Campus & Beyond Island of Digital Dreams: Fascinating Facts About Cornell Tech Stories You May Like Around Thanksgiving, the Big Apple Turns Big Red The Cornell Club Is a Big Red Oasis in NYC New Hotel at Cornell Tech Boasts Breathtaking Views and Big Red Touches From the famed tramway to the eco-friendly construction, we offer a wealth of info about the University’s newest campus By Joe Wilensky In 2011, Cornell won a much-publicized competition, spearheaded by then-NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, to build an applied sciences grad school in the Big Apple. The campus would help make the city a national center for digital and tech innovation—bridging academia and industry and boosting the region’s economy. Nearly a decade and a half later, Cornell Tech on Roosevelt Island is a hub of innovation. It boasts some 700 students and 50 faculty, with its alumni already numbering around 2,300. (Unlike the nearby Weill Cornell Medicine, Cornell Tech is not a separate school, but rather a graduate campus of the University.) The campus’s annual economic impact in NYC is estimated at $768 million, with some 2,800 jobs created each year—and by 2030, those figures are projected to rise to $1.5 billion and 7,000, respectively. To date, Cornell Tech has launched 115 startups, 94% of which are based in the city; 89% of the Class of 2024 had found jobs within three months of graduation. But how much do you know about this cutting-edge campus—located just across the East River from Manhattan? Read on for 14 fascinating facts! It was initially housed in a Google building! For its first five years, while the Roosevelt Island campus was under construction, Cornell Tech operated out of several floors in Google’s building, located in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. Cornell UniversityStudents hang out in the campus’s temporary location in 2013. After the campus’s first phase was completed, it opened to students in September 2017. Its island home has a complex history (and several names)! Two miles long and just 800 feet wide, it was called Hog Island during the Colonial era; by the 1800s it was known as Blackwell’s Island, after its owners. NYC purchased it in the 1820s as a site for hospitals, asylums, workhouses, and penitentiaries. Wikimedia CommonsA 1991 aerial view shows the Queensboro Bridge crossing over Roosevelt Island; the campus was built to the left of the bridge. For much of the 20th century, it was called Welfare Island. (Goldwater Memorial Hospital, located there, was originally the Welfare Hospital for Chronic Disease.) It was renamed Roosevelt Island (for President Franklin D.) in 1973 as part of a vast redevelopment effort, which ultimately created several affordable residential complexes, neighborhoods, and an elementary school. Wikimedia CommonsA vintage postcard of “The Work House on Blackwell’s Island.” It has room to expand through the 2030s! The campus occupies 12 acres; more than two acres are accessible outdoor areas, including the central plaza, walkways, and green space. In addition to the current five buildings, the master plan calls for several additional structures to be developed through the 2030s, eventually accommodating around 2,000 students and more than 200 faculty. Max TouheyThe campus viewed from the Queens side of the river, backed by the Manhattan skyline. Most recently, Cornell Tech opened The Bridge, a collaborative workspace for entrepreneurs, early- and mid-stage ventures, and established companies. Many of its users will be startups that were nurtured through the campus’s incubator programs. The central building has a tech-driven façade! The Bloomberg Center boasts sweeping panels of tilted metallic disks—which not only help reduce energy use (by trapping air to create insulation), but also have an artistic bent. Cornell UniversityThe Bloomberg Center’s façade. Two digital images, one of an Ithaca waterfall and one of the Manhattan skyline, were fed into an algorithm to vary the disks’ angles and catch sunlight in different ways. The results, while not comprising recognizable images to the human eye, form contrasting designs. The “skyline” area on the west side is busier and more chaotic, while the “waterfall” on the east side has a calmer and gentler mood. It’s home to the other Feeney Way! Formerly known as the Tech Walk, the broad central pedestrian avenue through campus was renamed for the late Chuck Feeney ’56, the University’s most generous donor, in 2023. (The Ithaca campus’s East Avenue was renamed Feeney Way in 2021.) The 30-foot-wide thoroughfare was formerly known as the Tech Walk. Made through his Atlantic Philanthropies, Feeney’s record-setting $350 million founding grant helped cement the University’s successful bid in the tech campus competition, funded its first-phase construction and program development, and created an endowment. You can get to the campus from “far above”! The Roosevelt Island Tram, which connects the island to Manhattan, was the nation’s first commuter aerial tramway. It opened on May 17, 1976, to serve the island’s residential areas. Stories You May Like Around Thanksgiving, the Big Apple Turns Big Red The Cornell Club Is a Big Red Oasis in NYC Cornell UniversityHave tram, will travel. Charging the same fare as a subway ride, the tram runs about every 10–20 minutes—from one station at 59th Street and Second Avenue in Manhattan to another a block or so from campus. The tram, which is popular with tourists and locals alike, can be viewed via livestream. Or, you can get there from deep underground! The other way to reach Roosevelt Island from Manhattan is via the subway. Opened in 1990, the stop on the F Line is the system’s third deepest, at approximately 100 feet below street level. Cornell UniversityLet Touchdown be your public transit guide! Can you drive to the island? Yes—but only from Queens, via the Roosevelt Island Bridge. (The Queensboro / 59th Street Bridge passes high over the island just north of the campus, but does not offer any exits there.) Its “T” logo has an intentional twist! The iconic "Twisted T" logo. Its funky “Twisted T” graphic—which appears on campus and online to visually represent Cornell Tech—is not bent randomly, but is an homage to the Big Apple. At 29 degrees off the vertical, the twist has about the same angle as that of the Manhattan street grid’s rotation from the north-south axis. Jason Koski / Cornell UniversityA panoramic view of the campus and its environs. It offers multiple grad programs! Degree programs include a master’s in data science and decision analytics; a master’s in design technology; dual master’s with the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute in health tech, urban tech, and connective media; a Johnson Cornell Tech MBA; and a tech-focused master's in law (LLM). The campus also offers PhDs in multiple fields, and its Runway Startup Postdocs program combines a business school, research, and a startup incubator. WWII-era murals are preserved on campus! Before Goldwater Memorial Hospital was demolished, several historic murals were carefully removed, preserved, and later re-installed in campus buildings. They’d been created in the early 1940s, commissioned as part of the Works Projects Administration’s Federal Art Project. The Abstraction mural, being carefully removed ... ... and later restored and displayed in its new home . One of them, the 324-square-foot Abstraction by painter Ilya Bolotowsky, was originally installed in a round dayroom—so to avoid damaging it, a room at Cornell Tech was specially designed with a similar footprint. Trees from the site got new lives—as tables! Two large pin oaks—each measuring more three feet in diameter—that were removed during construction were repurposed. Their trunks were transported to a facility in Connecticut to be kiln-dried for a year; they were then milled into two large communal tables for the Bloomberg Center. The former pin oaks, repurposed. It has hosted movie shoots and more! Projects that have used it as a location include the John Krasinski movie IF; episodes of “Clifford the Big Red Dog,” “Dr. Death,” “Instinct,” and “The Blacklist”; and commercials for Best Buy, Cartier, and Macy’s. Recast as a hospital for a film shoot. For the “Clifford” episode, a prop shaped like a giant ear of corn was brought into a lab; for the fantasy comedy IF, the Tata Innovation Center lobby was transformed into “Knight County Hospital.” Sustainability is a key feature! The campus’s many eco-friendly aspects include multiple LEED certifications; the Bloomberg Center’s photovoltaic roof and rainwater collection system; and geo-exchange heating and cooling. The House at Cornell Tech, a 26-story residence, was the world’s largest “passive house” when it opened in 2017. The standard requires that energy consumption for heating and cooling be reduced by more than 75% compared to the average for new construction. The House. And … a prof appears in a deck of playing cards! Deborah Estrin, an associate dean and longtime professor of computer science, is the King of Diamonds in a deck celebrating notable women in computing. Estrin’s many other honors include a 2018 MacArthur Fellowship—the award colloquially known as the “genius grant.” “Women have been leaders in computing from the start,” states the poster celebrating the project, “but not enough of our contributions are remembered.” Top: Aerial view of Cornell Tech on Roosevelt Island with the Queensboro Bridge and Manhattan’s Upper East Side in the background (Max Touhey). All photos provided by Cornell Tech, unless otherwise indicated. Published February 20, 2025 Leave a Comment Cancel replyOnce your comment is approved, your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *Comment * Name * Class Year Email * Save my name, email, and class year in this browser for the next time I comment. Δ Other stories You may like Cornelliana Around Thanksgiving, the Big Apple Turns Big Red Alumni Alum’s Business Is (Literally) Just Child’s Play Alumni Big (Red) Love: A Celebration of Cornellian Couples