Ithaca, New York This article is about the town/city of Ithaca.
City of Ithaca From top left: Ithaca amid winter, Ithaca amid autumn, Cornell University, Ithaca Commons (downtown), Hemlock Gorge in Ithaca, Ithaca Falls From top left: Ithaca amid winter, Ithaca amid autumn, Cornell University, Ithaca Commons (downtown), Hemlock Gorge in Ithaca, Ithaca Falls Ithaca / k / is a town/city in the Southern Tier-Finger Lakes region of New York.
This region contains the municipalities of the Town of Ithaca, the village of Cayuga Heights, and other suburbs and villages in Tompkins County.
The town/city of Ithaca is positioned on the southern shore of Cayuga Lake, in Central New York.
Ithaca is home to Cornell University, an Ivy League school of over 20,000 students, most of whom study at its small-town campus. Ithaca College is positioned just south of the town/city in the Town of Ithaca, adding to the area's "college town" atmosphere.
Nearby is Tompkins Cortland Community College (TC3). These three universities bring tens of thousands of students who increase Ithaca's cyclic populace during the school year.
In retaliation for conflicts to the east, the 1779 Sullivan Expedition was conducted against the Iroquois citizens s in the west of the state, destroying more than 40 villages and stored winter crops. It finished the Tutelo village of Coregonal, positioned near what is now the junction of state routes 13 and 13 - A just south of the Ithaca town/city limits.
Within the current boundaries of the City of Ithaca, Native Americans maintained only a temporary hunting camp at the base of Cascadilla Gorge.
The following year Jacob Yaple, Isaac Dumond, and Peter Hinepaw returned with their families and constructed log cabins. That same year Abraham Bloodgood of Albany obtained a patent from the state for 1400 acres, which encompassed all of the present downtown west of Tioga Street. In 1790, the federal government and state began an official program to grant territory in the area, known as the Central New York Military Tract, as payment for service to the American soldiers of the Revolutionary War, as the government was cash poor.
A several years later De Witt moved to Ithaca, then called variously "The Flats," "The City," or "Sodom"; he retitled it for the Greek island home of Ulysses in the spirit of the multitude of settlement names in the region derived from classical literature, such as Aurelius, Ovid, and especially of Ulysses, New York, the town that contained Ithaca at the time. Ithaca became a transshipping point for salt from curing beds near Salina, New York to buyers south and east.
This prompted assembly in 1810 of the Owego Turnpike. When the War of 1812 cut off access to Nova Scotia gypsum, used for fertilizer, Ithaca became the center of trade in Cayuga gypsum. The Cayuga Steamboat Company was organized in 1819 and in 1820 launched the first steamboat on Cayuga Lake, the Enterprise. In 1821, the village was incorporated at the same time the Town of Ithaca was organized and separated from the parent Town of Ulysses.
In the decade following the Civil War, barns s were assembled from Ithaca to encircling points (Geneva; Cayuga; Cortland; and Elmira, New York; and Athens, Pennsylvania), mainly with financing from Ezra Cornell.
When the Lehigh Valley Railroad assembled its chief line from Pennsylvania to Buffalo, New York in 1890, it bypassed Ithaca (running via easterly Schuyler County on easier grades), as the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad had done in the 1850s.
Wooden gunstocks with knots or other imperfections were donated to the high school woodworking shop to be made into lamps. John Philip Sousa and trick-shooter Annie Oakley favored Ithaca guns.
In 1885, Ithaca Children's Home was established on West State Street.
Ithaca advanced as a small manufacturing and retail center and was incorporated as a town/city in 1888.
State Street in Ithaca, ca.
For decades, the Ithaca Gun Company tested their shotguns behind the plant on Lake Street; the shot fell into Fall Creek (a tributary of Cayuga Lake) at the base of Ithaca Falls.
A primary lead clean-up accomplishment sponsored by the United States Superfund took place from 2002 to 2004, managed through the Environmental Protection Agency. The old Ithaca Gun building has been dismantled.
In 2004, Gayraud Townsend, a 20-year-old senior in Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, was sworn in as alderman of the town/city council, the first black male to be propel to the council and the youngest African American to be propel to office in the United States. He served his full term and has mentored other student politicians. In 2011 Cornell Class of 2009 graduate Svante Myrick was propel as the youngest mayor of the town/city of Ithaca. Ithaca is at the southern end (the "head") of the lake, but the valley continues to the southwest behind the city.
Ithaca was established on flat territory just south of the lake territory that formed in fairly recent geological times when silt filled the southern end of the lake.
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 encircling Ithaca (Finger Lakes American Viticultural Area) experiences a short but adequate burgeoning season for winemaking similar to the Rhine Valley wine precinct of Germany.
Climate data for Ithaca, New York (Cornell University), 1893 2012 Ithaca Metropolitan Travel Destination Ithaca is the larger principal town/city of the Ithaca-Cortland CSA, a Combined Travel Destination that includes the Ithaca urbane region (Tompkins County) and the Cortland micropolitan region (Cortland County), which had a combined populace of 145,100 at the 2000 census. The term "Greater Ithaca" encompasses both the City and Town of Ithaca, as well as a several smaller settled places inside or adjoining to the Town: There are two governmental entities in the area: the Town of Ithaca and the City of Ithaca.
The Town of Ithaca is one of the nine suburbs comprising Tompkins County.
The City of Ithaca is surrounded by, but legally autonomous of, the Town.
The City of Ithaca has a mayor-council government.
The charter of the City of Ithaca provides for a full-time mayor and town/city judge, each autonomous and propel at-large.
Cayuga Heights, a village adjoining to the town/city on its northeast, voted against annexation into the town/city of Ithaca in 1954.
A November 2004 study by e - Podunk lists it as New York's most liberal city. This contrasts with the more conservative leanings of the generally non-urban Upstate New York region; the city's voters are also more liberal than those in the rest of Tompkins County.
In 2008, Barack Obama, running against New York State's US Senator Hillary Clinton, won Tompkins County in the Democratic Presidential Primary, the only county that he won in New York State, likely due to support from younger voters. Obama won Tompkins County (including Ithaca) by a wide margin of 41% over his opponent John Mc - Cain in the November 2008 election.
Ithaca is a sister town/city of: Ithaca College was established as the Ithaca Conservatory of Music in 1892.
Ithaca College was originally positioned in the downtown area, but relocated to South Hill in the 1960s.
Ithaca is a primary educational center in Central New York.
In 2011 there were about 21,000 students enrolled at Cornell and about 6,400 at Ithaca College. Tompkins Cortland Community College is positioned in the neighboring Town of Dryden, and has an extension center in downtown Ithaca.
Empire State College offers non-traditional college courses to grownups in downtown Ithaca.
The enhance school fitness is based in Ithaca.
The Ithaca City School District, which encompasses Ithaca and the encircling area, enrolls about 5,500 K-12 students in eight elementary schools, two middle schools, Ithaca High School, and the Lehman Alternative Community School.
Several private elementary and secondary schools are positioned in the Ithaca area, including the Roman Catholic Immaculate Conception School, the Cascadilla School, the New Roots Charter School, the Elizabeth Ann Clune Montessori School, and the Ithaca Waldorf School.
Cayuga Street at Green Street in downtown Ithaca.
As of 2006, Ithaca has continued to have one of the several expanding economies in New York State outside New York City.
Ithaca has tried to maintain its traditional downtown shopping region with its pedestrian orientation; this includes the Ithaca Commons pedestrian mall and Center Ithaca, a small mixed-use complex assembled at the end of the urban renewal era.
Ithaca has many of the businesses characteristic of small American college towns: bookstores, art home cinemas, craft stores, and vegetarian-friendly restaurants.
The collective Moosewood Restaurant, established in 1973, presented a number of vegetarian cookbooks. Bon Appetit periodical ranked it among the thirteen most influential restaurants of the 20th century. Ithaca has many small-town restaurants and chains both in the town/city and town with a range of ethnic foods.
The Ithaca Farmers Market, a cooperative with 150 vendors who live inside 30 miles of Ithaca, first opened for company on Saturdays in 1973.
Other region publications include The Ithaca Voice, Tompkins Weekly, 14850 Magazine, the Cornell Daily Sun, the Ithacan at Ithaca College, and the Ithaca High School Tattler, one of the earliest student newspapers in the United States.
Other FM stations include: Saga's "98.7 The Vine", a low-powered translator station; WFIZ "Z95.5", airing a top-40 (CHR) format; intact Christian music station WCII 88.9; and classic modern "The Wall" WLLW 99.3 and 96.3, based in Seneca Falls with a transmitter in Ithaca.
The Center for the Arts at Ithaca, Inc., operates the "Hangar Theatre".
Opened in 1975 in a renovated municipal airport hangar, the Hangar hosts a summer season and brings a range of theatre to county-wide audiences including students, producing a school tour and Artists-in-the-Schools programs. Ithaca is also the home to Kitchen Theatre Company, a non-profit experienced business with a theatre on West State Street; and Civic Ensemble, a creative collaborative ensemble staging emerging playwrights' work and community-based initial productions. Ithaca is noted for its annual improve celebration, The Ithaca Festival.
The town/city and town also sponsor The Apple Festival in the fall, the Chili Fest in February, the Finger Lakes International Dragon Boat Festival in July; Porchfest in late September, and the Ithaca Brew Fest in Stewart Park in September.
Ithaca has also pioneered the Ithaca Health Fund, a prominent cooperative community insurance.
Ithaca is home to one of the United States' first small-town currency systems, Ithaca Hours, advanced by Paul Glover.
Ithaca is the home of the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra.
The School of Music at Ithaca College was established in 1892 by William Egbert as a music conservatory on Buffalo Street.
Ithaca's Suzuki school, Ithaca Talent Education, provides musical training for kids of all ages and also teacher training for undergraduate and graduate-level students.
My Education by Susan Choi (Although the college town setting is never named, readers familiar with Ithaca will note its extensive and obvious similarities) Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (schoolgirl dialog captured on Ithaca town/city buses) Enchantment by Orson Scott Card (partially set in Ithaca and fictional close-by towns) Various Kurt Vonnegut books have Cornell and Ithaca references, most prominently Player Piano, Slaughterhouse-Five, Hocus Pocus, and Cat's Cradle Prison Break (2005) in season 5 of the show, 7 years later, Sara is living in Ithaca with her son, Michael Jr and her new husband Jacob Ness Ithaca is in the non-urban Finger Lakes region about 225 miles (362 km) northwest of New York City; the nearest larger cities, Binghamton and Syracuse, are an hour's drive away by car, Rochester and Scranton are two hours, Buffalo and Albany are three.
Ithaca lies at over a half hour's drive from any interstate highway, and all car trips to Ithaca involve some driving on two-lane state non-urban highways.
However, Route 79 between the I-81 access at Whitney Point and Ithaca receives a momentous amount of Ithaca-bound congestion right before Ithaca's universities reopen after breaks.
There is incessant intercity bus service by Greyhound Lines, New York Trailways, and Shortline (Coach USA), especially to Binghamton and New York City, with limited service to Rochester, Buffalo and Syracuse, and (via connections in Binghamton) to Utica and Albany.
Between W State and W Seneca streets, a little over half a mile west of downtown Ithaca.
Cornell University runs a premium Campus to Campus bus between its Ithaca ground and its medical school in New York City which is open to the public.
Ithaca is the center of an extensive bus enhance transit network.
TCAT, Inc (Tompkins Consolidated Area Transit, Inc.) is a not-for-profit corporation that provides enhance transit for Tompkins County New York.
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.
It has incessant service to downtown, Cornell, Ithaca College, and the Shops at Ithaca Mall in the neighboring Town of Lansing, but less incessant service to many residentiary and non-urban areas, including Trumansburg and Newfield.
Chemung County Transit (C-TRAN) runs weekday commuter service from Chemung County to Ithaca.
Tioga County Public Transit operates three routes to Ithaca and Cornell, but will cease operating on November 30, 2014.
Ithaca Dispatch provides small-town and county-wide taxi service.
In addition, Ithaca Airline Limousine and Itha - Car Service connect to the small-town airports.
In July 2008, a non-profit called Ithaca Carshare began a carsharing service in Ithaca.
Ithaca Carshare has a fleet of vehicles shared by over 1500 members as of July 2015 and has turn into a prominent service among both town/city residents and the college communities.
Vehicles are positioned throughout Ithaca downtown and the two primary establishments.
With Ithaca Carshare as the first locally run carsharing organization in New York State, the rest have since launched in Buffalo, Albany, NY, and Syracuse.
Together, 2-1-1 Information and Referral and Way2 - Go are a one-call, one-click resource designed to mobility services knowledge for Ithaca and throughout Tompkins County.
As a burgeoning urban area, Ithaca is facing steady increases in levels of vehicular traffic on the town/city grid and on the state highways.
One positive trend for the community of downtown Ithaca is the new wave of increasing urban density in and around the Ithaca Commons.
Because the downtown region is the region's central company district, dense mixed-use evolution that includes housing may increase the proportion of citizens who can walk to work and recreation, and mitigate the likely increased pressure on already busy roads as Ithaca grows.
Ithaca is served by Ithaca Tompkins Regional Airport, positioned about three miles to the northeast of the town/city center.
Norfolk Southern freight trains reach Ithaca from Sayre, Pennsylvania, mainly to bring coal to AES Cayuga, a coal power plant (known as Milliken Station amid NYSEG ownership) and haul out salt from the Cargill salt mine, both on the east shore of Cayuga Lake.
There is no passenger rail service, although from the 1870s through the 1950s 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 optimistically publicized as 'The Handsomest Train in the World', perhaps to compensate for its roundabout route to Buffalo.
Ithaca was the fourth improve in New York state with a street stockyards ; streetcars ran from 1887 to summer 1935. For additional knowledge about recreational trails, see Trails in Ithaca, New York.
Ithaca College Main article: List of citizens from Ithaca, New York In addition to its liberal politics, Ithaca is generally listed among the most culturally liberal of American small cities.
The Utne Reader titled Ithaca "America's most enlightened town" in 1997. According to e - Podunk's Gay Index, Ithaca has a score of 231, versus a nationwide average score of 100. Like many small college towns, Ithaca has also received accolades for having a high overall character of life.
In 2004, Cities Ranked and Rated titled Ithaca the best "emerging city" to live in the United States.
In 2006, the Internet realty website "Relocate America" titled Ithaca the fourth best town/city in the nation to relocate to. In July 2006, Ithaca was listed as one of the "12 Hippest Hometowns for Vegetarians" by Veg - News Magazine and chosen by Mother Earth News as one of the "12 Great Places You've Never Heard Of." Ithaca was also ranked 13th among America's Best College Towns by Travel + Leisure in 2013 and ranked as the #1 Best College Town in America in the American Institute for Economic Research's 2013-2014 College Destination Index. In its earliest years amid frontier days, what is now Ithaca was briefly known by the names "The Flats" and "Sodom," the name of the Biblical town/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 De Witt retitled the town Ithaca in the early 19th century, though close-by Robert H.
"History of Ithaca and Tompkins County".
City of Ithaca.
History of the First Presbyterian Church of Ithaca, Andrus & Church, 1904 a b c "Ithaca: History", The De - Witt Historical Society of Tompkins County Library & Archive a b c Snodderly, Daniel R., "Ithaca and its Past", De - Witt Historical Society of Tompkins County, 1982 a b c d "Facts & Trivia About Ithaca", Ithaca, New York and Tompkins County Convention and Visitors Bureau Ithaca: A Brief History, The History Press, 2011 ISBN 9781 - 6142 - 30670 "History", Family & Children's Service of Ithaca "Ithaca't to the World", Icecreamsundae.com Ithaca, New York.
"EPA Finishes $4.8 Million Cleanup at Ithaca Gun", United States Environmental Protection Agency, October 29, 2004.
Teri Weaver, "Svante Myrick: How a child of modest means became Ithaca's youngest mayor-elect", Syracuse.com, 20 November 2011, accessed 14 September 2014 "ITHACA CORNELL UNIV, NEW YORK Climate Summary".
"The Rift Makes Ithaca Shift".
"Cornell University : Enrollments by College : Ithaca Campus - Fall 2011" (PDF).
"History", Ithaca Farmers' Market Civic Ensemble Ithaca's Civic-minded Theatre Company: Engaging The Community Employing Local Talent Championing New Plays Starting New Discussions "Ithaca's Booming Book Sale - Life in the Finger Lakes, Summer 2014".
Ithaca College School of Music "Ithaca, NY".
Ithaca, NY: The History Center in Tompkins County "Ithaca had its own 19th century stockyards rush", D G Rossiter, The Ithaca Journal, Centennial edition, Friday, 08-April-1988.
"Street cars preceded small-town bus lines", D G Rossiter, The Ithaca Journal, Centennial edition, Friday, 08-April-1988 .
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 small-town index Katherine Graham "Ithaca gets high marks from two earthy publications"[dead link], July 28, 2006, The Ithaca Journal "American Institute for Economic Research - College Destination Index 2013-2014: Ithaca, NY" (PDF).
See, e.g., 1811 article in small-town paper, at or Town of Ithaca History project, available online (click on "History Project", then "Historical maps..." Ithaca, New York Ithaca, New York at DMOZ Ithaca, New York Coffee Ithaca Commons Ithaca Gun Company Ithaca Hours Moosewood Restaurant Tompkins Trust Company United States Post Office Ithaca Discovery Trail Tompkins County Public Library Cornell University Ithaca College TC3 Ithaca Extension Center Cascadilla School Ithaca City School District Beverly J.
Martin Elementary School Ithaca High School Lehman Alternative Community School South Hill Elementary School Cornell Daily Sun Ithaca Journal List of citizens from Ithaca, New York Cornellians List of Ithaca College citizens Treman State Marine Park Ithaca Dog Park Stewart Park Cornell Big Red Ithaca Bombers Ithaca Little Red TC3 Panthers Ithaca Discovery Trail Cayuga Nature Center Cornell Lab of Ornithology Cornell Botanic Gardens Museum of the Earth Sciencenter Sagan Planet Walk Ithaca Bus Station Ithaca Tompkins Regional Airport New York State Routes NY 13 NY 13 - A NY 34 NY 79 NY 89 NY 96 NY 96 - B NY 366 Tompkins Consolidated Area Transit Buttermilk Falls State Park Ithaca Falls Robert H.
Categories:
Ithaca, New York - Populated places established in 1790 - County seats in New York - Cities in New York - University suburbs in the United States - Cities in Tompkins County, New York - 1790 establishments in New York
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