A CORNELL WALK
INTRODUCTION
“Put
walks where they are needed—this
is the universal rule; but be sure they are needed.”
First Steps
Cornell planted itself haphazardly in former fields and private homes across the Hill, seemingly without a thought as to how its scholars were to make their way across the campus—so they made their own ways, treading down paths into and out of gorges, up into the mountains and threaded tight between the gardens. Some have calcified into concrete and stone, others are little more than regularly-scuffed grass; all are marked by their walkers. Over 150 years, they have left behind everything from ten-ton concrete monuments to pop-up libraries and wilding apple trees, marking all the reasons a person wanders these trails: curiosity, stress, wanderlust; to commune, to explore…
Whatever compels you to wander Cornell’s campus, I hope this tour guides you somewhere new—somewhere that might become familiar.
Or maybe you just like reading about nice and wonderful places; in which case, you should not even CONSIDER reading Appendix I. It’s for your own good, I promise.
—June 26, 2017
Usage
A Cornell Walk is designed to provide a satisfying tour of
the campus and surrounding areas; a stroll that will take you from the heart of
campus to the edge of the Botanic Gardens and back again. If, however, you are
strapped for time or are intrigued by a specific description, you can skip ahead.
To chase down any given site from A Cornell Walk, choose a lettered site
that precedes it—these are recognizable landmarks that will help in orienting you. Follow the directions
as usual from that point.
Disclaimers
The directions given in "A Curious Cornell Walk" are based in my recollection of many pleasant walks personally taken around the campus. I have walked significantly fewer of these since May 2014. I make no guarantee that the routes described are still passable, accurate, or safe.
No guarantee is made that entrance to any of the premises described in "A Curious Cornell Walk" will be permitted. Cornell University is at once a private college and a land-grant school; accountable to student and trustee, to the public and the good of the state. Please be respectful of the students, faculty, and staff using these facilities on your walk. Keep quiet and exercise common sense!
A CORNELL WALK
A. Goldwin Smith Hall Courtyard
Behind the statue of A.D. White, Cornell’s first president is the courtyard of Goldwin Smith Hall, a pleasant space for study and conversation descending from the Hall's steps. A sturdy marble bench sits in this sparely-treed park, donated by the same Goldwin Smith after whom the Hall was named—the bench predating the building—inscribed: “ABOVE ALL NATIONS IS HUMANITY.” This message is marred, of course, by the fact that Goldwin was a committed anti-semite; thankfully, we are not obligated to take this noble sentiment in the torturous fashion he intended.
Head right around Goldwin Smith Hall and up to East Avenue. Head next-door on the right to Stimson Hall, a stone building with green-copper fixtures. Enter the front door.
B. Stimson Hall Landscape
Business Hours — Stimson Hall, once the home of Cornell’s medical college, now offers its airy Beaux-Arts lecture halls and side-cubby offices to all sorts from within and without the Biology Department. Take either the winding stairs or the aggressively ‘90s elevator to the third floor to see not only 20-gallon fishtanks, but a large landscape painting of a Mesozoic scene. Though doubtless out-of-date, it is nonetheless a testament to how the exacting work of paleontologists (like those at Ithaca’s own Paleontology Research Institute) has captured our imagination.
Descend to the ground floor, and exit the heavy wooden doors at the rear of the building. You should be looking out on the back of Olin Library, surrounded by rock-strewn acoustic tiles. Turn left and walk to where the sidewalk runs against the parking lot between Stimson and Day Hall. Turn right, and head down the path between Olin Library and Sage Chapel. Notice the indent into Sage Chapel on your left.
Sage Chapel’s Baird Courtyard
Spend a restful moment surrounded by the exterior stonework and meticulous gardening of Cornell’s non-sectarian chapel. The high walls usually offer a little shade on sunny days, and keep the snow shallow in the winter—the sight of a little drift at the foot of the small sharp-green-painted wooden-slat back doors is a picturesque treat. Listen closely, and you may hear the Chapel’s organist at work!
Continue down the path to the broad avenue of Ho Plaza. Cross the plaza to high-steepled Willard Straight Hall.
C. Willard Straight Hall
Enter through the large set of iron gates. Be sure to look up and take in a magnificent ceiling mural! The library will be on your left, beneath an analog clock built into the wall.
Willard Straight Library
School Session — Turn-of-the-century Chinese art? Model ships-of-the-line? Cornelian back-issues? The oeuvre of L. Ron Hubbard? Enjoy the eclectic collection of this reading room from its many armchairs and couches—if you come early, you may be able to snag a seat by the many-feet-tall windows that overlook the Plaza. At the far end, see a piano—free for public use—and a distressed-looking bust of the author Joseph Conrad.
Exit the library through the door you came in. See the staircase on your left? Go up two stories.
Reserved Rooms
Provided no-one has reserved the rooms, you may enjoy the run of rooms that top Willard Straight Hall. Up a few steps more from the top staircase is a dance practice space, with a piano, a mirror-wall, and an astounding view of Libe slope. Before you leave, be sure to give a little plié for the portrait of Washington by the door.
Two meeting rooms form the central corridor, seeming unchanged by the years, with wood-framed window-screens and now-creaky wooden furniture. These make nice reading rooms as well, if the library proves too loud. At the other end of the building, duck into a cramped—perhaps cozy?—space that conforms to the shape of the building, and peek out the thin slit of a window. Is this the view of the medieval archer?
Notice a door marked “SHOWER”? The University actually rents out three hotel rooms on this side of the building, with an unsurprisingly long waiting list.
Make your way back to the staircase, and descend all the way to the bottom of Willard Straight Hall.
Cinema
At the base of the staircase, take a few moments to appreciate the movie posters framed on the walls of the corridor. This way lies the vaunted Cornell Cinema, an organization of surpassing taste. Check the marquee on your way out!
Exit the building into the Cinema lot. Turn to your left, and walk to the end of the Hall. Just past a set of steps, see the entrance to a stone path amidst a hedgerow.
Willard Straight Rock Garden
A little island of nature in the center of campus, the sound of the school noticeably drops out here. Hop from rock to rock as you peer into the brook that runs in little cascades through the Garden. If you are lucky, you may see the muskrat that frequents this place dart out from the tunnel and into the network of holes it has engineered.
Move to the top of the Garden and return to Ho Plaza. Continue down towards Campus Road. As you pass Olin Hall, take in the bas-relief renderings of the tools of the chemist’s trade. Cross Campus Road at the left crossing, and continue straight to Snee Hall, the first curvilinear building along College Avenue—see Cornell’s stately Law School across the road! Descend to the ground floor.
D. Heasley Museum
Business Hours — Nestled in Snee Hall’s central cavity, the Museum offers a fine collection of geologic specimens and tools, documenting both the Earth beneath our feet and the ways that we’ve studied it. Entering, you feel as though you have stepped off of the college campus and into a wing of a well-funded metropolitan museum. A long plexiglass chamber designed to demonstrate sediment deposition draws the eye, and may even have been repaired by the time of your visit!
Exit the ground floor of Snee Hall into the Snee Hall parking lot. Proceed left, away from College Avenue. When you see a narrow staircase between two complexes (Thurston Hall and Hollister Hall), climb to its top and head right, along the Bender Geological Park. Enter the front door of Thurston Hall.
OPTIONAL WALK: The Snee Hall lot
connects to a small pedestrian bridge over the Gorge. A pleasant, shady loop
goes up one side of the Gorge, over a wooden bridge, and down the other.
Lifelines Geotechnical Facility
Business Hours — Through the bay window you may look down on the Lifelines Geotechnical Facility, a fault line simulator designed for testing how well human structures withstand earthquakes. Enormous plates attached to powerful actuators jerk and shift while covered with a dozen feet of soil in order to model actual seismic events. If you’re lucky, you’ll catch it during a test!
Exit the front door of Thurston Hall and walk back down the staircase on your left. At the bottom, head to your left, walking up the service road behind the Engineering Quad. When it intersects the main road, turn left. Enter the building marked “UPSON HALL” through the double doors.
E. Upson Hall Machines
Just inside the Hoy Road entrance to Upson Hall is a series of display cases holding various devices and mechanisms from the long history of mechanical engineering at Cornell. Of particular interest are a run of antiquated calculators—from slide rules to early electronic models—and a collection of complex 19th-century mechanisms for rendering movement useful to a variety of purposes through clever, curious gear systems.
Walk past the display cases and pass through a series of glass doors into the expansive atrium of Duffield Hall.
Duffield Hall Mechanisms
To your right, see an alcove filled with many more such inventive mechanisms—all of these due to the efforts of German mechanical engineer Franz Reuleaux to index, describe, and improve the linkages—specialized gears, bars, and so on—known to the late 19th century. Those on display here were collected by none other than Cornell’s first president, A.D. White. Also included are modern models of some of Reuleaux’s other notable contributions to the field.
Walk the length of the Duffield Hall atrium, proceeding up the stairs and out of the building onto East Avenue, the road leading from Duffield into the center of the campus. Walk until you see a statue of a man built out of car bumpers. This is Herakles in Ithaka I—and behind him is the immense copper shell of Uris Hall.
Enter through the doors set back in its angled concrete base.
F. The Brains of Uris Hall
Ride the elevator to the second floor and exit the central hallway. Uris Hall is organized around an outer loop, so walk in either direction until you encounter a large display case marked “Department of Psychology.” Within it are eight jars containing one brain each, a small sample of the 70 brains the department has in storage—and a smaller sample still of the original collection of well over 600 started by Professor Burt Wilder around the turn of the century. Wilder’s brain is among those on display, though it usually overshadowed by that of Edward Rulloff, a notorious murderer whose brain was famously one of the largest on record.
Return to the ground floor of Uris Hall and walk out to Herakles. To your left, see a squared-off archway—pass underneath it and into the quad of the School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Crossing the quad, exit to the left up a narrow concrete walkway and onto Tower Road. Cross Tower Road to the green space to the left of the concrete box of Malott Hall.
G. A Strange Silvery Gyre
There’s a reflective spire in the garden next to Malott Hall. I don’t know what this sculpture’s deal is. It is nice to look at, though, especially on a sunny day in late spring when the flowers are all in bloom and the surrounding grass has just been mowed.
Go deeper into the garden, following the grass path up to wood-chips and wooden steps. At the top, you will find the garden behind the A.D. White House. Pass between the White House and the Big Red Barn—once White’s stables, now a meeting-place for graduate students—and approach the dark brick tower of the Space Sciences Building.
H. A Meteor
Business Hours — Immediately inside the foyer of the astronomy building is a meteorite on a pedestal. Go ahead and touch it! See around you various space memorabilia—remember, this building is home to Cornell’s Astronomy Department, famous for supporting Carl Sagan and running the Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico.
Leave the foyer and return to the sidewalk. Turn right and walk down the sidewalk until you pass the red-brick building and find yourself at the top of a grassy hill overlooking the Arts Quad. Turn right.
I. The Physical Sciences Complex
Walk to where the futuristic white glass exterior of the Physical Sciences Building meets the brick of Rockefeller Hall. Enter Rockefeller Hall at ground level around the side, by the caged machinery between the two structures.
Antiquated Instruments
On your left and right are display cases exhibiting a range of 19th-century research equipment, marking a time when Rockefeller Hall was the site of the physics experiments pushing the field forward. Today, Cornell has dispersed these efforts throughout the Physical Sciences Complex and the world, but Rockefeller Hall continues to testify to the Physics Department’s achievements of the past 150 years.
Continue down the hallway in front of you until you reach the second stairwell near the end of the hall. Ascend the staircase to the second floor (two stories up from ground floor).
Foucault Pendulum
See beside a tall arch window a cylinder of wood and plexiglass surrounding a bob held up by a thin metal cord welded to an overhead girder. This is a Foucault Pendulum, a free-swinging weight with a path which slowly rotates over the course of a day, demonstrating the rotation of the Earth beneath it. Note that this pendulum passes over a small electro-magnet to replenish what little momentum it loses to friction as it swings, and occasionally taps on a little circle of cardboard to keep imperfections in the construction from compounding over time. Together, these little modifications keep an inexpensively constructed pendulum in a busy hallway surprisingly accurate.
If you are lucky, you will be able to peak in the door of the room next to the auditorium—the entrance to the room where the Physics Department’s many, many other demonstration pieces are housed.
Walk down the second-floor hallway.
Tesla and the Holograms
The bust of Nikola Tesla here, backed by cloth drapes and lit by halogen bulbs, was a gift of John Wagner, a Michigan school teacher who worked with his third-grade classes to have busts of the inventor placed at prominent colleges around the country. The Physics Department placed this bust here in 2004, just in time for the Tesla vogue of the following years. In the cases beside the bust are demonstrations of the physics of holograms and gas excitation—think neon signs.
Continue down this hallway and through the doors into the grand atrium of the Physical Sciences Building. Cross the bridge over to the central tower of the Building. The elevators will be on your left.
Sixth Floor View
Balcony closed outside of business hours and during poor
weather — Travel up to the sixth
floor of the Physical Sciences Building. You will be immediately granted a
tremendous view of the Arts Quad, Ithaca, and Cayuga Lake—as seen through the
floor-to-ceiling windows of perhaps the best conference room on campus.
Following the corridor to your right, you will see an access door at the end of
a small side-corridor to your left. This door opens out onto the balcony for an
unimpeded view (and unimpeded wind).
The motifs on the signs and elevator panels for each floor of the Building draw on diagrams and imagery from different scientific fields. Can you identify the source of each design?
Go down to the first floor of the Physical Sciences Building and exit the elevator. Head to the right—away from Rockefeller Hall—and out of the corridor.
The Baker Facade
Rearing before you is one of the stonework walls of Baker Laboratory, now housed within the Physical Sciences Building right down to the old copper lighting fixtures. The immediate junction of the Chemistry Department’s building with the Physical Sciences Complex is striking, as though one is stepping towards a century-spanning discontinuity in the flow of time.
Pull open the immense wooden doors and enter Baker Laboratory. Pass down the corridor until you see a study area.
Morse Bust
At the rear of this popular study spot sits a bust of Samuel Morse. Ezra Cornell made his university-founding fortune working for and with Morse, creating telegraph systems across the United States. The bust sits here in recognition of Cornell’s former Morse Hall, which housed the Chemistry Department before it burned down in 1916. At that time, the land now occupied by Baker Laboratory held only the home of Cornell President Jacob Gould Schurmann.
“The
stocks of radium and platinum and samples of rare earths were saved.” — Cornell
Alumni News
To the left and right of the bust are doors. Open either and descend one floor, entering Baker Laboratory’s central courtyard. Exit the courtyard through the door on the wall to your left. Continue out of Baker Laboratory through the door set in the wall of windows.
Green Apple Tree
A very tall apple tree that bears very small green apples has perched itself on the embankment separating this pavilion from the road below. Can you find it?
Walk down the access road to Forest Home Drive. Continue right along Forest Home Drive until an asphalt path diverts to the left. Follow this path down to the pedestrian bridge over Triphammer Falls.
Triphammer Falls
Originally a natural falls like the others you’ll see on your walk, Beebe Lake was dammed in 1898 so Cornell could construct its Hydrologic Laboratory and use the water pressure afforded by the Falls’ 80-foot drop. The Hydrologic Laboratory, long out of use, was destroyed by a flood in 2009; however, you can still see hints of the structure built into the Central Campus side of the Gorge, on the other side of the bridge from the dam.
Return to Forest Home Drive along the path to your left—the path you did not come down on. Cross to the concrete staircase on the opposite side of the road and walk up to the level of the College of Human Ecology. Enter the building closest to the road, the Human Ecology Building. Go into the gallery on your right.
J. College of Human Ecology
Human Ecology Student Projects
Weekdays — This gallery exhibits only student work, giving the visitor some idea of the variety and skill exhibited by the students in the College of Human Ecology. The exhibits rotate a few times per year, most often showcasing designs out of the fashion program—though the space also displays documentary work as well as more conceptual projects, like an interactive human-scale fabric vortex.
Exit the gallery through the back door and continue through the amply-windowed hallway into the Building’s Commons, a workspace and high-roofed atrium. Walk to the rear of the Commons, observing a dramatic shift in architecture—you are now in the pale brick palace called Martha Van Rensselaer Hall.
Walk to the rightmost end of the corridor at the rear of the Commons and take the stairwell up to the first floor. Look for room MVR166 on your right.
MVR166 Mural
Business Hours when Not In Use — Painted in 1937 by Virginia True, this Modernist-Cubist mural occupies nearly an entire wall of MVR166’s studio space. The painting is busy—not satisfied with a simple tableau of the College’s specialties, it attempts to answer what the College does and why through the people its work touches; through the doctors, grandmothers, scientists, laborers, and chefs whose work sustains the nation’s families. At its center is a maternal figure—“primitive,” in the words of the artist—which dominates the frame, an expression of that early sense of interest, influence, and debt to other cultures and times that occupied the Modernists. It is titled, simply enough, “Home Economics.”
Martha Van Rensselaer, her long-time associate Flora Rose, and Eleanor Roosevelt are all featured in this painting. Co-founders of the College of Home Economics, Flora Rose and Martha Van Rensselaer lived together for much of their later lives, growing very emotionally close. Little more is known about their relationship.
Can you find them?
Exit MVR166 and go the end of the hallway on your left. On your left will be the door leading to a glass spiral staircase.
Emanate
Five-story steel strings suspend curved strips of plastic film in the central space of a spiral staircase, catching the light spilling in from the 240º windows as the strips twist in the subtle air currents of Van Rensselaer Hall. Always beautiful, the piece becomes luminous in the late afternoon as direct sunlight hits the film, throwing an ever-shifting set of tinted beams, reflections, and rainbows across the walls and floors of the space.
The space also often hosts the semester’s-end projects of students in the design program, walls and window-sills filling with issue papers, ergonomic analyses, and re-worked tchotchkes.
Exit the staircase at the ground floor, walking out onto a concrete pavilion with plastic chairs shaped into various inventive forms. At the end of the pavilion, see a sidewalk headed right—and to its left, the rise of a small hill. Head to the top of the hill, finding an asphalt loop with a wooden bench and a bronze statue clutching its legs to its chest.
K. Grieving Statue
I don’t know what the provenance of this life-size bronze sculpture is—only that I spent minutes here each time I visited, caught in its expression of anguish and distress.
Follow the path that surrounds the statue down the hill and into a pleasant set of gardens showcasing a variety of ornamental plants well-suited to this shady area. They carry the standard silver tags used by the Cornell Botanic Gardens (formerly the Cornell Plantations)—following this path further will lead you into the Botanic Gardens proper. For now, instead enter one of the doors on the wall of the building—Warren Hall—that runs alongside it. Make your way to the center of the basement hallway, and climb up the stairs.
L. Warren Hall
You stand now in the atrium of Warren Hall, extensively rebuilt in the early 2010s to make the space accessible, increase instruction space, and group together the faculty offices of the Dyson School of Applied Economics in a closer, homier environment. Many of the features in the new atrium are repurposed from the old, combined with carefully selected new elements that still maintain the opulent feel of its Beaux-Arts interior. The sconces! The panelling! The chandelier!
When finished in Warren Hall, exit through the front doors that you passed on your way up to atrium.
Warren Hall's Shining Doors
Though its interior has been extensively refurbished, the outside remains much the same as ever—indeed, if you crane your neck you may see a cartouche bearing the words “Agricultural Economics” high on its face, a mark of the subject’s more parochial origins at Cornell.
These imposing bronze-sheathed doors shine under the morning sun, casting golden light across the entrance to greet the students of many a too-early Econ seminar. Curiously, though the poetry plaque above the door is part of the original 1932 construction, it was not part of the architect’s plans. The identity of who placed the plaque has never been determined.
Head to your left, towards the double-set of double-doors leading into Mann Library.
M. Mann Library Atrium
Closed Sundays — Pass through Mann Library’s gorgeous Art Deco facade into its equally stylish Art Deco interior, filled with swooping lines, wood panelling with inlaid metal, and gently-skewed angles that keep this titanic box of a building vibrant and welcoming even into the depths of bleary-eyed night. More wonders await inside—galleries, portraiture, eery fourth-floor silences—but if you find yourself worn out, a little café on your right serves excellent study-treats, suited to the agriculture-conscious students who take their study-breaks here.
Exit through the front doors of Mann Library, returning to where you entered. To the right of the Mann Library is the Plant Science Building, and nestled at the corner between the two is a lightly-greened pavilion one story above the ground. Ascend the stairs to this pavilion.
Mann Green Roof
This is a fine spot to eat lunch while taking break from your studies in Mann Library, getting a bit of sun on your skin while you wander among the various plants chosen for their hardiness to the thin soil that can be laid on a rooftop—mostly members of the genus sedum, or “stonecrops,” flowering succulents which excel at storing water. Take this opportunity to taunt any students still trapped inside by lounging to the fullest by the windows of the reading room.
Enter the door into the Plant Science Building. Minding the step down, find a sturdy wood display case to your right.
Plant Science Display Case
Behind this glass, Plant Science presents the odds and ends collected from a century of horticultural research and student work. Cast your eyes over preserved leaves and flowers, germinated seeds held in solution, all manner of teaching models—and, of course, countable tree rings from trees that must have been quite old.
Continue down the hallway to the nearest staircase or elevator, and head up one level to the 3rd Floor. Go to the end of the hall and pass through the door at the end of the corridor into Emerson Hall and its thick-painted cinderblock walls. Then go the length of Emerson Hall and enter Bradfield Hall, where the construction is done in bare brick.
N. Bradfield Hall
Take the elevator to the seventh floor.
Bradfield 7th Floor
Entrance only through Emerson on weekends — Each floor of Bradfield ends in cupola of sorts, an angular extension from the brutalist brick tower that offers a 180º view east of campus. The seventh floor, though, is special—the carpeted risers here are filled to bursting with pots and planters, the dividing space replaced by a vine-filled trellis, flowers wedged up against tinted window-panes—a year-round green garden tucked beside the elevators.
An area for reading, chatting, and eating indents into the other end of the hall. Watch the aquarium while you catch up on back issues of Soil Science Society of America, and maybe have a drink to warm yourself up—teabags, coffee, and hot cocoa are available on the honor system.
Return to the elevator and travel to the 11th floor.
Bradfield 11th Floor
You are now at the highest point in the tallest building on Cornell’s campus—short of heading to the roof, there’s nowhere you’ll be able to see further. Visit the floor-to-ceiling windows at either end of the hall for a singular view. Up here against the sky, you are in the home of the Meteorology Department, as well as the Northeast Regional Climate Center. In between checking out tremendous views, make sure the weather for the rest of the day will suit your trip!
Return to the elevator and travel down to the 1st floor. Move in the direction of Emerson Hall, instead of the Bradfield corridor as on floors 7 and 11. Continue past the wide atrium that lets out onto a broad staircase leading to the road, and instead exit through the doors at the far end of the hall onto a narrow brick staircase and ramp. Descending those, turn to your left. You are presently behind Mann Library. Enter the short tunnel connecting this pavilion to the Ag Quad—taking note of the fine ironwork on the ever-open gates—and enter the door into Plant Sciences on your left. Go down the hallway and to the right until you reach a staircase. Descend one level.
O. Plant Science Murals
The walls here are adorned with a series of agricultural-themed murals, illustrating a variety of fruits and vegetables in an appealing, tasty rainbow. An Art of Horticulture class (HORT 201) produced them in 2007 using a classroom projector to enlarge their initial sketches for painting at a much larger scale. This same class also regularly builds substantial pieces of turf work on the Ag Quad, like comfortable sod benches and couches.
Head to the elevator. Enter the key-carded door to the right of the elevator and descend down the stairs one level.
THE TUNNEL
Business Hours — Enter into a long white hallway that bends slowly, preventing travelers from seeing to the other end. You are passing underneath Tower Road on a route that daily carries plant samples back and forth between Plant Sciences and the newer laboratories in the biotech quad. Originally proposed as a bridge over the road, the University decided instead on the harder option of burrowing into the Earth—thereby leaving the view of McGraw Tower unobstructed.
The hallway carries sound exceptionally well, so remain quiet along this leg of your journey.
Continue until you see the first door on your left marked as a stairwell. Proceed up the stairs and to the door marked “EXIT.”
P. Weill Hall's Wall
As you pass through the door, you will find yourself on the lawn of Weill Hall, facing Plant Sciences. As you allow the door to close behind you, note how well it blends into the walls of Weill Hall with its lego-like modular white panels. You cannot re-enter through this door—why mar this facade with a handle?—so make sure you have left nothing in the Tunnel!
Cross Tower Road to the garden in front of Plant Sciences.
Minns Garden
Minns Garden is at its most beautiful around graduation, when its many varieties of flower are in bloom. An earlier flower garden on this spot was prepared annually specifically for graduation—a practice that was discontinued when the Administration could find no way to stop merry graduates and their parents from taking bulbs home!
The fine ironwork on the gates, though, is visible all-year-round. Installed in 2009 by local blacksmith Van Doren, they are covered in fine horticultural details well-suited to the garden. Can you identify the cultural image each apple in its arch represents?
Continue along Tower Road away from the center of the campus until you see the squared-off edifice of the Kenneth Post Lab on your left.
Q. Greenhouse
Business Hours — Go up a single flight of concrete stairs and find yourself in the central avenue connecting a row of vibrant, moist greenhouses. Unless there is an event, remain in the central corridor—these are, after all, operating experimental greenhouses, performing research for Cornell’s horticultural community and providing services to growers throughout New York State. The University’s Titan Arum was on display here while it flowered in its unique hot, odiferous manner. Who can say if the greenhouse complex will last until its next bloom, roughly a century from now?
Exit back through the Kenneth Post Lab and onto the sidewalk. Continue forward to the alleyway running alongside the complex, and head to the lot at the rear of the greenhouses. In the right-hand corner is a small, plain wooden staircase of relatively recent construction.
R. That One Wooden Staircase
This staircase provides a convenient escape from the greenhouses down to the edge of the Botanical Gardens. Cross at the crosswalk to a stone overlook and take in the view of this decidedly forested section of the Gardens—a well-curated collection of shade-loving plants awaits below!
To the left of the outlook, see the start of a dirt path. Follow it.
S. The Ridge Path
This well-trod dirt path skirts the Mundy Wildflower Garden. See down the rise to your left a rickety wooden hillside trail, curving to the topography both by design and through decay. Its log benches are picturesque, but I don't recommend sitting on them—at least, not if you like your pants.
Though the path sort-of continues into people's backyards, stop when you reach a manicured clearing with plaques and diverging trails:
If you do not want to take the Arboretum Loop, cross the road when you reach the end of the trail and descend into the garden. (See T2: The Botanic Garden.)
If you want to take the Arboretum Loop, find the long stair down the slope on your right near the end of the path. (See T: The Stairs Down to Mundy.)
T2. The Botanic Garden
Seek out the Nevis Welcome center for a guide to these densely cultured environs. There are here herb gardens, hardy winter ornamentals, old fruit trees, and an elevated rhododendron garden that ranks among the top spots on campus for weddings.
Cross through the Garden, coming to the parking lot. Exit onto Plantations Road, then Forest Home Drive and travel to your right, away from the looming buildings of the Ag Quad rising to your left. Continue until you reach a stone bridge on your left. (See X: Sackett Foot Bridge.)
T. The Stairs Down to Mundy
A long stairway of soil and wood blocks leads down into the Mundy Wildflower Garden. A wet, forested area, Mundy fosters a wide variety of native flowering plants along its winding trails, riverbank walk, and deer-fenced areas. Be sure to firmly close the gates of the no-deer zones as you enter and leave to protect some of the more edible flowers collected here.
Walk the riverbank path until you reach the road at the edge of the garden, then head for the concrete structure near the treeline.
The Hypar
This canopy sits in an otherwise open field in the F.R. Newman Arboretum, offering shelter from bursts of rain on the patch of sand and grass it covers. “Hypar” is a contraction of “hyperbolic paraboloid,” the mathematical term for its shape; in spite of its thin and airy construction, this design allows the Hypar to hold several hundred pounds of weight. (Please do not climb on the Hypar.)
Return to the main paved path into the Gardens and travel further in until you see a collection of concrete towers on your left.
U. Modernist Statuary
Cornell architecture students designed, built, and installed these concrete sculptures during the 1960s as part of their classwork, intended to give them an appreciation for the challenges and possibilities of working with concrete. You can see here how the students experimented with forms nigh-impossible in other media, curving and cantilevered and abrupt. Curiously, the pieces predate this extension of the Gardens—when installed, this patch of land was a disused pasture.
Some of these statues weigh over ten tons!
Continue along the paved path until you see a staircase on your immediate left leading down into the forest, opposite a stand of maple trees. Head down through the woods to the road, and cross the road to a dirt parking lot. Follow the trail to the back and right of the lot.
V. The Wooden Bridge
This wooden suspension bridge connects the F.R. Newman Arboretum to the Fall Creek Natural Area. Built at low elevation and for periods of only occasionally high use, the bridge is unusually free to rock—the well-positioned, well-timed jumper can induce the bridge into wild waves.
The trails of the Fall Creek Natural Area are delightful, sufficiently quiet to be frequented by garter snakes, rabbits, and woodchucks, as well as a variety of birds. They also all let out onto a golf course that abuts the preserve. You can cut through them for quick access to North Campus, provided you do not mind ruining a golfer's day.
Return from the bridge to the road, and head right—towards campus. Note when the vegetation to your right clears for access to the river.
W. Flat Rock
Bare bedrock and a wide section of Fall Creek combine to make an excellent wading spot, popular during the summer and the waning days of the Spring Semester.
Return in the direction of campus along Forest Home Drive, using either the wide Garden-facing shoulder on the left or the stone wall on the right to protect yourself from the (usually light) traffic. You will cross two metal trellis bridges (the first replaced in 2013, the second dating back to the New Deal) before you see Sackett Foot Bridge on your right.
X. Sackett Foot Bridge
One often sees students dive into Beebe Lake from this bridge at the end of the Spring Semester, even though the water is deceptively swift and the spot is difficult for emergency crews to quickly access; diving from Sackett Bridge should not be encouraged.
The Bridge offers a clear view of Werly's Island, a dense-brushed rocky spot of land at this end of Beebe Lake. The island is usually accessed by kayak, though Cornell Outdoor Education sometimes offers zip-line trips by way of one of its sturdier trees. I once nearly travelled to the island by foot during a long cold spell in the winter of 2010, but broke through the ice mere feet from its shore. I was able to extract myself, but the sub-zero temperatures, driving wind, and disintegrating ice promised injury if I pushed my luck—so I returned home without touching the island, pants freezing stiff as I did.
I do not recommend crossing to Werly’s Island over the ice.
The Apple Tree
Clinging to the exposed rock at left of the other end of the bridge is an old—yet surprisingly productive—apple tree. Throughout the fall it bears many small (1-2 inch) green apples with just a touch of red on their waxy skin. The taste is tart, edged with sourness. Would they be larger and sweeter if this tree had been planted in richer, less precarious soil? Only the pomologists can say! If you are lucky, you may see a woodchuck or other semi-aquatic mammal swim by to make a meal of any apples that have fallen into Beebe Lake.
Ascend the steep wood-block steps at the end of the bridge. Alternatively, take the short path to the right to see a small falls before looping back to the stairs.
Y. Fuertes Observatory
Fridays at 8 P.M. — Constructed in 1917, eye-catching Fuertes Observatory overlooks a dense West Campus that has been built beneath it. Placing the characteristic white dome at the center-top of a long white-stone building, it evokes nothing less than the tradition of the American state-house. Though no longer a research telescope—that work is done a few miles off-campus in a less imposing structure atop Mount Pleasant—the premises still open for tours on most Friday evenings, with telescope demonstrations when skies are clear.
Cross Credit Farm Road and head towards the Collegiate Gothic stone dorms of Balch Hall. Enter the first door available—advertised as the Carol Tatkon Center—and head down the hall to its end.
Z. Carol Tatkon Center Library
Tired yet? If you’d like to rest a moment, head into the Tatkon Center. Dedicated to supporting Cornell’s first-year population, the Center offers homework help, lectures, screenings, and laptop loans for Cornell students. The center also has a small library, tucked away in the back behind the rotating art displays. The collection centers on classic literature, Cornelliana, and the assorted text-books left behind by a dozen different courses. The evenings often find dormers at Balch Hall practicing on the piano on the other side of the wall—whether this is a benefit or a deficit depends largely on who elects to practice. When tutoring business in Room 3303 was slow, I would often take the copy of Hawthorne’s The Marble Faun from these very shelves to pass the time until we received a visitor.
Leave the Tatkon Center and continue down Credit Farm Drive. Cross at the intersection and head behind Risley Hall, that magnificent castle of a dormitory. Find the chainlink fence there and follow it. Continue along the fence—perhaps taking a break to head down the path through the fence that takes you beneath Thurston Avenue Bridge—following it past the tennis courts, and onto the road. You are now on Fall Creek Drive—follow it as it follows the gorge.
Fall Creek Drive
Fall Creek Drive winds down Fall Creek from Beebe Lake to the Falls themselves, marked throughout with construction from an older era of the University—stone walls, stucco houses, and exposed pipes from infrastructure projects which have since been eroded into the gorge. Watch for cars—the shoulders are small by modern standards.
On your right, you will see a small iron door built into the stone retaining wall. What’s it for? Search me! Drainage? Mail? A stove? I’ve never figured it out!
If you are getting tired, skip ahead now to ZA: The Suspension Bridge and cross the Pedestrian Suspension Bridge when you see it on your left. Otherwise, continue down Fall Creek until you reach a fork in the road.
ZA2. The Sagan House
At the end of Fall Creek Drive, you will see a white stucco wall about ten feet high cordoning off the front of a parcel of land. Behind this wall is 900 Stewart Avenue, the home Ann Druyan and Carl Sagan kept while Sagan was a professor at Cornell. Formerly the home of the secret Sphinx Head Society, the building incorporates a number of Egyptianate elements into its design. You can sneak a peak at this 1920s oddity from the bridge over Fall Creek to your left.
Crossing the Stewart Avenue bridge—be sure to take in the view of Ithaca!—see on your left a dirt path leading up from the end of the sidewalk.
The Sagan Path
This path, with its mixture of wire, wood, and absent fencing, was the daily walk of Carl Sagan during his time teaching at Cornell. On your right, see paths leading to the buildings for several of the university’s older fraternities, including Alpha Delta Phi’s windowless, star-shaped stone silo. On your left, notice one of the few official paths down to the Gorge. If you are comfortable descending steep and often slick stone staircases, the view from the bottom is tremendous, offering a real sense of the water’s power as well as a straight-shot view out of the Gorge.
ZA. The Suspension Bridge
The path ends at the 60s-mint pedestrian suspension bridge. If you jump up and down, you may be able to feel the bridge move beneath your feet! Earlier, ricketier suspension bridges over the Gorge gave rise to the campus legend that the bridge would collapse should two lovers crossing it not kiss at the center.
On days of terrific flow, the spray will reach even the 125-foot height of this bridge, creating fine iridescent mist-bows. These will be accompanied by the strong scent of river muck.
After exiting the campus side of the suspension bridge, climb the steep wood-block and concrete stairs back up to campus. Cross the road at the pedestrian crossing.
ZB. The Rock Garden
Looming ahead of you is the immense Brutalist tower of the Johnson Art Museum, a wonderful (free!) institution worth a visit itself. A smaller concrete box lies before the main building—the Museum’s recent expansion, designed by the same firm as the original construction in the 1970s! To the right of that building is a short stair down to a zen garden, with a mix of American and Japanese plants surrounding a “dry river”—the impression of a river given by the arrangement of rocks. Rest on the stone bench for a few contemplative moments—and if you are curious, more information about the Garden is provided inside the Johnson Extension.
After walking back up from the Garden, walk along the Gorge-side road (Thurston Avenue) towards the center of campus.
The Sumac Garden
Past a red-stone building recessed from the drive, see a metal-lattice-caged staircase descend into the earth amidst structures of concrete and glass. At its base is a sunken garden of sumacs and wide grasses growing into and up the concrete, a study in how nature wears on the architecture of today—which is to say that it is sort of grungy, and would make a good set for a short film set in the post-apocalypse.
ZC. Milstein Hall, Which Is Bad
Business Hours — The Sumac Garden is attached to Milstein Hall, which is an awful awful building that I detest (Appendix I). The small gallery space adjacent to the Garden often shows intriguing pieces of student art.
Ascend the winding concrete byway in the center of the Hall and exit the front doors, by the wood-and-glass elevator. Turn to your right, and head towards to the center of the Arts Quad.
A. Ezra Cornell and A.D. White
And here you are, back under the watchful eyes of these colossal renditions of Cornell and White. Ezra Cornell must have been the first to tread these paths with the University in mind; after all, it was his land up to the very moment the State created the University at his and White's behest. Paths, I think, change around how you think of them.
Sometimes, Ezra is wearing a funny hat, like a beanie or a traffic cone. White, meanwhile, looks a bit tired and a bit cold, so people lend him their scarves as the winter sets in.
I. Why Milstein Hall is Awful
I am not an architect. If you would like to read an architectural take-down of Milstein Hall, please consult Jonathan Orchschorn’s work (ochshorndesign.com/cornell/writings/milstein-critique/index.html) for detailed analyses of the Hall’s weaknesses with respect to fire safety, drainage, and environmental impact. Atop these foundational issues, though, cosmetic and ideological problems in the building’s design render it shambling and cruel—galling, for the new home of the architecture students in Cornell’s School of Architecture, Art, and Planning.
The effect is immediate. You walk into the Hall and it treats you to the sight of unprotected fluorescent tube fixtures bolted into the concrete, awaiting some student with a strong-but-wide pitching arm to fill the vast foyer with tiny shards of mercury-coated glass. That foyer—and the spiraling walkway which leads down to it—are bare concrete as well, promising blunt, stiff injury to anyone who should trip, and arch pain to any professor unlucky enough to have to teach in those areas. (One longs for the characteristic dull gray carpeting of so many Brutalist buildings.) What will these surfaces look like in another decade, I wonder—will Cornell be willing to continually front the cost of keeping so much concrete sightly?
Rem Koolhass is evidently fond of plastic insets in his admittedly striking curves of concrete and glass, peppering the Hall’s exterior with illuminated domes, strips, and ceiling-panels. The materials are poorly suited to frequent use—fine and coarse scratch marks quickly covered them—and are often poorly affixed to the building. I have seen many of the LED strips flop out of their recesses, too generous a bend cutting power to the topmost diodes—and despite being well beyond reach, ceiling tiles have already been pushed out of place. Between their oily sheen and scuff-marks, they are leant a play-school quality—indeed, similar white-plastic hemispheres are a feature at many children’s playgrounds.
Milstein Hall is a building with a strong—and often incorrect—conception of how it will be used by its occupants and the natural world. Its construction attends to the most frequent patterns of interaction, discounting the less common ones that are likely to injure it. A familiar cruelty to many of its occupants arises here, too, in its reification of norms. Several decisions in the building’s design illuminate how attached it is to serving the most usual person; to reinforcing their accepted knowledge and minimizing the experiences of others.
Viewed from Thurston Avenue, the most striking feature of the Hall is its curvilinear central window, nearly a story tall and running much of the length of the building. It is unmistakably a portrayal of the bell curve, the probability distribution most often used to model the natural—and particularly the human—world. Indeed, the similarity is underlined by the vertical seams between the window's panels, which—regularly spaced—reenact the bell curve's division into standard deviations from its peak, the average and most common outcome of the model. That the very tips of the window are not windows at all, but rather some white plastic further plays into this interpretation, as they call to mind the practice of discarding data points beyond the third standard deviation as outliers.
Despite its frequent use, the “Normal distribution” (as it is formally called) is often a poor fit to real-world data. Instead, its mathematical amenability—before the computer, essential; now simply convenient—drives usage. The erroneous presumption of the bell curve’s power and universality has lead to it having a frankly bad century! Who can forget Murray and Herrnstien’s work of racist pseudoscience The Bell Curve? In architecture its influence is felt in human measurement—and the lamentable decision earlier in this century to design buildings that accommodate only those who were not statistical outliers, forcing many with disabilities from the public sphere. To place the curve at the helm of new construction is to declare ignorance of the distribution’s problems, and to commit to continuing this statistical malfeasance.
On the other side of the hall, the outstanding feature is often a long, tall curtain, working to keep the auditorium’s projections visible against the sun. This curtain has on it Renaissance drawings demonstrating perspective by the Dutch artist and architect Hans Vrederman de Vries. The building otherwise prefers sleek and abstract forms, so the contrast creates a before-after link; we did art in the renaissance like so, and we have built from that to do it this way now. No-one could argue that the work produced in the Renaissance did not influence the course of first Western and then global art—but it certainly was not the only influential locale in art! Its use builds up a sort of ideogram system where the styles of Renaissance art communicate the idea that Art Starts Here; a system that we have been building through our common wish for a straightforward narrative of art’s complex history since Giorgio Vasari first coined “Renaissance” to hype the influence of Medici patronage on art. For the quiet cost of discounting all other artistic lineages, our desire for the confirmation of our simple, clean conceptions is sated.
At the bathrooms, that desire veers into the obviously tasteless—and, indeed, the cruel. Even though this building was completed less than a single year before the Student Council mandated that buildings offer gender-neutral restrooms, the most prominent restrooms on the ground floor are marked for men or women not with simple signs, but with towering backlit sheets of cut metal, emblazoned:
XX
XY
in repeating patterns. The backlights are also differentiated, illuminating the men’s wall in baby blue and the women’s in a dim peach.
This pageantry is immediately strange in its desire to slam together a too-clever designation of sex with an utterly childish one (one which will provide no benefit to those with color-blindness). Consider, though, its challenge to the transgender or intersex student for whom visiting the restroom may already be an unpleasant ordeal (59% of trans people avoid using public restrooms for fear of being harassed, per the NCTE). At the very entrance, you are presented with not just the usual gender binary, but the further explicit statement that cultural expressions of gender cannot differ from your genotype. The very signage of the bathroom gives ammunition to harassers—after all, the room is marked “XX”! This is not a building that welcomes outliers.
If you were perhaps worried that the bathrooms were only morally objectionable, rest assured—they are also poorly designed. Aluminum fixtures were already showing discoloration by the time I left, particularly the urinals (which additionally had the same acoustics as a trough at a county fair), and those cut-metal walls had bent at the vertices of several of the X-cuts.
I hope that housing today’s students of architecture in such a monstrosity will be its own remedy. The University’s administration can empower them to repair this structure—to replace its material failings, to dress its structural flaws, and to subvert its ideological cruelty. If we can learn from the mistakes of others, what better teacher than Milstein Hall?
II. Additional Information
Cinema
Welcome to Cornell Cinema. Available at: cinema.cornell.edu
Heasley Museum
Heasley Museum. Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. Available at:
www.eas.cornell.edu/about/facilities/museum.cfm
Lifelines Geotechnical Facility
Geotechnical Lifelines Large-Scale Testing Facility. Available at: lifelines.cee.cornell.edu
Duffield Hall Mechanisms
Cornell Reuleaux Collection. Cornell University Libraries. Available at: kmoddl.library.cornell.edu/model.php
Reuleaux Collection of Mechanisms and Machines at Cornell University. Francis C. Moon, 1999. Available at: kmoddl.library.cornell.edu/facets/moon61899.htm
The Brain Collection of Uris Hall
“The Brains of Uris Hall.” Ithacating in Cornell Heights. Brian Crandall, 2014. Available at: ithacating.com/2014/12/27/the-brains-of-uris-hall/ (Crandall’s blog is essential reading for anyone interested in Ithaca’s buildings.)
“In Search of Answers from the Great Brains of Cornell.” The New York Times. Peter Edidin, 2005. Available at: nytimes.com/2005/05/24/science/in-search-of-answers-from-the-great-brains-of-cornell.html
“A Case for Brains: Cornell’s Cerebral Display Gets Refurbished Home.” Cornell Chronicle. Susan S. Lang, 2006. Available at: news.cornell.edu/stories/2006/05/two-students-upgrade-showcase-wilder-brain-collection
Tesla and the Holograms
“John Wagner - Placing Nikola Tesla Busts at various major Universities in the USA.” Tesla Memorial Society of New York. Available at:
www.teslasociety.com/jwagner.htm
Triphammer Falls
“Hydraulic Laboratory at Triphammer Falls.” The Cornell Daily Sun. 1896. Available at: cdsun.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/cornell?a=d&d=CDS18961027.2.11
“Hydraulic Lab Collapses.” The Cornell Daily Sun. Ben Eisen, 2009. Available at: cornellsun.com/2009/02/17/hydraulic-lab-collapses/
MVR166 Mural
“Mural in MVR166 by Virginia True, 1937.” Available at: www.human.cornell.edu/administration/facilities/spaces/specialspaces/mural.cfm
Emanate
“Emanate Sculpture and Plaque.” 2012. Available at: digital.library.cornell.edu/catalog/ss:1790197
"Human Ecology Staircase Art in Full Sun.” 2013. Available at: vimeo.com/63707168
Warren Hall's Shining Doors
“Warren Hall.” 2012. Available at: digital.library.cornell.edu/catalog/ss:53302
Plant Science Murals
“The Art of Horticulture.” Available at: www.hort.cornell.edu/art/
Minns Garden
“The ‘Most Colorful Spot.’” Upstate Gardeners’ Journal. Michelle Sutton, 2011. Available at: issuu.com/upstategardenersjournal/docs/ugjmay-june_11/17
The Botanic Garden
“Botanic Garden.” Cornell Botanic Gardens. Available at: www.cornellbotanicgardens.org/our-gardens/botanical
The Stairs Down to Mundy
"Mundy Wildflower Garden." Cornell Botanic Gardens. Available at: www.cornellbotanicgardens.org/our-gardens/botanical/mundy-wildflower
The Hypar
“The Hypar Turns 50.” 2016. Available at: www.graphics.cornell.edu/TheHyparTurns50FINAL.pdf
“F.R. Newman Arboretum.” Cornell Botanic Gardens. Available at: www.cornellbotanicgardens.org/our-gardens/arboretum
Modernist Statuary
“Sculpture Garden.” Cornell Botanic Gardens. Available at: www.cornellbotanicgardens.org/our-gardens/arboretum/sculpture
Fuertes Observatory
“The Cornell Astronomical Society & Fuertes Observatory.” Available at: www.cornellastrosociety.org
The Sagan House
"Of Architecture and Astronomy: Capturing the Sky in Carl Sagan's Ithaca, New York, Study.”. Architectural Digest. Vidas Pilar, 1994.
“Lessons of Immortality and Mortality From My Father, Carl Sagan.” New York Magazine. Sasha Sagan, 2014. Available at: thecut.com/2014/04/my-dad-and-the-cosmos.html
The Suspension Bridge
“News Tidbits: The Disappearing Suspension Bridge and its Conflicting History.” Ithacating in Cornell Heights. Brian Crandall, 2008. Available at: ithacating.com/2008/07/30/news-tidbits-the-disappearing-suspension-bridge-and-its-conflicting-history/
The Rock Garden
“The Rebecca Q. and James D. Morgan Garden.” Available at: museum.cornell.edu/morgan-garden
III. Image Credits
Cover Image
“Ezra Cornell.” 2013, Stephen Luke. Used under Creative Commons 2.0 Attribution License. Available at: www.flickr.com/photos/stephen_d_luke/9090812686
Included satellite imagery was produced by the United States Geological Survey, and is in the public domain. Available at: eros.usgs.gov/aerial-photography
First Steps
Usage
Disclaimers
Map
A
CORNELL WALK
A. Goldwin Smith Hall Courtyard
B. Stimson Hall Landscape
Sage Chapel’s Baird Courtyard
C. Willard Straight Hall
Willard Straight Library
Reserved Rooms
Cinema
Willard Straight Rock Garden
D. Heasley Museum
Lifelines Geotechnical Facility
E. Upson Hall Machines
Duffield Hall Mechanisms
F. The Brains of Uris Hall
G. A Strange Silvery Gyre
H. A Meteor
I. The Physical Sciences Complex
Antiquated Instruments
Foucault Pendulum
Tesla and the Holograms
Sixth Floor View
The Baker Facade
Morse Bust
Green Apple Tree
Triphammer Falls
J. College of Human Ecology
Human Ecology Student Projects
MVR166 Mural
Emanate
K. Grieving Statue
Warren Hall's Shining Doors
M. Mann Library Atrium
Mann Green Roof
Plant Science Display Case
N. Bradfield Hall
Bradfield 7th Floor
Bradfield 11th Floor
O. Plant Science Murals
THE TUNNEL
P. Weill Hall's Wall
Minns Garden
Q. Greenhouse
R. That One Wooden Staircase
S. The Ridge Path
T2. The Botanic Garden
T. The Stairs Down to Mundy
The Hypar
U. Modernist Statuary
V. The Wooden Bridge
W. Flat Rock
X. Sackett Foot Bridge
The Apple Tree
Y. Fuertes Observatory
Z. Carol Tatkon Center Library
Fall Creek Drive
ZA2. The Sagan House
The Sagan Path
ZA. The Suspension Bridge
ZB. The Rock Garden
The Sumac Garden
ZC. Milstein Hall, Which Is Bad
A. Ezra Cornell and A.D. White
APPENDICES
I. Why Milstein Hall is Awful
II. Additional Information
III. Image Credits