The A.D. White House

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It was the stately home of the University’s cofounder and first president, and once stood alongside a handful of other Victorian-era faculty houses and cottages lining what was then the edge of campus.

Today, the A.D. White House still sits grandly atop its knoll—with a large circular driveway curving gracefully out front and a spread of lovingly cultivated gardens at back. But now, the three-story villa is located at the heart of a much-expanded campus.

Rear view of the A.D. White House and gardensRyan Young / Cornell University
The back gardens were originally planted by White's second wife.

“On its hillock, crowning all, stood the President’s House … which can only be called a mansion [and] still pleases the contemplative eye,” Morris Bishop 1914, PhD 1926, wrote in A History of Cornell.

“The detail, the interior finish, betray White’s liking for fine workmanship and for uplifting symbolism.”

The detail, the interior finish, betray White’s liking for fine workmanship and for uplifting symbolism.

Morris Bishop 1914, PhD 1926

The style of the house, Bishop noted, was the antithesis of the “grim, gray, sturdy, and economical” buildings that first populated the Arts Quad.

Known as Old Stone Row, those three original halls—Morrill, McGraw, and White—had been closely associated with the more utilitarian style of founder Ezra Cornell.

Andrew Dickson White in his library in the President's House, circa 1885–91
White, barely visible in the background, appears dwarfed by his library in the late 1800s.

Along with Sage Chapel and Sage College, the house was “romantic Upstate gothic, quaintly pinnacled and bedizened,” Bishop wrote, describing these additions to the growing campus as embodying “the taste and soul of Andrew D. White.”

Jump ahead to 2024: for the past half century, the building has been home to the Society for the Humanities, an Arts & Sciences research institute that brings scholars together for seminars, courses, and interdisciplinary projects.

(And the road it overlooks—formerly East Avenue—is now called Feeney Way, renamed in 2021 in honor of foremost benefactor Charles Feeney ’56.)

View of the doors and paneling in the dining room of the A.D. White House. The wood panels date from the mid-17th century, but aren't original to the house; they were removed from a New York City residence and installed in 1953Jason Koski / Cornell University
The dining room paneling was relocated from an NYC residence and installed during a 1953 renovation.

With an eye toward honoring the house’s storied history, Interim President Mike Kotlikoff hopes to host official functions there, bringing Cornellians together through its doors and on its grounds.

“The A.D. White House is a treasure on our central campus, and a wonderful link to Cornell’s first president,” Kotlikoff says. “Being able to use it as a place to connect with our community, as A.D. White did, is especially meaningful to me as interim president.”

The A.D. White House is a treasure on our central campus, and a wonderful link to Cornell’s first president.

Interim President Mike Kotlikoff

The house traces its history to 1871, when White asked an NYC architect to draw up early plans.

He then commissioned the University’s first architecture professor, Charles Babcock, and one of its earliest alumni, William Henry Miller 1872, to adapt and implement the design.

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The President's House, circa 1880
Victorian vibes: The house in 1880.

Babcock was the architect of Sage Chapel, Sage College (now Sage Hall), and numerous other faculty homes and cottages.

Miller designed Uris Library and its attached McGraw Tower as well as Risley Hall, the old Ithaca High School (now downtown’s DeWitt Mall), and his share of faculty dwellings.

Constructed in high Victorian Gothic style, the A.D. White House was completed in 1874 on the hilltop that was then called Breezy Knoll, becoming home to White and his family.

Stone carvings by an artisan who also worked on Llenroc—Ezra Cornell’s mansion—grace the exterior.

(White referred to the man as magister de vivis lapidibus —Latin for “teacher of living stone.”)

The interiors include a long and broad central hallway, open to the second floor through a central balustrade; heavily carved sideboards and staircases with walnut newels; a large parlor that served as a music room; a grand, floor-to-ceiling library; and a family room, a dining room, and living quarters.

The Whites filled the house with art, furniture, and collections that they brought back from Europe during their many travels.

Andrew Dickson White pictured in front of the President's House, undated photo
White on the grounds in the early 1900s.

Andrew lived there not only through the end of his presidency in 1885, but until his death in 1918. (He also expanded the house with an addition to the south end in 1912.)

It then served as the official home of presidents Livingston Farrand (in office from 1921–37) and Edmund Ezra Day (1937–49).

The back gardens were first cultivated by White’s second wife, Helen Magill White—also notable as the first woman in the U.S. to earn a doctorate—and greatly expanded by Farrand’s wife, Daisy.

View of the interior of the A.D. White Museum, 1967
The first floor—then a museum—in 1967.

After a 1953 renovation, the building became the A.D. White Museum of Art—housing much of the University’s collections for two decades. At the same time, its former carriage house was converted into what’s now the Big Red Barn.

The University, meanwhile, purchased a Tudor-style home in Cayuga Heights to serve as a presidential residence.

In early 1969, the museum famously hosted the landmark “Earth Art” exhibition, which saw mounds of soil, sand, salt, coal, and other materials displayed as part of the then-burgeoning environmental art movement.

"Grass Grows" exhibit that was part of the 1969 "Earth Art" exhibition at the A.D. White Museum
Grass Grows was part of the “Earth Art” exhibit.

But when the Johnson Museum was slated to become the new permanent home of the University’s art collections in 1973, the house’s future was in doubt.

Professor Henry Guerlac ’32, MS ’33, then director of the Society for the Humanities, led an effort to preserve the building, successfully applying for its inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places and securing funding for its restoration.

The house was renovated, with much of the first-floor furnishings and décor returned to how they looked during White’s time.

The society relocated there in 1973 and has called it home ever since.

(In 2023, it marked the 50th anniversary with a booklet about the house.)

Like historian Bishop, former AAP dean Kermit Carlyle Parsons, MRP ’53—author of an exhaustive history of the University’s physical development—stressed the mansion’s intentional symbolism.

In his 1968 book, The Cornell Campus, Parsons quoted famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted in characterizing the house.

It was, Parsons wrote, “an example of how ‘an American of considerable responsibility’ should live and a symbol of the dignity of the presidential office—a sermon in brick and stone for the education and moral benefit of Cornellians.”

Top: Photo by Sreang Hok / Cornell University. All images by Rare and Manuscript Collections, unless otherwise indicated.

Published October 31, 2024


Comments

  1. Robert P. (Bob) Patterson, Class of 1968

    Sincere thanks for informing us of this truly wonderful part of Cornell’s incredible history. Bring back such heart-warming memories!

  2. Christian C. Day, Class of 1967

    I loved the White House. During dead hours several classmates and I studied in the Dining Room of the house. What a splendid oasis.

  3. James Morey, Class of 1990

    Above the front door to the A.D. White house one can read the sixteenth verse from Matthew, chapter seven: “Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs from thistles?” Readers are meant to turn around, gaze down at the campus, and recall the words that precede and follow that verse: “By their fruits ye shall know them.”

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