I am on campus for Reunion weekend. Cornell University’s campus in Ithaca, New York is one of the most dramatic and distinctive in the American Ivy League. It’s a place where serious academic architecture meets genuinely wild natural landscape. The campus sits on a hill above Cayuga Lake, the second biggest of the Finger Lakes, at an elevation on East Hill that gives it sweeping views of the lake and surrounding valley. Two dramatic gorges define the main campus area bounded by Fall Creek and Cascadilla Creek, that cut through the edges of campus, complete with waterfalls, suspension bridges, and hiking trails. It’s genuinely breathtaking. The historic heart of campus is the Arts Quad, a large open green surrounded by collegiate Gothic and Romanesque stone buildings that are 150 years old. McGraw Tower anchors the scene, a 173-foot campanile that chimes the hours and hosts bell concerts several times each day. Uris Library, the main undergraduate library, with its elegant reading room, where many an hour was spent studying, sits nearby. The Quad has the feel of a classic New England college transplanted onto a hillside. I consider the center of campus to have a second part as well, reflective of my academic experience at Cornell. While the Arts Quad was my undergraduate playground, a little to the south is the more administrative and pragmatic part of campus where I spent my graduate time. That consists of Day Hall (the admin building), Sage Hall (now the graduate business school where I served as a Clinical Professor for a decade), Statler Hall (the hotel school where I taught hospitality economics back in the day), and something called Wee Stinky Glen, a creek that runs through the middle of it all.
Cornell is architecturally eclectic in the best way since centuries of building styles coexist across a large campus footprint. You get Victorian-era brick and stone halls like Sage, Beaux-Arts buildings (like Goldwin Smith Hall on the Arts Quad), mid-century modernist structures (including I.M. Pei’s Johnson Museum of Art, a striking brutalist landmark with panoramic views), and contemporary engineering and tech facilities (including both a Gates Hall and a Nanotech building). The campus doesn’t feel fussy or frozen in one era. It is a genuinely large campus spread over 2,300 acres, so walking from one end to another is a serious undertaking.
Parking at any time is a challenge on campus and during Reunion weekends like this, it is both harder, based on car volume, and easier, based on relaxed restrictions. Parking will be my first adventure this morning. I’ve secured a spot in the Sage Hall lot, which at 6:30am is already mostly full. I consider myself a member of the Cornell parking “cognoscenti”, so it’s almost a matter of pride for me to get a good spot for the one day I’m dedicating to being on campus.
My rental car will sit in that spot until I finish the celebratory dinner tonight at about 9pm. That’s almost 15 hours that I will spend hanging around this place. Despite the massive size of the campus and my familiarity with it, I’m guessing that I will not venture too much away from the central part of campus. I am starting my day here at Sage Hall and will end my day with a dinner in the Dyson Atrium at Sage. In between I will venture to the campus bookstore, Willard Straight Hall, the Uris Library Terrace (to take a picture of the stone engraving with my and my mother‘s name on it… the closest thing I ever want to a tombstone), the Arts Quad, and Statler Hall. I see little reason to go to North or West Campus or up to the Ag Quad (where son-in-law John hangs out).
The gorges of Cornell (“Ithaca is Gorges” says the t-shirt) deserve special mention. The gorge trails are a defining feature of Cornell life. They are dramatic rocky ravines where students walk, run, and swim (in warmer months). The suspension footbridges over the gorges are iconic. My memory of them focuses on the summer I worked at the Cornell Plantations. Our crew had the job of clearing them out for the season, which meant hauling 75 pound logs from deadfall up the gorge trails for disposal. I feel like I know every inch of those trails having sweated my way up and down them too many times.
My first meeting wasn’t until 9am, so I decided to take advantage of the cooler morning air and walk around campus. I walked across the Art Quad and over to the Stewart Avenue Bridge to have a look at Beebe Lake and the falls that start down Fall Creek. After getting my fill of the gorge and the memories of treking up and down those trails, I walked up past the natural science buildings of Baker labs and Rockefeller, Hall until I connected with my daughter Carolyn, who said they were having their breakfast up at Trillium, which is a dining space at Kennedy Hall. This gave me a reason to see the Ag Quad, but it was time for my meeting back at Sage so we headed back downhill on Tower Road. By the time I finished my meeting, that’s when my old classmate Bob asked if I was free to meet with him and John Alexander (who to see every year when I come up to Ithaca at this time). We had a half hour of laughs talking about old times and agreeing to plan a trip to Mexico City where John keeps a lovely estate.
Carolyn had called to ask me to join them in front of Willard Straight Hall where she had bumped into my old friend Rob Hellman. It was time for my annual walk through the campus store, which was jam-packed with alumni buying every type of Cornell junk they could find. After a short water break it was time for me to get to my luncheon and Wee Stinky Glen as Carolyn and the girls headed uphill to some function John wanted to attend on the Ag Quad. For some reason, the buffet lunch offered by the Johnson School consisted of several vegan dishes, plus a chicken breast. It was actually a good healthy lunch, but it’s always fun to try and eat with plastic silverware on paper plates on tables and chairs set up on a grassy lawn that may or may not be designed to hold up against one’s weight. When the Dean stood up to give recognition to the attending classes, he started with our class of 1976 since it was the 50th year class. He called out nine names of class members who were supposed to be in attendance and three of us stood up and we’re actually there. After the obvious jokes about low attendance, they pulled us away to take a class photo. As we were standing around, thinking about all of this, two other class members showed up and asked if they had missed the photo. We managed to convince the photo team to take another swing at this and in so doing, increased our class attendance record by 67%.
My afternoon was spent in the lounge at Statler Hall, where I met up with half a dozen old fraternity pals who were a year behind me in school. It was great seeing them for the first time in over 50 years. We whiled away the afternoon until it was time for them to go to their dinner and me to go to mine. I had put a jacket and fresh dress shirt in the car so I changed discreetly in the parking lot and was all set to finish a very long 15 hour day on campus and putting another reunion gathering on the record books.
There’s a particular combination of intellectual seriousness, rugged natural beauty, and slight isolation that defines the Cornell experience. The campus rewards exploration — it’s the kind of place that looks different in every season, and genuinely spectacular in October when the gorge foliage turns.