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By Joe Wilensky

As the sun set during a clear, mild Friday evening early in the fall 2026 semester, visitors thronged the rooftop deck of Fuertes Observatory. The darkening skies were bringing an increasing number of stars into view, and several standing telescopes offered magnified vistas of distant celestial objects. Students from the Cornell Astronomical Society helped operate the instruments, managed the crowd, and explained some of the night sky’s visible features.

For more than half a century, the student group has hosted weekly open houses and tours at the observatory during the academic year, with the events open to Cornellians and the local community.

“It’s a lot of outreach every Friday night—eight to midnight, rain or shine, clouds or not,” says Treyton Grahn ’27, the group’s president.

It’s a lot of outreach every Friday night—eight to midnight, rain or shine, clouds or not.

Treyton Grahn ’27, Cornell Astronomical Society president

If the weather doesn’t cooperate for live stargazing, there is a museum in one wing of the building, showcasing the history of the observatory and of astronomy on the Hill; a collection of vintage astronomical instruments; and an illuminated gallery of night-sky images taken from the site.

Renovated and upgraded in the past decade, the museum also features a section devoted to famed astronomy professor Carl Sagan.

The building’s—um—star attraction, though, is located under the cavernous rotating dome: fondly known as “Irv,” the Irving Porter Church Telescope marked its 100th birthday in 2022.

Grahn, an astrophysics major in Arts & Sciences, notes that his fondest Cornell memory so far is “looking through Irv at Saturn that first time; it was my ‘aha’ moment.”

Irv is one of only a handful of vintage refracting telescopes around the globe that are still operated completely mechanically, with a hand-wound, weight-driven clockwork system that allows it to track the sky as the Earth rotates on its axis.

Says Grahn: “It’s quite a marvel.”

That evening in early fall, the longest line was to take a turn gazing through Irv at the Hercules Globular Cluster, a glittering spherical ball of several hundred thousand stars. Located nearly 25,000 light years from Earth, it’s estimated to be more than 11 billion years old, making it one of the oldest such clusters in the Milky Way.

The Irving Porter Church Telescope, fondly known as “Irv,” marked its 100th birthday in 2022.

Visitors also had a chance to view the Andromeda Galaxy—the nearest large galaxy to ours—and got a primer on how to identify some of the most common constellations visible from the Northern Hemisphere.

In addition to the weekly open houses, the Astronomical Society hosts special events at the observatory, such as viewings of lunar eclipses, and holds lecture series by astronomy faculty and researchers—all open to the public.

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But casual visitors to the historic observatory—which was built in 1917 on a high knoll above the northern edge of Beebe Lake—likely don’t realize that it isn’t Cornell’s first such facility; in fact, it’s the fourth.

The structure’s namesake, Estevan Antonio Fuertes, was a professor of civil engineering who requested that the University build and equip an observatory for his students.

(Civil engineers then used stellar observations chiefly to calculate time and position in order to survey land and measure distances.)

That first building was a small wooden structure on the Arts Quad—on the current site of Goldwin Smith’s north end, to be exact—erected around 1888.

But as central campus grew, the observatory was demolished and rebuilt several times.

That first observatory was a small wooden structure on the Arts Quad erected around 1888.

Its second iteration, from 1895–1901, was approximately where Stimson Hall now stands. It was completely rebuilt again in 1902–03, when a trustee helped fund a more substantial brick facility that sported three domes, on the current location of Barton Hall.

After that third version was demolished in 1914 to make way for the drill hall, today’s observatory—with its 24-foot diameter steel dome—was constructed on what was then the Hasbrouck poultry farm.

A Brief History of Star-Gazing

It wasn’t until a few years later that money was raised for a suitable telescope; the campaign was led by Prof. Irving Porter Church 1873, a mechanical engineering major who had become a professor of applied mechanics and hydraulics.

Church sourced lenses from the University of Chicago’s Yerkes Observatory, which had a pair of surplus 12-inch glass blanks.

He then organized an alumni fundraising effort—he donated $1,000 (roughly $17,500 today) himself—to have them ground, polished, and built into a suitable telescope mounting.

The instrument was formally dedicated in June 1923, with festivities culminating in a chance for Church’s students and their friends to view Jupiter, Saturn, and the globular cluster in Hercules.

“A goodly number availed themselves of the opportunity,” Prof. Samuel Boothroyd later recalled in Popular Astronomy magazine, “and were favored with clear skies and good 'seeing.’”

Top: Visuals by Sreang Hok / Cornell University. All vintage images in this story courtesy of Rare and Manuscript Collections.

Published November 4, 2026

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