Gothic Revival Mansion at Cornell University NY

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The elegant stone mansion known as Llenroc is the last extant building associated with the personal life of Ezra Cornell, inventor, industrialist, philanthropist and founder of the world-renowned Cornell University. Regarded as Ithaca, New York's finest post-Civil War Gothic residence, it is an outstanding and exceptionally well-preserved example of high-style masonry Gothic Revival architecture. Inside and out, the building displays an unusually high level of craftsmanship and meticulous attention to details, a tribute to the lofty ideals of Ezra Cornell, who supervised much of the building's construction himself.

Ithaca, New York, the chief beneficiary of Ezra Cornell's philanthropy and the town he chose as the site for his home and the university he founded, is nestled in "an amphitheater of hills," all of which command dramatic views of Cayuga Lake, one of New York State's noted Finger Lakes. As early as 1836, only fifteen years after the incorporation of the village of Ithaca, one visitor remarked, that "this village is destined to become the resort of fashion, taste and genius." Most of the land which now comprises the city of Ithaca was purchased by Abraham Bloodgood from a Revolutionary War veteran who had received it in payment for his service in the Colonial Army. The land was surveyed and readied for development by Bloodgood's son-in-law, Simeon DeWitt, on whose farm Llenroc now stands. Early accessibility to rail and water transportation systems contributed to the town's rapid growth as a center for both industry and education. Mills and quarries flourished throughout the area. By the mid-nineteenth century, such diverse manufacturing ventures as the Ithaca Calendar Clock Company, established in 1854 as the maker of the world's only reliable calendar clock, and the Ithaca Gun Company, founded in 1883, contributed to Ithaca's stature in the business world. Today, the social and economic climate of this small city, however, is dominated by Ithaca College, founded in 1892 as the Ithaca Conservatory of Music, and Cornell University.

Ezra Cornell was born on January 11^th, 1807 at Westchester Landing on the Bronx River. In 1819, his family moved west to De Ruyter, New York. After practicing carpentry and other trades in Homer and Syracuse, New York, young Ezra Cornell settled in Ithaca in 1828. Here he found employment with Jeremiah Beebe, a leading local mill owner, for whom he built mills, blasted rock for the construction of flumes and, eventually, handled business affairs at the grain and sawmill on Fall Creek.

In 1843, Cornell purchased part interest in a newly patented plow which he then peddled to farmers in Georgia and Maine. Journeying to Georgia, he happened to pass through Washington D.C. just as that city was buzzing with excitement over the proposed Baltimore-Washington telegraph line. Cornell came to be employed by Samuel F.B. Morse, and invented a device for laying underground cables. When problems in insulating the cable developed, he perfected a method of stringing the wires on poles with glass insulators. Convinced of the commercial future of the telegraph, he devoted his energy and savings to building and financing new lines and soon became a leading figure in this field.

Subsequently, in 1847, Cornell formed his own telegraph system, the Michigan Telegraph Company. Competition forced Cornell and other midwestern telegraph line owners to merge and form the Western Union Telegraph Company. Having abandoned an active role in the uncertain world of business, Cornell was

Between 1860 and 1864, Cornell's annual earnings from his investment in Western Union jumped from $15,000 to $140,000. To Cornell, the product of a strict New England Quaker family, there was only one thing to do with his rapidly growing fortune. He wrote in his cyphering book, "My greatest care now is how to spend this large income to do the greatest, good to those who are properly dependent on me; to the poor and to posterity." In accordance with this philosophy, he founded the Cornell Library in 1862, a free public library for the citizens of Ithaca and Tompkins County, which he built and vested with a $300,000 endowment.

Together with his fellow State Legislator, Andrew Dickson White, Cornell began to actively champion an effort to found an agricultural college under provisions of the Morrill Land Grant College Act of 1862. The act provided each state with thirty thousand acres of western lands, the income from which was to be used "as an endowment for education in agriculture and the mechanical arts." To the $6 million proceeds realized from the careful management of the New York State land grant, Cornell added $500,000 of his own money and his three-hundred-acre East Hill farm for the construction of a campus, Cornell University.

Despite pressure from A.D. White and others to locate the campus nearer to the heart of the village, Cornell chose his farm as the site for the new university. Following the nineteenth-century planning ideal of the campus as a "city on a hill," Cornell insisted that the university would be most viable if its buildings crowned the top of the hill on the eastern horizon. Moreover, the chosen site offered dramatic vistas of Cayuga Lake and the surrounding countryside and provided room for future expansion.

At the time of the chartering of the university, Cornell decided to build a new house on his remaining parcel of farmland, just below the site of the new campus. Although he had originally intended to build "an ordinary, comfortable residence," the president of the new university, Andrew Dickson White, persuaded him to erect instead "an imposing and expensive New-Gothic stone mansion which necessitated the importation of skilled German stonecutters." Constructed at an estimated cost of $50,000 to $60,000, the house took nearly ten years to complete.

Cornell devoted these years to overseeing the day to day construction details of his new home and the university's first buildings: Morrill Hall, 1866; White Hall, 1867; McGraw Hall and Tower, 1869; and Sibley Hall, 1870. He reported to the university trustees in 1867:

To ensure a high level of craftsmanship on both the campus and his house, Cornell actively recruited European workmen. He directed his son, Alonzo Cornell, traveling in England in 1869, to be on the lookout for "young men, Scotch, English, or German, without families and with money to pay their fares to Ithaca." A.D. White, in a 1911 letter to the Delta Phi fraternity, refers to "English master carpenters and carvers who were brought to this country by Professor Goldwin Smith" and to "German workmen who had been employed on the stonework of Cologne Cathedral." Another source refers to Italian workmen "carving stone …near the Cayuga Lake Inlet."

Although the construction details of both the house and the campus were very carefully documented, some confusion about the authorship of the final plans for Llenroc still exists. The remaining original plans bear the stamp of the Albany firm, Nichols and Brown, architects of the university's awkward Cascadilla Hall, constructed as a water cure establishment in 1864. However, A.D. White, in his 1911 letter to the fraternity, cites Thomas Fuller, architect of the New York State Capitol building and the Neg-Gothic Canadian Houses of Parliament, as the designer of the Cornell House. Because Nichols and Brown shared an office with Fuller during the period in which the house was designed, it is assumed that Fuller was called in, probably at the request of A.D. White, to refine the Nichols and Brown design.

By 1872, seven years after the architects had begun drawing up plans for the building, Llenroc was still under construction. Cornell wrote impatiently to his wife, Mary, in September, 1872, "We must hurry up that house. I have made up my mind not to live on the flats in Ithaca for another summer. I am satisfied that hill air is best for me." In 1874, however, before the house was completed, he became ill with pneumonia and died on 9 December 1874, while getting up from his sickbed to work at his desk. After Llenroc was completed in 1875, it was occupied by Cornell's wife and children, including his son, Alonzo, who served as governor of New York from 1879 to 1882. It remained in the Cornell family until 1911, when it was sold to the Pi Chapter of the Delta Phi fraternity.

"Llenroc, originally known as the "Villa Cornell" or "Cornell's Folly," remains as an exceptionally well-preserved example of Gothic Revival architecture due to the efforts of the members of the Delta Phi Fraternity. Although interior alterations have been made to meet the needs of the fraternity, the architectural integrity of the building has not been violated. Only 2.34 acres of the original estate are still owned by Delta Phi. In 1974, a 2.5-acre parcel of land, north of the building site, was sold to the university. Because of the high cost of maintenance and liability insurance, the fraternity also sold to the university

the Balwin Stairs, which link Cornell Avenue to University Avenue. Not a part of the original design scheme for the estate, the stairs were donated by the parents of a Delta Phi member killed in World War I. The fraternity holds restrictive covenants over these properties, giving it full use of them as well as control over their development. As part of its ongoing commitment to maintain and preserve the mansion and its grounds, Delta Phi has embarked upon a program to replant the property with new trees, replacing those lost to the ravages of Dutch Elm Disease.

Llenroc stands today as the only personal monument to the man whose vision and leadership led to the creation of one of the nation's foremost institutions of higher education and advanced research. Associated throughout its one hundred years with Ezra Cornell and the university he founded, it serves as a reminder of the university's past while continuing in active service as part of the Cornell community.

Building Description

The irregular profile of Ezra Cornell's Gothic villa, Llenroc, rises abruptly from a grassy knoll encircled by groves of century-old trees. Both the house and its grounds command panoramic vistas of the Ithaca countryside and Cayuga Lake. The property is bounded on the east by Llenroc Court, a private road, and on the south by Cornell Avenue and the heavily wooded Ithaca Cemetery. Great expanses of gently sloping lawn stretch almost to the north and west perimeters of the estate, separated from University Avenue by a thick curtain of trees.

Designed in 1865, Llenroc reflects the stylistic nuances of the late Gothic period. A similar villa, illustrated in C.J. Richardson's 1870 edition of Picturesque Designs for Mansions, Villas and Lodges, is placed in "the domestic style of the reign of Henry VII," (1485-1509). The overall composition of Llenroc expresses the American interpretation of the Gothic style, reminiscent of the many Gothic Revival villas built during the 1840's and 1850's. Viewed outside the context of the building, however, many of Llenroc's expertly wrought stone details reflect a distinctly European influence, more the product of the impeccable craftsmanship of the German stone carvers employed and supervised by Cornell than any happy accident of design.

Oriented on an east-west axis, the overall dimensions of the house measure 60 by 110 feet. The massing of the house is best expressed as a composition of two rectangular blocks, scaled according to the functions they serve. The two-and-a-half-story main block, 60 by 75 feet, contains the public and private family spaces: living rooms, bedrooms, and a ballroom. Projecting ells on the south facade and the west, north and east elevations of the main block relieve its massiveness and articulate the pinwheel arrangement of the major interior spaces around the central stair hall. Separated from the main block by the east projection, the one-and-a-half-story service block, 30 by 35 feet, contains the kitchen and pantries, and upstairs, in what were originally the servants' quarters, several bedrooms.

Llenroc's richly varied roofline further expresses the complexity of its plan and elevations. Somewhat obscured by the steeply pitched gables of the four projecting ells, a mansard roof covers the area occupied by the third-floor ballroom and much of the central stair hall. Jerkin-headed dormers protrude from the mansard as well as from the gables. Equipped with slatted lancet windows to ventilate the attic spaces, each gable is embellished with stone coping, terminating with carved turrets. Massive stone chimneys rise above the roofline on the west end of the north facade, the east projection, and the south end of the east elevation. A smaller chimney rises from the center of the service wing, which is capped with a mansard roof punctuated with jerkin-headed dormers cut through the cornice line. All of the exposed roof surfaces are covered with imbricated slate shingles. There is no evidence, however, that the delicate wrought-iron crestings and finials shown in original renderings of the house were ever installed.

Llenroc is finished with smooth-faced Ithaca limestone laid in a random coursed ashlar pattern against thin beds of mortar backed by two-foot-thick masonry walls. Over the years, this Ithaca Stone has assumed a greenish cast which contrasts vividly with the gray Onondaga limestone used for the many rich surface details such as quoins and belt courses. The raised basement, lit by Gothic arched windows, is visually divided from the first floor by a smooth stone watertable.

A thin, projecting, string course provides horizontal demarcation between the first and second floors. The cornice line is embellished with block modillions. Quoins surround the windows and emphasize the corners of the building, its projections, and its chimneys. .The surface texture of the building is further embellished with carved dripstones and labels which terminate in leaf-patterned bosses. Foliated capitals and balustrades ornament the arcaded porches and bracketed balconies.

The main (south) facade of the building faces the U-shaped driveway, oriented, unlike the house, on a north-south axis. It is dominated by a steeply gabled entrance projection marked by twin freestanding globe lamps and a great Gothic-arched doorway surmounted by a beribboned tablet bearing Ezra Cornell's personal motto, "True and Firm.". Above the entrance composition, coupled windows, divided by a delicately carved colonnette and capped with a blind Gothic arch, open onto a bracketed shelf. A massive buttressed chimney, whimsically pierced with a blind Gothic arch and a lancet opening, draws the eye away from the entrance to the west end of the south facade. A richly carved stone balcony, reached from the card room, is located to the right of the entrance projection. Gothic pier arches mark the portico of the secondary entrance set into the south facade of the house next to the service wing.

Great porches and windows which afford sweeping vistas of the Ithaca countryside distinguish the north and west garden elevations and help to express the hierarchy of the interior spaces. The south end of the west elevation is dominated by a three-bay arcaded porch composed of Gothic pier arches. The center projection, which forms the north wall of the music room porch, houses the living room on the first floor, and on the second the master bedroom/study. From the living room, a tall window, flanked by two narrower windows, opens onto a bracketed balcony, identical to that outside the card room on the south facade. On the second floor, the three double-hung sash windows surmounted by blind Gothic arches are arranged in a Palladian configuration. Two French doors lead from the living room to the arcaded porch which occupies the northwest corner of the house. The fenestration details of the central projection on the north elevation which houses the library and, above, a bedroom/study, are identical to those found on the west wall of the living room projection. To the east of the library, the north wall of the east projection is marked by a pair of coupled windows.

The gable end of the east projection is dominated by the great chimney of the dining room fireplace. South of the projection, two tall Gothic-arched windows pierce the east wall of the central block of the building and illuminate the stair landing within. To the right of these windows, a buttressed chimney similar to that serving the music room rises above the mansard roof. The east elevation, however, is dominated by the service wing which is linked to the main part of the house by the dining room ell. In keeping with the utilitarian function of its interior spaces, the ornamentation of the block has been kept to a minimum. Smaller modillions mark the cornice line of its mansard roof. Although its windows are marked with quoins, the labels have been left undecorated. On the east side, a simple Gothic-arched door opens onto a service court. A chimney pokes through the center of the block.

The interior displays the same fine craftsmanship and meticulous attention to detail lavished on the exterior of the building. Throughout the house, Gothic motifs are repeated in the black walnut and stained oak woodwork. Gothic-arched panels and delicate brass hardware embellishes the doors. Interior folding shutters are concealed within the boxed window frames when not in use. Well-preserved fireplaces, chandeliers, and other decorative details further contribute to the aesthetic harmony of the interior and exterior of the building.

A monumental central stair hall forms a strong east-west axis around which the major living spaces are oriented. The hall is dominated by a grand three-flight staircase distinguished by a richly carved wainscot and balustrade. A trefoil cusp molding trims the paneled wainscot. The balustrade, however, is filled with flowing tracery combining the trefoil motif with the fish bladder design used during the French Flamboyant period of late Gothic architecture. Gothic-arched windows with white marble sills illuminate the second-floor landing and the hall below. Following the nineteenth-century principle of creating distinctive entry and stair halls so as to discourage casual visitors and business associates from entering the more private quarters of the house, the stair hall is set aside from the entry hall, which is located in the south projection.

Reached from a doorway set into the east wall of the entry hall, the card room was originally intended to function as a study. The focal point of this room is a small fireplace surrounded by an unpolished gray marble mantle. Multi-colored Portuguese tiles surround the fireplace opening, while the hearth is paved with larger tiles glazed with a rich cream and brown geometric design. Small niches on either side of the fireplace, similar to those found throughout the house, were designed for Mrs. Cornell to hold arrangements of fresh flowers.

The music room and living room are arranged en suite at the west end of the stair hall, divided by a Gothic-arched opening ornamented with a casing of black walnut inlaid with ebony. Both rooms feature richly detailed molded plaster ceilings from which hang identical twelve-globe crystal chandeliers, which have been converted from gas to electricity. The mantle of the music room fireplace is constructed of unpolished gray marble with a shelf and trim of polished black marble. A deep, stenciled cavetto molding tops the mirrored overmantle. Following the design of the exterior of the house, a depressed Gothic arch forms a hood over the mirrored overmantle of the living room's black marble fireplace.

Unlike "Llenroc's" other formal living spaces, the ornamentation of the library, located in the north projection, is largely derived from Classical rather than Gothic sources. The plaster ceiling, set above a dentilled cornice, is decorated with delicate Adamesque moldings. Two doors, though inset with Gothic-arched panels, are surmounted with broken pediments. A band of Greek fretwork surrounds the fireplace opening of the white marble mantle. The Greek fretwork motif is repeated in the cream and brown tiles that border the hearth. Simple, stained oak bookcases line the walls.

Exceptionally rich details of dark-stained oak add richness and warmth to the spacious dining room. Narrow ribs crisscross the paneled ceiling in a latticework pattern. Bosses carved with fruit and vegetable motifs mark the intersections of the latticework at regular intervals. The walls are fitted with an oak wainscot. Captured game birds, carved in bas-relief, embellish the pilasters. On the east wall, the ornately carved fireplace is presided over by a leering grotesque, Old Cannon Must. According to a legend passed down through the Cornell family:

Doors flanking the dining room fireplace provide access to the butler's pantry and the stair hall of the service wing. Although much of the original woodwork and cabinetry remains in the kitchen and two pantries; these areas have been modernized to accommodate the needs of the fraternity. The narrow staircase leads to three small second-floor bedrooms, originally used as servants' quarters. The service stair also leads to the basement, equipped with a cement floor in the 1950s. Arched passageways, built into the two-foot-thick masonry walls, lead through a maze of storage and utility rooms which have been finished to provide space for a bar and game room.

The plan of the second floor corresponds directly to the pinwheel configuration of the rooms below. Four bedrooms, situated above the study, entry hall, music room and living room, open onto the second-floor stair hall. Two smaller bedrooms and a bath, located above the library and the dining room, are served by a secondary hall. Divided from the stair hall by a Gothic-arched opening embellished with a trefoil cusp molding, this hall, also oriented on an east-west axis, serves as a linking element between the second floor of the main block of the house and the service wing. Despite the grandeur of the second-floor stair hall, neither the bedrooms nor the third-floor ballroom, converted to a dormitory, reflect the richness of detail found in the first-floor formal living spaces. In only two of the bedrooms, those designed for Ezra Cornell and his wife, do we find such original features as built-in bookcases, a built-in vanity, and fine woodwork.

These bedrooms are located above the music and living rooms.

Both the exterior of Llenroc and the significant features of its principal rooms have remained virtually unchanged since the house was completed. The Pi chapter of Delta Phi fraternity, which owns and occupies the building, has, over the years, taken measures to preserve its architectural integrity and, when necessary, to stabilize the structure. As a result of the chapter's efforts, Llenroc stands today as one of the finest and best-preserved masonry Gothic Revival-style residences in the region.

View from northwest (1979)

View from south (1979)

Entryway from south (1979)

View from west (1979)

View from north (1979)

View from northwest (1979)

View from northeast (1979)

Central stair hall (1979)

Music room fireplace (1979)

Library fireplace (1979)

Dining room ceiling (1979)

View from West (1983)

North Elevation from Northwest (1983)

West Elevation (1983)

West and South Elevations from Southwest (1983)