbanized areas in the United States, Ithaca does not
have direct access to the
Interstate
highway system. In 1968, it was proposed to convert Route 13
from Horseheads to Cortland through Ithaca into a limited access
highway (it is currently such for three miles heading north from
Ithaca), but the plan lost local and State support.
Other recent changes and trends

Cascadilla Creek gorge, just south of
the Cornell campus.
For decades, the
Ithaca Gun
Company tested their shotguns behind the plant on Lake St.; the
shot fell into Fall Creek (a tributary of Cayuga Lake) right at the
base of Ithaca Falls. A major clean-up effort sponsored by the
United States
Superfund took place from 2002
to 2004.
The former Morse Chain company factory on South Hill, now owned by
Emerson Power Transmission, was the site of extensive groundwater
and soil contamination. Emerson Power Transmission has been working
with the state and South Hill residents to determine the extent and
danger of the contamination and aid in cleanup. Last Accessed on
December 6, 2008.
Reputation
Ithaca is commonly listed among the most culturally liberal of
American small cities. The
Utne
Reader named Ithaca "America's most enlightened town" in
1997. According to ePodunk's Gay Index, Ithaca has a score of 231,
versus a national average score of 100.
Like many small college towns, Ithaca has also received accolades
for having a high overall quality of life. In 2004,
Cities
Ranked and Rated named Ithaca the best "emerging city" to live
in the United States. In 2006, the Internet realty website
"Relocate America" named Ithaca the fourth best city in the country
to relocate to. In July 2006, Ithaca was listed as one of the "12
Hippest Hometowns for Vegetarians" by
VegNews Magazine and chosen by
Mother Earth News as one
of the "12 Great Places You've Never Heard Of."
These designations have at times polarized some local residents:
some note the recognition with pride, some see it as an indication
of decadence, and others feel that it is a narrow view of the
community. Some, particularly conservatives, note that the positive
press often appears in left-leaning publications, or have more
general questions about the methodologies used in determining the
designations.
In its earliest years during frontier days, what is now Ithaca was
briefly known by the names "The Flats" and "Sodom," the name of the
Biblical city of sin, due to its reputation as a town of "notorious
immorality", a place of horse racing, gambling, profanity, Sabbath
breaking, and readily available liquor.
These names did not
last long; Simeon DeWitt renamed the
town Ithaca in the early 1800s, though nearby Robert
H.
Treman State Park
still contains Lucifer Falls.
That early reputation for immorality, together with its more recent
reputation as having a left-leaning population, has once again made
Ithaca mildly infamous in some circles as the "City of Evil," due
to a satirical campaign by members of a politically conservative
online discussion board. Some Ithacans have embraced the label.This
idea is further buoyed by Cornell University's early nickname, "the
godless university" which came about due to their lack of
affiliation with any organized religion.
Points of interest

The falls of Buttermilk Falls State
Park
- *
Cornell
Plantations

- * Cornell Dairy Bar
- *
Llenroc
House
- *
F.R.
Newman Arboretum
- *
Cornell
Laboratory of Ornithology

For additional information about recreational trails see:
Trails in Ithaca, New York.
Books set (at least partially) in Ithaca
- Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (schoolgirl dialog
captured on Ithaca city buses)
- Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov ('Waindell University' a
portrait of Cornell)
- The War Between the
Tates by Alison Lurie
('Corinth University', a thinly-disguised portrait of Cornell)
- Been
Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me by Richard Fariña ('Mentor University',
same as above)
- The Widening Stain
by Morris Bishop
- The Names of the
Dead by Stewart O'Nan
- Enchantment by
Orson Scott Card (partially set in
Ithaca and fictional nearby towns)
- Various Kurt Vonnegut books have
Ithaca references, most notably Player
Piano, Slaughterhouse-Five, and
Cat's Cradle
- Fool on the
Hill by Matt Ruff
- The Emigrants by
W.G. Sebald
- The Alex Bernier
Mysteries by Beth Saulnier
takes place in a fictionalized Ithaca known as Gabriel
- We Were the
Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol
Oates
- Triphammer by
Dan McCall
- Mailman by J. Robert
Lennon takes place in a fictionalized Ithaca known as
Nestor
- Z For Zachariah by
Robert C. O'Brien
- Between Two Fires by
Nicholas Nicastro describes scenes
in and around the site of Ithaca during the Revolutionary War
- Water for Elephants
by Sara Gruen (the main character, Jacob,
was a Cornell University veterinary student)
- The second book in the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer, called New Moon, has a mention of Ithaca and Cornell
University. In the paragraph, Carlisle
Cullen, a doctor in the novel, is working nights at a hospital
in Ithaca and teaching part time at Cornell, and Jasper Hale is a student at the university.
Movies set or filmed (at least partially) in Ithaca
See also
The Whartons Studio for
films shot in Ithaca prior to 1920.
Notable residents and natives
This list is abridged from
- Hans Bethe, resident, physicist, Nobel Prize winner, Cornell Professor,
head of theoretical division of the Manhattan Project
- Roald Hoffmann, Nobel Prize
winner, American theoretical chemist
- Alex Haley, native, author of
Roots: The
Saga of an American Family and the Autobiography of Malcolm
X
- Mary McDonnell, native, actor in
Dances with Wolves,
Independence Day,
Battlestar
Galactica, and others
- Vladimir Nabokov, resident,
Cornell Professor, author (most famously of Lolita)
- Roy H. Park, resident, media executive, founder of Park
Communications and the Park
Foundation
- Carl Sagan, resident, astronomer,
Cornell Professor, popularizer of science, and author and host of
Cosmos
- Rod Serling,
resident (of nearby Interlaken, NY
), Ithaca
College
Professor, screenwriter, creator and host of
The Twilight
Zone
- Steve Squyres, resident, astronomer, Cornell Professor, Principal
Investigator of the Mars
Exploration Rover Mission
- E. B.
White, resident, novelist, author of Charlotte's Web and co-author of
The Elements of
Style
- Paul Wolfowitz, native, academic,
Deputy Secretary of
Defense (2001-2005), former President of the World Bank (2005-2007)
- Dustin Brown, NHL
player for the Los Angeles Kings
- Josh Bard. MLB baseball catcher for
the Washington Nationals
- Greg Graffin,
resident, lead singer of the seminal punk band Bad Religion and holds a Ph.D from Cornell
University
in Zoology.
Graffin
is currently a professor at UCLA
.
- David Foster Wallace,
native, novelist
- Johnny Dowd, resident, musician,
poet, and co-founder of Zolar Trucking
- Disashi Lumumba-Kasongo,
guitarist for band Gym Class Heroes
- Richard Feynman, resident, Nobel
Prize winner, professor of physics
See also
References
- {{Cite web
|url=http://www.ci.ithaca.ny.us/index.asp?Type=B_BASIC&SEC={480C93FC-88B9-4C3D-811D-BD7EE0E3F926}&DE={0F21E16C-E234-456D-8841-FF5C2F491300}
|title = History of Ithaca and Tompkins County |author =
Carol Kammen
|publisher = City of Ithaca |accessdate = 2007-08-16 }}
-
http://www.theithacajournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070626/NEWS01/706260304/1002
The Ithaca Journal "New intel in the sundae wars: IHS
grads scoop up ice cream facts" June 26, 2007, accessed June 26,
2007
- The Official Website of the Ice Cream
Sundae
- [1]
- In Ithaca, 6,000 give peace a chance, The
Post-Standard
- ePodunk
- 2000 presidential general election results, New
York State Board of Elections
- 2008 presidential primary election results, New
York State Board of Elections
- Ithaca Times - A Greater Ithaca?
- METROPOLITAN STATISTICAL AREAS AND COMPONENTS,
Office of Management and
Budget, 2007-05-11. Accessed 2008-08-01.
- MICROPOLITAN STATISTICAL AREAS AND COMPONENTS,
Office of Management and
Budget, 2007-05-11. Accessed 2008-08-01.
- COMBINED STATISTICAL AREAS AND COMPONENT CORE BASED
STATISTICAL AREAS, Office of Management and
Budget, 2007-05-11. Accessed 2008-08-01.
- Ithaca Greyhound Station
- "3 Million Bus Passengers and Counting as TCAT Sets Record
in 2005", Tompkins Consolidated Area Transit (TCAT), December
19, 2005. Last Accessed on March 24, 2006.
- "EPA Finishes $4.8 Million Cleanup at Ithaca
Gun", United States Environmental Protection Agency, October
29, 2004. Last Accessed on March 25, 2006.
- "Public Meeting - Emerson Power Transmission Environmental
Investigation", New York State Department of Environmental
Conservation. June 22, 2005.
- Jay Walljasper, Jon Spayde, Ithaca,
New York: A Gritty upstate City Where the Grassroots are
Green, "America's 10 Most Enlightened Towns (and we don't mean
Santa Fe)", May/June 1997 Issue, UTNE Reader
- "Ithaca Community Profile" Gays & Lesbians local
index
- Relocate-America.com, "Relocate-America.com's 2006 list of
America's TOP 100 Places to Live." Available online [2]. Last accessed 4 April 2006.
- Katherine Graham "Ithaca gets high marks from two earthy
publications", July 28, 2006, The Ithaca Journal
- Dr. James Sullivan, "The History of New York State", Book VII:
"The Finger Lakes Region", Chapter VII:
Tompkins County. Lewis Historical Publishing Company, Inc.
(1927) Last Accessed on March 25, 2006.
- See, e.g., 1811 article in local paper, at [3] or Town of Ithaca History project,
available [4] (click on "History Project", then "Historical
maps..." and finally "famous for its notorious immorality").
- "Evil City Trio," and the label is sometimes referenced in the
local press, including the Ithaca Journal [5] and Cornell Daily Sun [6].
Last Accessed 2 April 2006.
- The Godless University by Kramnick, Isaac; Moore,
R. Lawrence ERIC Department of
Education accessed 01.10.2008
External links