Ithaca, New York
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The city of Ithaca (named for the Greek island of Ithaca in Homer's Odyssey) sits on the southern shores of Cayuga Lake, in Central New York.
Setting
The valley in which Cayuga Lake is located is long and narrow, with a north-south orientation. 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 natural vegetation of the Ithaca area, seen in areas unbuilt and unfarmed, is northern temperate broadleaf forest, dominated by deciduous trees. Among these, maples are particularly common. Steep hillsides seen from a distance resemble a curtain of green from late May through September, show bright fall colors in October, and are a display of gray trunks and branches, often with a white snowy background, from November through early May.
The region surrounding Ithaca is dotted with numerous wineries, many of which specialize in the native Labrusca grape varietals, although more and more vintners have started to focus upon the classic Vinifera styles such as Riesling and Cabernet Franc. Despite the relatively short growing season in the Finger Lakes American Viticultural Area, vineyards can flourish due to the microclimates created by the impact of the lakes.
The life of the city
The economy of Ithaca is based on education and tourism, with some manufacturing. The city is home to Cornell University, which overlooks the town from East Hill, and Ithaca College, similarly situated on South 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. 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, occasionally resulting in controversy over political content in academic events.
Tourists come largely for the natural scenery, including three gorges within the city limits and three in nearby state parks. Visitors also enjoy Cayuga Lake, hiking trails, and visits to wineries in lakeside vineyards found north and west of the city.
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. Therefore, 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. 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.)
Ithacans support a popular farmer's market[1], professional theaters[2],[3],[4], a civic orchestra, much parkland, a science museum for children, and a new paleontological museum. Ithaca is noted for its annual artistic celebration of community: The Ithaca Festival[5]. (The Ithaca Festival Parade[6] and Circus Eccentrithaca[7] are legendary!) Another gem is the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts [8] which provides grants and Summer Fellowships at the Saltonstall Arts Colony for NYS artists and writers. Ithaca also hosts what is described as the third-largest used-book sale in the United States.
Politically, the city's population has a strong liberal Democrat political tilt, standing in stark contrast to the more conservative leanings of the region of Upstate New York that surrounds it. Ithaca is known for its amazing variety of liberal groups and activities.
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.
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. Other local print publications include the Ithaca Times, 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.) Local residents often subscribe to out-of-town papers as well. The Post Standard of Syracuse and the New York Times are popular among many community members.
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
Local government
The name "Ithaca" actually designates two governmental entities in the area. 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 of Ithaca.
As of December, 2005, the city and town governments have begun discussing opportunities for increased government consolidation, including the possibility of joining the two into a single town or city. The possibility is controversial for town residents who would be forced to pay higher taxes. This topic was last discussed in 1963 and 1969.
Other non-municipal areas within the Town of Ithaca identified by the US Census Bureau as census-designated places are:
In addition, 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 Town of Ithaca is bordered by other towns of Tompkins County as follows:
- Enfield to the west
- Ulysses to the northwest
- Lansing to the northeast
- Dryden to the east
- Danby to the south
- Newfield to the southwest
The majority of local property taxes are actually assessed by an entirely independent agency with entirely different borders, the Ithaca City School District.
Population and income figures
For census and income data on the two municipalities called "Ithaca" see Ithaca (city), New York and Ithaca (town), New York.
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.
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 Philadelphia using a mixture of small jets and propeller craft. Northwest Airlink provides twice-daily service to Detroit Metro airport. Many residents travel to Syracuse Hancock International Airport, Greater Binghamton Airport, Elmira-Corning Regional Airport or Greater Rochester International Airport for more 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, Adirondack Trailways, and Shortline (First Transit), particularly to New York City.
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 thirty nine routes, many run seven days a week. It has very frequent service to Cornell, Pyramid Mall, and downtown, but less frequent service to many residental areas.
GADABOUT Transportation Services, Inc. provides demand -response paratransit service for seniors over 60 and people with disabilities. Ithaca Dispatchand Finger Lakes Taxi provide local and regional taxi service. Ithaca Airline Limousine connects to the airport.
Regional short haul freight trains reach Ithaca from Sayre, PA, mainly to deliver coal to the Milliken Power Station halfway up Cayuga Lake. There is no passenger rail service, although from the 1870's through the 1930's there was service to Buffalo via Geneva, New York City via Wilkes-Barre (Lehigh Valley Railroad) and Scranton (DL&W), Auburn, and the northeast via Cortland; service to Buffalo and New York lasted until 1961.
Problems faced by the city
Template:Totallydisputed-section Although Ithaca is considered by many to be a very desirable place to live, it also faces some problems. One key problem is transportation. 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 also a walkable and bikeable community for many people.
Ithaca is one of a few small urbanized areas in the US without direct access to the American Interstate highway system. In 1968, it was planned 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. Ithaca may be the only small urbanized area (over 50,000 in population) without a limited access highway connection to the national interstate system.
The City's emphasis is on traffic management and better using the existing road capacity rather than building new roads. New road-building in any of the congested areas would require substantial condemnation of private property. Some pro-highway critics have argued that this is an ineffective means of dealing with increasing traffic congestion, especially in the City's West end. The Ithaca-Tompkins County Transportation Council is the coordinating body for federal and state funded transportation projects covering Ithaca.
One positive trend for the health of downtown Ithaca is the new wave of increasing urban density in and around the Ithaca Commons. But as multi-story mixed-use projects (of offices, hotels, shops, parking and residences) are built, traffic congestion around the Commons will progressively increase.
Retail development trends in the city have created traffic pressure in neighborhoods. In the late 1990's, the City decided to encourage "big box" retail development in an area known as the Southwest. To influence traffic traveling through neighborhoods, the City Government adopted traffic plans to introduce traffic calming elements on City roads including, traffic tables at intersections, mini traffic circles, traffic humps, and a traffic rotary. (These “traffic calming devices” are unpopular among many drivers from Ithaca and the surrounding areas, and are a common local subject of criticism and satire.) The City also rebuilt a long-absent road bridge over Six Mile Creek.
In 2005, Mayor Peterson emphasized pedestrian and bicycle circulation, safety education and traffic enforcement. Highly publicized pedestrian-vehicle and bicycle-vehicle accidents have focused attention on these traffic conflicts. Underfunding of sidewalk construction and maintenance are basic pedestrian infrastructure issues facing the City.
The near-disappearance of grocery stores from neighborhood areas (replaced by larger stores in the commercial strips) has made it harder for Ithacans without cars to shop for food.
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.
There have been recent significant increases in property values in the City. House shopping is very competitive.
History
The original inhabitants of the Ithaca area were the Cayuga Indians, who formed part of the Iroquois confederation. They were driven from the area by the Sullivan Expedition, which 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.
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 apparently 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 NY 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 Ulysses, the Latin form of the Greek Odysseus from Homer's Odyssey. A few years later DeWitt moved to Ithaca 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 Country). Contrary to popular myth, DeWitt did not name many of the classical references found in upstate NY such as Syracuse and Troy; these were from the general classical fervor of the times. Perhaps because of the name, The Odyssey is routinely taught to elementary school students in the Ithaca area.
In the 1820s and 1830, Ithacans 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. 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 1840's; 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, Cayuga, Cortland, Elmira, Athens PA) mainly with financing from Ezra Cornell; however the geography of the city has always prevented it from lying on a major transportation artery. 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 1850's. Ithaca became a city in 1888 and remained a small manufacturing and retail center until the recent education boom.
Ithaca was nationally known for the Ithaca Gun Company, makers of highly-valued shotguns, and Ithaca Calender Clocks. The largest industry was the Morse Chain company, still active in Lansing as BorgWarner Morse. In the post-war decades National Cash Register and the Langmuir research labs of General Electric were also major employers.
Cornell University was founded by Ezra Cornell in 1865. It was coeducational from its inception, which was extremely unusual at the time. Ezra Cornell also established a public library for the city. Ithaca College was founded as the Ithaca Conservatory of Music in 1892.
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, and the films often featured the local natural scenery. Many of these films were the work Leopold Wharton and his brother Theodore Wharton. 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.
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"Most Enlightened Town in America"
Ithaca is commonly listed among the most culturally liberal and "enlightened" of American cities. In 2004, Cities Ranked and Rated named Ithaca the best "emerging city" to live in the United States (although some have criticized the book's methodologies.) The Utne Reader named Ithaca "America's most enlightened town" in 1997 [9].
These designations have at times polarized local residents: some note the recognition with pride, some see it as an indication of decadence, and others (especially native Ithacans) feel that this is a narrow view of a diverse community. Some, particularly conservatives, note that the positive press often appears in left-leaning publications.
"Sin City"
In its earliest years during frontier days, Ithaca had a less savory reputation. In addition to the more innocuous name "The Flats," Ithaca was known as "Sin City" and "Sodom", the name of the Biblical city of sin, due to its reputation as a town of readily-available loose pleasures. These names did not last long; Simeon Dewitt renamed the town Ithaca in the early 1800s. Nevertheless, in a few instances the old names may have lingered to this day. One of the many nearby waterfalls is known as Lucifer Falls, which may be tied to the city's former alleged association with the Dark Side. A dead-end road at the top of Snyder Hill a few miles east of Ithaca is named "Sodom Road", although according to the recent reissue of "Place Names in Tompkins County" this road was actually named for a family with the sirname "Sodom" sometime in the 1930's.
- Sodom, Sin City (Women's League for Conservative Judiasm)
- Sodom, The Flats, The City (History of NY State, Tompkins Cty)
- Sodom, The Flats (Ithaca NY Community Profile)
Books set (at least partially) in Ithaca
- Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (schoolgirl dialog captured on Ithaca city buses)
- War Between the Tates by Alison Lurie (a thinly-disguised portrait of Cornell University)
- Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me by Richard Farina
- Various Kurt Vonnegut books have Ithaca references
Notable residents and natives
- A.R. Ammons, resident, poet, Cornell Professor
- Hans Bethe, resident, physicist, Nobel Prize winner, Professor, head of theoretical division of the Manhattan Project
- Adam C. Engst, native, resident, publisher of TidBITS and Take Control ebook series
- Richard Feynman, resident, physicist, Nobel Prize winner
- Alex Haley, native, author of Roots: The Saga of an American Family and the Autobiography of Malcolm X
- Karel Husa, resident, composer
- Steven Stucky, resident, classical american composer. Professor of composition at Cornell University. Winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Music Composition
- 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, Professor, popularizer of science, and author and host of Cosmos
- Rod Serling, resident, screenwriter, creator and host of The Twilight Zone
- Steve Squyres, resident, astronomer, Cornell Professor
- David Foster Wallace, native, novelist
- E.B. White, resident, novelist, co-author of Strunk and White's Manual of Style
- Robert R. Wilson, resident, physicist
- Paul Wolfowitz, native, academic, Deputy Secretary of Defense (2001-2005), World Bank President (2005-)
- Greg Graffin, musician, academic, resident, Lead singer of Bad Religion
External links
- City of Ithaca's municipal Web site
- Wikitravel article on Ithaca
- Carl Sagan Planet Walk
- History of Ithaca railways
- History and Remnants of the Ithaca trolley system
