Why Cornell and Ithaca Were Once in Different ‘Time Zones’

Our history expert offers that and other tantalizing town-gown anecdotes, including a bygone social club and some vintage pranks

By Corey Ryan Earle ’07

Built halfway up the hill on land deeded by Ezra’s son Franklin, the clubhouse was designed by William Henry Miller 1872, whose many buildings still dot campus and downtown.

Prominent local businessman William Sage—son of Henry Sage, benefactor of Sage Chapel and Sage Hall—served as its first president.

The club even once garnered coverage in the New York Times—for a 1910 contest to see who could continually smoke a cigar the longest without it burning out. (The winner: a prof who puffed for 85 minutes, narrowly beating a local doctor.)

Founded in 1890, the club was a social space bringing together prominent men from Ithaca and Cornell.

Sadly, though, the club failed to survive the Great Depression, defaulting on its mortgage and disbanding in 1934.

Of course, the use of the phrase “town and gown” to refer to the relationship between locals and an academic community long predates that Ithaca club, stretching back to at least the 18th century.

And with students inevitably causing a certain amount of disruption in the community, Ithaca’s own town-gown tensions date back to Cornell’s beginning.

But it wasn’t always the students who were responsible for that early friction.

For example: on January 11, 1869, just months after the University opened, Ezra invited the Ithaca and Cornell communities to a grand party at Cascadilla Hall to celebrate his birthday—but local clergymen protested the event’s inclusion of dancing, which they deemed ungodly and inappropriate.

The University’s response did nothing to address local concerns: the faculty declined to ban student dancing outright, and Ezra hired a full orchestra to play at his next birthday party.

Of course, the use of the phrase “town and gown” to refer to the relationship between locals and an academic community long predates that Ithaca club, stretching back to at least the 18th century.

And clearly, Cornell depended on the citizens of Ithaca from the start.

With very limited campus accommodations, many students lived downtown with local families until the rapidly developing Collegetown began adding large boarding houses, followed by the construction of additional University residence halls in the 1910s and 1920s.

A lack of residential and community spaces on East Hill meant students were socializing downtown, too.

Early town-gown clashes often revolved around student shenanigans, like the tradition of “Gate Eve” on Halloween—when students marauded through downtown, stealing, destroying, and vandalizing gates, fences, and signs.

Several of the first uses of the phrase “town and gown” in Big Red student publications refer to these antics, like an 1871 Gate Eve postmortem in the Cornell Era.

“The old war between town and gown can never end until each learns to comprehend the other’s stand-point,” the publication observed.

“We do not believe the fault is all with students, or all with town people, any more than we believe the old hostility between faculty and students was because one was essentially bad and the other essentially good.”

With very limited campus accommodations, many students lived downtown with local families until the rapidly developing Collegetown began adding large boarding houses.

And other early student journalists were quick to point out a perceived double standard from local law enforcement.

The Daily Sun bemoaned in 1882—somewhat melodramatically—that when Glee Club members sang on their way home from rehearsal, they were threatened with arrest, yet it was common to be “awakened by a crowd of ruffians wandering up and down, and giving vent to noises whose hideousness is only equaled by its frequent indecency.”

The town-gown relationship would continue to ebb and flow over the decades—but perhaps the greatest tension came in 1928, when the city and the University were quite literally out of sync.

On May 1, 1928, Cornell implemented Daylight Saving Time, moving its clocks one hour ahead through November. Ithaca did not.

The sentiment on the Hill was that the additional hour of daylight would aid student recreation and athletics, with some recalling its benefits when the U.S. first implemented the time change in 1918, during wartime.

But after the war and until the practice became standard in 1966, municipalities could choose whether to move clocks ahead; a New York State report found that Ithaca was one of 33 out of 101 that opted not to.

On May 1, 1928, Cornell implemented Daylight Saving Time, moving its clocks one hour ahead through November. Ithaca did not.

“Time Tangle Caused by Adoption of Daylight Saving Time,” the Sun declared on April 30, one day before the plan even went into effect. Ithacans who had purchased tickets for a Bailey Hall concert on May 1 were left wondering if the 8:15 p.m. start time was Cornell’s or Ithaca’s.

President Livingston Farrand wrote the mayor to acknowledge “certain inevitable inconveniences.”

The confusion endured for seven months, until standard time returned. The following year, the University opted out of extra daylight and remained aligned with the city—and when Ithaca voted to turn clocks ahead in 1939, Cornell followed.

While not without conflict, the symbiotic relationship between town and gown has undoubtedly strengthened both. The clock tower may not always by synchronized to the heartbeat of downtown, but the city and campus have been unavoidably linked since the very start.

An expert on Big Red lore, Corey Ryan Earle ’07 teaches “The First American University,” a wildly popular spring semester course on Cornell history.

Top: McGraw Tower above Ithaca and Cayuga Lake, circa 1920. (Rare and Manuscript Collections.)

Published September 21, 2026

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