A Nominal Nod to Cornell

18 12 2011

Whether or not one likes or dislikes Cornell and its environs, the university has been around long enough and produced enough graduates to have a fairly recognizable name as colleges and universities go. I happened to hear from a friend recently who had moved out to Colorado after graduation, and their experience in the Collegiate Peaks of Colorado. When I checked Wikipedia, I was dismayed to find that their were mountains named in those peaks named for Oxford, Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Columbia, but not Cornell. For what it’s worth, it appears they were named in the late 1860s and 1870s, when Cornell was still a fledgling school. But, I decided to do a google search for a “Mt. Cornell”.

While there wasn’t a “Mt. Cornell” anywhere in the world, there is a Cornell Peak named in honor of the university. The 9,750 ft. mountain is part of the San Jacinto Mountains in Southern California.  The mountain earned its name from a USGS topographer camping in the valley below with a geologist friend who was a graduate of Cornell, and remarked how the peak resembled McGraw Tower in appearance. Personally, I don’t see it, but the topographer named the mountain in honor of the university. Of much lesser note, there is a 3,860 ft. “Cornell Mountain” in the Catskills that is named for Thomas C. Cornell, a distant relative of Ezra.

Looking northward to a place even colder and less inviting than Ithaca in winter, on the west coast of Greenland there exists a “Cornell Glacier“. Similarly to the Collegiate Peaks, there is a collegiate set of glaciers in Alaska that Cornell was not a part of, the set consisting of the four aforementioned Ivies and Johns Hopkins.

On the more civilized end, the town of Cornell, Wisconsin (population 1467 as of the 2010 census) is named for Ezra and the university, due to its placement on the lands that the university once held as part of the Morrill land-grant in the late 19th century. The university has given this some light attention to this connection by writing an article referring to a blog written by a Cornell alum and his fact-finding adventures in the small community in northern cheesehead country. Apparently, the town was originally named Brunet Falls and is famous for having the only surviving pulpwood stacker, and like many other small towns with minor claims to fame, they make a festival out of it (considering my hometown’s claim to fame is the method a hose is laid on a fire engine, I have no right to be critical). Although it’s hard to tell whether communities named Cornell are named after Cornell U. or someone who happens that surname, at least two unincorporated communities are named for the school far above Cayuga, one in the U.P. of Michigan and one in Southern California north of Malibu (and a fair 100 miles from Cornell Peak). Cornell, Illinois and Cornell, Ontario are not related to the university.

Lest one try to limit themselves to the Earth, an asteroid was named in honor of Cornell in 1999 (8250 Cornell). I guess the next astronomical goal should be a large crater somewhere.

If it’s any consolation to the folks associated with Cornell College, they have a species of tropical fly named for their school.


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Ithaca is Hot

21 07 2011

According to NWS Binghamton, the high temperature in Ithaca tomorrow is expected to be right around 99 degrees Fahrenheit (~37.2 C). Earlier model outputs suggested a high right around 102 F. Regardless, the heat index (an indication of how it actually feels, thanks to the effects of high humidity) will be right around 110. It’s not often that Ithaca flirts with the century mark when it comes to temperatures (since most students know Ithaca as a frigid windswept land, any heatwave of this magnitude should be nothing short of shocking).

Being curious, I decided to glance at the NRCC climate records to determine the last time Ithaca hit 100 degrees (non-heat index). Well, a cursory check of the last twenty years turned up squat. So, I expanded the search, and pulled all days from 1900 onward that had temperatures recorded at 100 degrees or greater at the Ithaca station. Here’s the result:

07/03/1911 101

07/04/1911 102

07/05/1911 100

08/22/1916 101

07/02/1931 102

09/12/1931 100

06/29/1933 102

07/08/1936 101

07/09/1936 103

07/10/1936 102

An almighty ten occurrences in 110 years of records. The last of which was over 75 years ago.

Expanding the threshold a little bit, I checked out the dates where the temperature reached 95 F or higher. There were 129 occurrences in 110 years, a little more than one a year (but, since heat waves tend to be longer-term events, they typically occur in spurts of a few days at a time). the last day above 95 was August 15th, 2002, when the temperature hit 96 at the Ithaca Game Farm weather station. Looking more closely, the dates break down fairly clearly – once in 2002, once in 2001, twice in 1995, once in 1990, once in 1988 (a grand 98 degrees, the highest in the past 50 years), once in 1966, twice in 1965, and a record 5 times in 1955 (the highest of which was 98). So in the past 50 years, Ithaca has broken 95 degrees only 9 times.

So, it will be a hot day, maybe even one for the record books. I’m sweating in my AC-lacking apartment as I write this a few hours east of Ithaca, and I will be very glad when a cold front moves through later this week.


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The Keyword Bar XII

8 07 2011

One of those entries where I respond to questions or queries in the search bar that brought people to this blog. Plus it’s summer and I don’t feel like delving into history today.

For the curious – the sculpture in front of Uris is called “Song of the Vowels”. The sculptor, Jacques Lipchitz, created seven copies back in 1931. Cornell’s was the fifth production, and the sculpture was acquired in 1962 by the Uris brothers on behalf of Cornell, and installed in June of that year. Princeton, UCLA, Stanford, the Kykuit Gardens and two European art museums own the other copies. “Song of the Vowels” was renovated and re-sited in 2007.

1. “why does cornell cals accept so many transfer students” (7-6-2011)

That’s actually a good question. This one kinda creates some tension in the CALS community, and certainly that animosity is not unfounded. In the past, I’ve heard people criticize transfers as not being “true Cornellians”, whatever they define that to be.

As a general rule, the contract colleges accept more transfer students than the endowed colleges. It’s actually part of the mission of the contract colleges to include transfer students into their programs, if the applicants meet standards. However, this does not hold true for endowed schools, and that is reflected in the fewer students that they accept as transfers.

Specifically regarding the ag school, CALS accepts more because of “transfer agreements” that serve as feeders into CALS programs. A number of SUNY-affiliated two-year schools fall into this category. Basically, a student studying full time with a 3.0 or higher in their coursework (including required classes that match up with their desired major at Cornell) are guaranteed admission. This tends to be most common in the agricultural programs – for example, a majority of students in the dairy science concentration of animal science are transfers from two-year schools such as SUNY Cobleskill and Alfred State. A few others, like Morrisville and Delhi, also send in a fair number of students. As the list in the link indicates, there’s 43 schools, mostly community colleges in New York, that have these agreements. Some of it is coordinated through programs such as “Pathways to Success”, a set of guidelines and counseling in place at some schools for students who want to transfer to Cornell. For the name-conscious AEM majors, it should be noted that biology, landscape architecture, and non-agribusiness AEM are exempt from this and fall under “competitive transfer” admissions. Also, if you don’t attend a partnered institution, then the transfer isn’t guaranteed either.

In my own major within CALS, I know that we had two transfers in the years from 2007-2011 (~3% of total). But in lean years where the yield from freshman admissions wasn’t so great, they were supplanted the following year with transfers. I think there’s at least eight in the 2012 and 2013 classes (~50% of total).

2. “cornell freshman population” (7-4-2011)

Varies a little bit from year to year due to yield. The goal number in the late 2000s was 3,050. The university usually over-enrolls (my guess is twofold –  it’s to make up for students who may not show up in the fall, and a few more accepting students makes the yield increase), so class size usually ends up somewhere in the 3100s. The trend over the years has been to increase freshman class size, which was about 2700 in the late 1980s.

3. “cornell safety school” (7-4-2011)

Meh. Do your graduate work at a large state school and you’ll realize how little weight that statement carries. The New York Times has a nice little piece about image-conscious students at Cornell from a few years back.

4. “how far is it from wegmans to maplewood apartments at cornell in ithaca” (7-1-2011)

I think Mapquest would’ve been more useful than a search bar for this question. But for the record, between 2.5 and 2.7 miles, depending on what part of the Maplewood Park Apt. complex you’re going to.

5. “construction project; bj’s ithaca; owner” (7-1-2011)

The project is being developed by Arrowhead Ventures of Syracuse, which is a division of Triax Development Coroporation. Triax is the company that owns the Ithaca Mall, and the BJ’s site is (rather conveniently) the property just northwest of the mall.


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Taking Care of Cornell’s Students’ Bodies

10 05 2011

After I wrote about the medical college, I felt inspired to write up a brief piece regarding the history of student health at Cornell. Understandably, the value of this entry to the practical person looking up health information is nil, but then, I would hope that if someone has health issues, they would be looking through health websites like Gannett’s instead of blogs.

Anyways, most Cornell students know that if they feel sick, or think they might be pregnant, or some combo thereof, that a trip to Gannett Health Center is in order. Back in Cornell nascent days, if you were sick, well…you were pretty much screwed. A student at Cornell a few years after its founding, if they were to become ill, could hope to be taken care of by their friends, roommates or professors, if they were lucky and had strong connections. Otherwise, you were S.O.L. If it was any consolation, so were all residents of the city of Ithaca, which wouldn’t get it’s first hospital for a few more years (the first hospital opened on Aurora Street sometime during the 1870s, and the second hospital was built off of Quarry Street in Lower Collegetown in 1910; that complex still stands today as the Quarry Arms apartments, which Collegetown Terrace will be built around). In 1870, the faculty senate voted to set aside rooms on campus for sick students (Bishop 176), and the first medical examiner, a sort of campus physician, was appointed in June 1877 (he held two job titles, the other being an assistant professor of mathematics). Jennie McGraw of Cornell Chimes fame put a bequest in her will of $15,000 for the construction of a student hospital on the grounds of Cornell, and this was increased to $40,000 before her death in 1891. However, thanks to the Great Will Case, Cornell never saw any of her money used towards a health facility.

The first building dedicated solely to student health was the Cornell Infirmary, which still stands as the Schuyler House dorm to the far southwest of main campus. The Sage Complex  initially consisted of only the east building, which was essentially a converted mansion built in 1880 as Henry Sage’s retirement home after he moved from Brooklyn to Ithaca (Bishop 211).  Upon his death in 1897, he asked that the building and land be donated to Cornell, which his sons Dean and William did with an additional $100,000 donation for maintenance (Bishop 333). They might not have done that if Sage had outlived his nemesis and fellow generous benefactor Willard Fiske. Both sons were furious that Fiske was interred in Sage Chapel in 1904 and abruptly stopped all involvement and donations to the university. William Sage actually had donated a building to Yale some years later. But, I digress. The original Cornell Infirmary had room for twenty patients, and the large addition on the west side was completed in 1912. What you received was bed, board, and modest nursing care and lab services. While a student of yesteryear might receive advice on hygiene or bad habits, actual diagnosis by physicians was a role the university refused to take on until around 1940. It was felt that the university should not be responsible for the clinical care of its students, only lend a hand in their treatment. Medical advising by Cornell staff was generally discouraged.

By the 1950s, it was felt that the Infirmary was inadequate, poorly located and outdated, so a new building was constructed on land that used to hold two faculty residences. This building was named for media mogul Frank Gannett 1898, who generously funded its construction. The Gannett Health Clinic opened its doors in 1955 and received an expansion to its west side in 1979, bringing it to 39,000 sq ft. The masterplan suggests a 90,000-130,000 sq ft structure to replace the current building on the current site sometime during the next several years.

I’m marginally jealous that Cornell’s health center is on campus. The one at my grad school is located a half mile away across a four-lane highway. What a nice way some colleges provide for their students.


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The Cornell Store

23 02 2011

So, this entry is a little different from the norm because normally, I cite several outside sources to try and put together something coherent enough to pass as a blog entry. But this post is a little different, because most of it will be anecdotal. I worked at the store from the start of my third week of Cornell up to the Wednesday of senior week, including full time for at least one summer. So I learned a lot about the place (plus, I think I was the highest paid student employee by the time I left, so my wallet was happy). Plus, one of my favorite things to do on break was to smuggle a book about some random Cornelliana upstairs to the breakroom, so in a way, my job encouraged this blog.

Obviously, I’ve graduated and moved on. Rule of thumb was (probably still is), if you want to keep your job, don’t write anything about the store. Hence, I made the store conspicuously absent from my posts, even when I was sorely, terribly tempted to do otherwise. Which played out quite fortuitously on one occasion.

So, over at Fast Lane, Elie Bilmes, for all of his wonderful posts, managed to rub me the wrong way when he posted an entry casting suspicion about the store’s $100 gift card giveaway. It hit a sour note because over the years we had repeatedly been accused and verbally attacked by customers who thought we were stealing their information and tracking them, such that a couple of my coworkers were driven to tears. We actually had a professor taken from the store by CUPD in my first year because he struck an employee who he thought was stealing his identity by swiping his ID card.  Anyways, the $100 gift card giveaway wasn’t fake. We kept a list of the winners (a book of sheets containing name, ID#, student/faculty/staff, date won, claimed, and the cashier who made the sale [cashiers get $5 bonuses if one of their customers wins – an incentive for them to ask for the ID card]) in the back of store services, the department I worked in. I thought of posting something, but I knew I wasn’t willing to take that risk of getting in trouble with my employer. Seeing the questions still on the entry, I’ll address them now – no, you technically don’t have to buy something to enter your ID, but the ID has to be swiped in to say you were in the store that day (online orders don’t count). But we would think you’re a really big dork if you just came in for the sake of getting your card swiped. There was a winner every day the store was open, and for a while we did publish the winners on large tablet sheets which were placed on the structural columns. I guess no one noticed.

Anyways, it happened to be a couple of days after the post when I was working on a Saturday, and who should come up to the counter but Elie Bilmes. I think, for the record, this is the only time I ever met Elie, and I didn’t even introduce myself. I rang him up and then told him that I saw his entry, and I could show him the proof that we have winners. He politely declined. But I went to the back anyway, pulled out the clipboard of sheets and, from across the service area, offered him a closer look if he thought it was fake. Shortly after, the update was posted to the entry. Anyways, if I still worked there, admitting I did that could possibly have been enough to get me fired for a breach of privacy or something. Not a risk I was willing to take, so I’m only sharing it now. Sorry Elie, I wasn’t trying to be an ass, but I probably came across that way.

Which, I’ll admit that near the end of my four years, I wasn’t very lovable. I was very capable, no denying that. But I learned that the more I was paid, the bigger the amount of BS that seemed to come my way. And as my older coworkers graduated, the younger ones looked to me as the next step in the hierarchy. Especially on weekends, when we had no full timers. I think my tipping one was the occasion an architect berated me for not having Rockite in stock and calling me cheap hired help, not even realizing I was a student too. The damnedest thing about that was that there was an architect who used to come in, buy over a hundred pounds of Rockite, and sell it over at Rand for a profit. Yes, the architects had a black market.  I couldn’t decline selling Rockite because someone was “buying too much”.

The store had about $21,200,000 in total revenue in 2008. I remember this on a stakeholder packet that had been printed up sometime early in my senior year. However, after expenditures, our profit was an almighty $200,000, roughly. The store was majority-owned by CBS – Cornell Business Services, so profits went into university operations. We made virtually no profit selling textbooks. What money we did make came from novelty item sales – clothing, candies, mugs and the like. The store had about 40 full time staff, plus a few more at the warehouse on Palm Road, and about 50 part-time students interspersed through the departments. Some students worked only 7 or 8 hours, others like myself fell more towards the upper end of 13-15. The Statler Hotel gift shop and Sage print shop generated a grand total of 2.5 jobs, and the gift shop operated at a loss. It was only kept open because the hotel needed it for its three-star classification. I didn’t mind covering the Statler. Even though I had to wear shirt and tie, it was so slow I could do homework there. Plus I got to meet Robert and Helen Appel, namesakes of Appel Commons.

While I worked there, Cornell stopped doing long-term maintenance on some of the mechanicals because they planned to close the store down within the next five to seven years and demolish the structure, which of course caught my interest. The store mulled over moving to a space in Collegetown or to a location halfway between the Arts Quad and the Vet School, a proposal that as a far as I know is still on the table, albeit mothballed due to the Great Recession. Still, I don’t expect the current ca.1970, 33,000 sq ft structure to be around way too much longer (only about 22,000 sq ft is selling space). Which is a win for aesthetics, but it will be a loss for my nostalgia and for many of my memories. I used to joke that working at the store kept my sanity and reminded me why I was in college. But given some of the more frustrating times, there was a little more truth to that than I let on.


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The Urban “Renewal” of Ithaca

1 02 2011

So, the Cornell Alumni Magazine latest issue caught my attention. Its feature article, “Through a Glass, Darkly“, is a feature about visiting professor Mark Iwinski’s artistic work of superimposing photographic stills of Ithaca streetlife from decades past over the contemporary appearance of those locations today. Which, falling in line with my addiction to interest in local architecture in a historical context, was a worthy read.

The most obvious thought after reading it is that history has not been kind to Ithaca. It hasn’t been kind to the downtowns of many older cities and towns in the Northeast. From the late 1940s to the 1970s, “urban renewal” basically consisted of trying to suburbanize downtowns by tearing down underused structures, often pinning their hopes on one or two big projects. An example of its effects can be seen whenever you drive through I-81 in Syracuse –  in 1957, Syracuse’s primary African-American neighborhood (the 15th ward) was town down to make way for the interstate, which effectively cut off Syracuse University from downtown and contributed to the emptying out of that city.

Image property of syracuse.com

As the article mentioned, Ithaca fared better than its peers. First of all, in 1968, Route 13 was supposed to become a limited-access highway connection from Horseheads, through Ithaca and to I-81 in Cortland. However, the project lost state and local support, and the only portion completed was the three-mile section that leads north out of Ithaca to just past the Cornell Business Park in Lansing. So there weren’t large expressways bisecting the city.

Secondly, although Ithaca was fairly rundown by the 1970s, the preservationist movement also started to gain momentum around that time by saving the Dewitt Mall (the old high school) and the Clinton House from demolition. In a way, it could be said that when the Cornell Public Library was torn down in 1959, and gas stations started replacing Victorian homes near downtown, that the Ithaca preservationist movement was really born. However, as the article shows, not every structure could be saved; the Colonial old city hall was torn down around 1970 to make room for the Seneca Street parking garage. The original Hotel Ithaca, which dated from 1871, was torn down 95 years later and eventually replaced by the Rothschild’s Building, which in an ironic twist of fate the building was vacated by its primary occupant because they complained it was too old and inefficient. The Rothschild’s Building is slated to be renovated into residential units.

So Ithaca has a relatively intact downtown thanks to early preservation efforts, and with further redevelopment and infill, the city has enjoyed a better aesthetic appearance than most of its regional peers. For the record, although I am strongly pro-development, I don’t think preservation is a bad thing. It has its merit and each case has to be considered in all its pros and cons on an individual basis.

On a final note, progressive and meticulous Cornell is by no means an innocent party. Back in the 1990s, the university and the town of Ithaca engaged in several contentious meetings because the university was seeking to expand north campus with the Residential Initiative in the late 1990s. The decision in itself wasn’t a problem, but the decision to tear down one of the oldest farmhouses in the county was. Eventually, a deal was worked out where the Cornell and the NPO Historic Ithaca would have the building, known as the Cradit-Moore house, trucked up Pleasant Grove Road .3 miles (in one piece no less) and built onto a new foundation. Cornell wrote off the moving cost and Historic Ithaca sold the house to a private owner to write off the costs of building a new foundation. In case you were wondering, this is how  “Cradit Farm Road” on North Campus received its name.

The article was a good read, I enjoyed it immensely. It reminds me that while we continue to develop new assets, we shouldn’t turn a blind eye and wantonly demolish what we already have. Otherwise, it might be as empty as the lots behind Dr. Iwanski’s photographic stills.


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The Keyword Bar X

19 10 2010

“what was the first residential building at cornell” (10-13-10)

Technically speaking, the first residential building was Cascadilla, which was re-appropriated by  Ezra Cornell to serve as a dormitory for students and faculty when the school first opened its doors in October 1868. White and Morrill Halls served as both residential and classroom facilities, but I suppose by a strict interpretation of the question, those would be mixed use. The first residential building for women was Sage College in 1875, and the first building built explicitly to be an all-male dorm was Baker Tower on West Campus, in 1914 (A.D. White was a strong advocate of housing male students in fraternities or boarding houses, to encourage independence— hence the tardiness of new dorms for men).

“ithaca beer company” (10-11-10)

One of the minor caveats I have with the area in which I moved to post-graduation is that there’s no Ithaca Beer distributor. Trust me, I looked it up, and the nearest one is in Utica (or the Catskills, I haven’t checked that closely). It would be a nice little nostalgia trip to be out at the bar with my fellow grad students and order an Apricot Wheat, but it’s not possible here. This is why I need to quench my inner lush and stock up the next time I visit. Also, it seems I’m not be the only one who enjoys their beers – they’re expanding the brewery and adding a restaurant.

“president’s house ithaca college” (10-10-10)

Rather peculiar for an all-residential college, but Ithaca College’s president lives off campus on Fountain Place. Fountain Place borders Cascadilla Glen and is between Collegetown and downtown. It also only has three houses on the street, all of which are really expensive looking.

“small frat house at cornell” (10-7-10)

Depends on the meaning of small; I think in terms of number that goes to Sigma Chi Delta, a very small co-ed fraternity on Heights Court (OFSA reported they had 11 members in the Spring of 2009; their website records 15 as of Fall 2010). In terms of size, I honestly don’t know, but would venture an educated guess at Sigma Chi Delta.

I actually was at this house a few times. One of my housemates dated a girl who was president of this house, and even though they broke up, I was still friends with the ex, and since they were just down the street from my apartment, it was never much trouble to go over and say hello once in a great while. Nice folks.

“beer pong table designs” (10-6-10)

They’re never classy and only useful for a few years. By then, you’ve ever grown out of it or the table is wearing out. But I have seen some pretty nice tables over the years. I always had a soft spot for beer pong tables with inlaid beer caps. So in August of 2009, I refinished a standard table in my fraternity’s living room with beer caps.

It’s a pain in the ass. Getting enough caps is difficult because hardly anyone wants to be “that” guy running around collecting caps at a party. I guesstimate that I used about 1500 caps. For the finish, I used a combo of resin and epoxy that cost about $90. Basically, I had to mix the two together in a large bucket with a broomstick, and pour it down on the (edge-sealed) table in 1/8” layers, with about 8 hours for each layer to dry. It took about three days. Oh, and if you don’t glue the caps down, you risk them floating up and away while pouring — never fun. Popping the air bubbles that rise up isn’t a great time either. Eventually, the table was done, (I did it in the fraternity’s letters with an unpatterned border) and it came out really well. The last time I visited, it was still there and in relatively good shape after a year’s worth of food and drink spills. It made me happy. It’s a small source of pride, in its own, perverse way.


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The Medical School

10 10 2010

The position of Cornell’s Medical School within the greater institution is a bit awkward. For the most part, unless one is associated with something in the medical field, or lives in the New York City area, we’re liable to forget it exists; it is, after all, located in Manhattan, on the Upper East Side. However, this isn’t to say the school isn’t a valuable asset of the university; it’s just really disconnected from many of Cornell’s affairs. With 400+ doctors-to-be and over 1,000 academic staff, the medical branch of our university manages to exert a significant influence.

Historically, the med school operated out of both Ithaca and New York City. The New York City portion was established in 1898 as Cornell University Medical College, and included women as well as men. The Ithaca branch operated out of Stimson Hall and paralled the first two years of the NYC branch, but was closed in 1938 due to declining enrollment. Ithaca was always seen as too small of an environment to allow for adequate medical training. Until its closing, the Department of Surgery was based out of Cornell proper and was originally led by Dr. Lewis Stimson, for whom Stimson Hall is named. Back in the days of its opening, one did not have to have previous college education to begin medical school; Johns Hopkins and Harvard first mandated prior education in 1907, and Cornell followed suit the following year. The results were disastrous at first, with the standard class size of 70 dropping to 3 for the entering class in 1908, and from 35 to 11 in Ithaca. Total enrollment went from 320 in 1907/08 to 118 in 1911/12, and finally back up to the low 300s by the early 1920s (Bishop 385).

Through some negotiating with George Baker, a governor and wealthy benefactor of New York Hospital, an affiliation agreement was arranged between the medical school and the hospital in 1913, and in June 1927 the two became formally intertwined as New York Hospital Cornell Medical Center (this included a nursing school run by the hospital that then came under Cornell’s academic umbrella starting in 1942). George Baker is also the same guy who’s name adorns Baker Tower and Baker Lab on the Ithaca campus. Although the hospital and college were part of the same complex, they were largely autonomous and ran under their own supervisory groups. Realizing the financial power of a large medical institution, “The Society of the Lying-In Hospital of the City of New York”, essentially an ob/gyn clinic, joined the complex in 1928, and the Manhattan Maternity and Dispensary joined the complex in 1929 and became the pediatric unit. A children’s hospital would join the mix in 1934, and the three institutions formally merged into the New York Hospital in 1947. The iconic art deco tower (Baker Tower) of the medical school opened in September 1932 (patients were first received at the hospital at 10 AM on the 1st, and medical students began classes there on September 26th).

Image property of WCMC archives.

The Graduate School of Medical Sciences was established in 1952, and the NY-Cornell nursing school closed its doors in 1979. In 1997, the large building that defines the eastern portion of the complex, the Greenberg Pavilion, was opened, and New York Hospital merged with Presbyterian Hospital the same year (which has an affiliation with Columbia University; the two still maintain separate facilities, so it’s basically one giant unholy mass of conglomeration). The medical school was renamed for major donor and Citigroup billionaire Sanford Weill and his wife in 1998, becoming the Joan and Sanford I. Weill Medical College of Cornell University, or Weill Cornell Medical School (WCMC) for short. The college has been home to the first eye bank in the United States (1944), the first kidney transplant (1963) and MRI Machine (1983) in the New York area. In the meanwhile, a new 15-story $650 million 330,000 sq ft building is underway. You can tell how much I care about New York City by the number of times I’ve referenced it on this blog. Which I think is once…if ever.

WCMC Qatar was established in 2002 by Cornell and the Qatar Foundation, and began instruction in 2004. For those who are unsure, Qatar is a small, wealthy Middle Eastern country slightly more conservative than Dubai in the UAE, and just as rich. The Qatari royal family has invested through the Qatar Foundation a vast sum of money into its “Education City” complex, with one of those facilities being Cornell’s Qatari medical school (WCMC-Q). Other schools invested in Education City include Carnegie Mellon, Georgetown and Northwestern. Cornell was its second affiliation, after Virginia Commonwealth University four years earlier. WCMC also has an affiliation with the Bugando Medical College in Tanzania that began in 2007.

WCMC-Q in Doha. Image from Wikipedia.

 


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The Keyword Bar XI

20 09 2010

…because I don’t feel like researching (Cornell related or work-related).

1. “new collegiate gothic” (9/19/10)

Okay, so this probably has little to do with Cornell, as Cornell hasn’t built in collegiate Gothic in over fifty years. Regarding that, I’d like to share a brief quote from Morris Bishop’s A History of Cornell:

“The Buildings and Grounds Committee recommended (September 19, 1950) that we wait no longer for donors of Gothic magnificence, but that we build structures that would pay their way. Said the chairman, John S. Parke ’23: “Engineering rather than architectural construction is advisable”. (597)

Of course, then we ended up with such “lovely” works as Olin Library and Olin Lab and Bradfield Hall.  I suppose the only way one could force a new Collegiate Gothic structure onto campus today would be as a stipulation of a very large donation (as in, one that pays for an entire new building without major additional funding from Cornell).

2. “ivory tower drinking society” (9/18/10)

This is a little murky. First off, it wouldn’t formally be called a drinking society  (the more likely term would be social society). As for the existence of such a group, googling “Ivory Tower Honor Society Cornell” pulls up a bunch of linkedin profiles of sorority women in  who were part of Cornell’s “Ivory Tower Honor Society” during the 1990s. So, if I had to take a guess, it was probably a tenuous organization that served more of a social purpose than anything honorary. But, I can’t say for sure.

3. ‘tompkins county public library roof” (9/17/10)

It has solar panels (that generate about 145 kilowatt-hours). Kinda funny considering Ithaca is one of the cloudiest cities in the country (206 days/year).The library opened in 2000 after moving from a location several blocks away; the site used to be home to a Woolworth’s department store.

4. “ithaca 103 dryden ave video store” (9/15/10)

I was wondering if this would come up. As covered recently by the Sun, the Collegetown Video store shut down after nearly twenty years of service. The store open in February 1991. The unique metal facade was designed by Cornell architecture students while the store was renovating the building for its grand opening. No plans for new tenants have been announced at this time.

5. “college confidential cornell biology” (9/4/2010)

I’m going to use this as a bit of a conversational launching point, actually. Since a lot of my information has to be pulled from the internet,  stumbling through message boards is inevitable. College Confidential is somewhat trustworthy, but the discussion focuses on more practical questions – “how easy is ASIAN 2571” and “chance me for admission plz!!!11”. There’s a couple of sites where people rate their experiences at Cornell, which lack details but are often good reads if you’re just looking to kill time. then of course, there’s the gossip site College ACB, which focuses on which frat is best, which freshman girl puts out the most and which sorority has the hottest pledge class. A whole lot of douchebaggery, but on rare occasion there’s a really interesting topic that offers frank insight — but finding those is like finding a diamond in a pile of crap. Use at your own discretion.


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Crazy-As-Hell Alumni Profiles: Erich Holt

17 08 2010

Cornell has somewhere around 245,000 alumni or so. It’s only fitting that an unfortunate few of our alumni err on the side of insanity. They might be acting as if they’re on crack, but most of their behavior can be attributed to them just being out of their damn minds.  This entry details one of our finer members of the batsh*t insane alumni club: Erich Holt, PhD 1914.

Erich Holt is one of several names he went by. He was born as Erich Muenter in Germany in 1871, but would adopt the aliases Frank Holt and/or Erich Holt later in his life. He moved to the U.S. and enrolled as a graduate student at Harvard (already famous for its whacko alums). In 1906 he was an instructor in German at Harvard College, living the life of a quiet and rather shabby looking married man.  His wife died mysteriously of arsenic poisoning, and Muenter felt the sudden compulsion to flee to Texas (a slight discrepancy here; Morris Bishop claims he fled to Mexico), later emerging under his aliases (which from what I’m finding, were pretty interchangeable). Holt launched into a brilliant scholarly career, doing four years of undergraduate work in only one year at the Fort Worth Polytechnic Institute before coming to Cornell to take on PhD work. Holt graduated in 1914 and took on a position as…a German instructor [1]. As you can see, he was really moving up in the world.

Well hell, if this was just about alumni who’ve killed their spouses, I could probably pull a dozen names easily. However, as those late night TV ads would say, “but wait, there’s more”.

1914 was not a great time to be a German guy living in the good ol’ U.S.A. For one, there was that whole war in Europe thing going on. Some folks weren’t too inclined to be polite towards folks who could be showing German sympathies. According to Morris Bishop, on campus alone there were rumors of tennis courts designed to serve as gun emplacements, and stories of bomb-making operations in faculty cellars (428). The professor of Latin tried to expel the professor of German (not Holt) from the “Town and Gown Club” because of German sympathies – namely, he read a New York daily that was published in German.

Well, Muenter/Holt was horrified by the war and all of the killing (not crazy). He decided that if he could stop all the munitions manufacturers, like J. P. Morgan, from selling to the Allies, he could single-handedly stop the war (kinda crazy). After realizing letters and arguments wouldn’t work, he decided to take action by bombing the Senate chambers of the U.S. Capitol (WTF crazy).

He designed a suitcase time bomb designed to work by letting acid eat through a cork, and took the next train to Washington D.C. His goal was to “wake the American people up to the damage which explosives like these were doing abroad”. Well, he went into the Capitol on July 2, 1915 at about 11:40 PM, and with bomb under arm, set it down in a reception room where it wouldn’t hurt anyone, went outside and waited for the explosion, running off to catch a train out of town when the bomb went off. The room was blown apart and a watchman was blown off his seat some distance away, but the story only merited a tiny blurb in the NY Times that attributed the explosion to “gasses”.

Step two in his grandiose plan was to take the train to Glen Cove, Long Island, home of industrial magnate J. P. Morgan Jr. Holt’s goal was to hold Mrs. Morgan and the Morgan kids hostage until J. P. agreed to stop sending munitions abroad. Well, after forcing his way into the house, J. P. stormed towards Holt and was given a warm Cornellian greeting by receiving two Big Red and bloody gunshot wounds to the groin as the British ambassador (Cecil Spring-Rice) and a butler subdued the German madman. This time, Holt earned himself the first three pages in the Times. While taken into custody, a grimmer part of his plan was revealed, as he planned to blow up several munition ships while they were at sea. It didn’t help that while he hadn’t plant any bombs yet, one munition ship (the “Minnehaha”) caught fire, and they thought it was one of his bombs,  and it returned to port in a panic.

Of course, the press had a field day with the story. While Morgan survived without major aftereffects (he lived another 28 years), Holt was exposed as Erich Muenter, the Harvard wife-killer. After trying to kill himself using by using the metal part of an eraser cap to try and cut an artery, he literally launched into a second attempt by climbing over the Mineola jail’s lattice bars and throwing himself head-down to the concrete floor 18 feet below. His second attempt turned out to be successful.

Word to the wise – you may not be the richest or most famous person to come out of Cornell, but things could be a lot worse. This is one alumni club that everyone should avoid joining.

[1] Bishop, Morris. History of Cornell. pp. 428-429


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Categories : Cornell, cornell history, factoids, general history, possibly illegal activity

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