What to See in Ithaca - Top Sights and Attractions

The Telluride House, formally the Cornell Branch of the Telluride Association, and commonly referred to as just "Telluride", is a highly selective residential community of Cornell University students and faculty. Founded in 1910 by American industrialist L. L. Nunn, the house grants room and board scholarships to a number of undergraduate and graduate students, post-doctoral researchers and faculty members affiliated with the university's various colleges and programs. A fully residential intellectual society, the Telluride House takes as its pillars democratic self-governance, communal living and intellectual inquiry. Students granted the house's scholarship are known as Telluride Scholars.

The Telluride House is considered the first program of the educational non-profit Telluride Association, which was founded a year after the house was built and was first led by the Smithsonian Institution’s fourth Secretary Charles Doolittle Walcott. Nunn went on to found Deep Springs College in 1917. The Telluride Association founded and maintained other branches thereafter, two of which—at Cornell University and at the University of Michigan—are still active. The Association also runs free selective programs for high school students, including the Telluride Association Summer Program.

In its more than a century of operation, the house's membership has included some of Cornell's most notable alumni and faculty members. Located in the university's West Campus, the Telluride House is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.^[5]

Auditorium in Ithaca, New York. Bailey Hall is the largest auditorium at Cornell University, seating 1324 people. It is named for Liberty Hyde Bailey, first dean of what is now Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences; it was originally built by New York State for the use of agriculture students, but also filled a need for a large auditorium for the whole university.

The building was constructed in 1912 according to the Greek Revival architecture design of Buffalo architect Edward Brodhead Green, an 1878 Cornell graduate. It is shaped as an amphitheatre, with a colonnaded portico wrapping around its south side, and monumental stairs leading up to 11-foot main doors.

Bailey Hall was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.^[7]

Prudence Risley Residential College for the Creative and Performing Arts, commonly known as Risley Residential College, Risley Hall, or just Risley, is a program house at Cornell University. Unlike most other dormitories on campus, Risley is a residential college; house members, or "Risleyites," have some say in the administration of the residence hall, can continue to reside there as long as they are enrolled at Cornell, are encouraged to eat together at the in-house dining hall, and participate in educational activities such as guest lectures within the dormitory. The building houses 192 students, chosen by Risleyites from a number of applications, as well as one or two Artists-In-Residence, who live in the building and organize regular programs in which the house members participate. The current Artist-In-Residence is Georgia O'Neil. Previous AIRs include Patrick Gray, Carolina Osorio-Gill, Natalie Tyler, Abraham Burickson, Gregory Halpern, and Brandon Bird. Many famous people have visited the house for intimate discussions with the Risleyites, such as Anthony Rapp, Christopher Hogwood, John Cleese, who hosted a question and answer session after the showing of his film A Fish Called Wanda, and Samuel R. Delany who continues to collaborate with Risley alumnus Kenneth James.^[12]

Botanical garden in Tompkins County, New York. The Cornell Botanic Gardens is a botanical garden located adjacent to the Cornell University campus in Ithaca, New York. The Botanic Gardens proper consist of 25 acres of botanical gardens and 150 acres of the F. R. Newman Arboretum. The greater Botanic Gardens includes 40 different nature areas around Cornell and Ithaca, covering 4,300 acres.

The origin of the Botanic Gardens dates back to Cornell's beginning in the mid-19th century and are part of the university's longtime interest in agriculture, forestry, and the natural sciences. The Botanic Gardens saw a major planting effort during the 1930s and assumed the name Cornell Plantations in 1944. Gardens and facilities have continually expanded, including a construction program at the start of the 21st century. The Botanic Gardens also maintains four gardens on Cornell's central campus. The Botanic Gardens offers three courses for academic credit, are used as a resource by other classes, host a number of informal lectures and tours, and have played a part in many scholarly papers. As of 2009, the Botanic Gardens had a $2.9 million annual operating budget. The name was changed to the current form in 2016.

The gardens specialize in trees and shrubs native to New York State. The themed herb garden is especially noted. The Botanic Gardens have been the subject of several books and films over the years, are open daily without charge, and have been recommended as a visitation site by a number of travel books and newspaper travel sections.^[13]

Waterfall in New York State. Ithaca Falls is a waterfall located within the city of Ithaca, New York. It is the last of a series of waterfalls along the hanging valley formed where Fall Creek intersects the glacial trough of Cayuga Lake. The falls are in an amphitheater formed by freezing and thawing of the weak shale which makes up most of the gorge walls. The splash pool, and the creek just below the falls, are a popular spot for fly fishing.

The area around the base of the falls was owned by Cornell University for many years, before being sold to the City of Ithaca in 2000 as a part of environmental cleanup. The area has been a popular, if dilapidated, park for many years; currently it is undergoing a major redesign and rebuild. In June 2016, the Ithaca Common Council voted to demolish a house directly north of the falls and add the parcel to the park. The city had acquired the house after the owner failed to pay property taxes.

The falls is present as the stylized "I" in the "Ithaca is Gorges" logo.^[15]

Tourist attraction in Ithaca, New York. The Sciencenter's Sagan Planet Walk is a walkable scale model of the Solar System, located in Ithaca, New York. The model scales the entire Solar System—both planet size and distances between them—down to one five billionth of its actual size. The exhibition was originally created in 1997 in memory of Ithaca resident and Cornell Professor Carl Sagan.

Consisting of eleven obelisks situated along a 1.18 km path through the streets of downtown Ithaca, the original Planet Walk leads from the Sun at Center Ithaca to Pluto at the Ithaca Sciencenter. In 2012, the model was expanded 7,630 kilometers to include a representation of Alpha Centauri, the Sun's closest neighboring star, at the ʻImiloa Astronomy Center at the University of Hawaii. The addition of the Alpha Centauri Obelisk made it the world's largest exhibition, until the Akaa Solar System Scale Model added Proxima Centauri in 2018 at a distance of 13,370 kilometres away from Akaa.

In 2014, the inner planets and Sun were removed as part of extensive construction being done to the Ithaca Commons, but have since been replaced. In 2015, a grant was approved to further expand the exhibition by installing an exoplanet Kepler-37d station on the Moon 384,500 kilometers away.^[17]