Cornelliana Prolific Campus Architect Couldn’t Wait for a Department—Or a Degree Stories You May Like Crowning Glory: McGraw Tower’s Renovations Are Complete Gothic Castle on the Hill: Fascinating Facts about Risley Hall How Cornell’s First President Transformed Higher Education From Eddy Gate to the iconic clocktower to the president’s villa, William Henry Miller 1872 shaped a young Cornell By Joe Wilensky William Henry Miller 1872 is often referred to as the University’s earliest architecture graduate, but that’s incorrect on two points. First off, there was no school or program devoted to the discipline on the Hill when he attended—and the ambitious young Miller did not actually complete a degree. Nevertheless, Miller is certainly Cornell’s most influential architect: over nearly half a century, he shaped the look and feel of not just the growing campus, but much of the City of Ithaca as well. jason koski / cornell universityMiller's creations on the Hill include the Romanesque-style Barnes Hall. On the Hill, his legacy includes Eddy Gate, Barnes and Risley halls, Uris Library, and the iconic McGraw Tower. A native of Barneveld, NY (a small town outside Utica), Miller had already begun to immerse himself in the principles of architecture when he matriculated on the Hill in 1868 as part of Cornell’s inaugural cohort of students. He enrolled in what was then called the “optional course,” which allowed for more electives, and took several classes on art and drafting. Miller worked on the A.D. White House, seen here in 1880. While Cornell did not yet have an architecture school, Miller found a mentor in Andrew Dickson White, its first president. White had an eye for classic design, kept a robust architectural library, and was highly involved in the planning and construction of many of the first campus buildings. As Morris Bishop 1914, PhD 1926, wrote in A History of Cornell, White “was taken by the lines of a rough office building in Ithaca; he found that the architect was a Cornell student, William H. Miller.” Essentially acting as head of a not-yet-extant architecture department, White took Miller under his tutelage. “Everything I see and hear confirms my opinion as to the advice I gave you,” White wrote to him in 1870. “There is no nobler or more promising profession for any young man who has a taste for it and a willingness to master it than that of Architect.” White even asked Miller to revise the plans for his own home on the Hill. A NYC architect had drawn up preliminary designs, but the president worked with Miller to adapt them and finish construction on his Gothic campus abode, the A.D. White House. It was completed in 1874, and White lived there until his death in 1918. There is no nobler or more promising profession for any young man who has a taste for it and a willingness to master it than that of Architect. President Andrew Dickson White Much of Miller’s earliest works on and around campus in the 1870s and ’80s were faculty homes that once lined East and Central avenues, ranging from large villas to more modest wood-and-brick cottages. (At the time, the University allowed professors to lease campus land.) “Miller’s skill in planning, his imaginative and playful disposition of interior space, and the sculptural quality of his exterior masses began to mature in the design of these houses,” wrote Kermit Parsons, MRP ’53, in his 1968 book The Cornell Campus: A History of its Planning and Development. “His clients were very pleased with them.” One of Miller’s grandest structures was the McGraw-Fiske mansion, commissioned by heiress and Chimes benefactor Jennie McGraw and her husband, University Librarian Willard Fiske. The McGraw-Fiske mansion once overlooked Ithaca and Cayuga Lake. Featuring a grand, three-story rotunda and a skylit central hall, the home sat on a commanding hilltop along the south edge of Fall Creek Gorge—just below the Suspension Bridge and across University Avenue from where the Johnson Museum stands today. “In the late 19th century, when East Hill was almost bare of view-obscuring trees,” Parsons wrote, “this spot had more sweeping, dramatic vistas than most castles on the Rhine.” In the late 19th century, when East Hill was almost bare of view-obscuring trees, this spot had more sweeping, dramatic vistas than most castles on the Rhine. Kermit Parsons, MRP ’53, on the site of the McGraw-Fiske mansion Stories You May Like Crowning Glory: McGraw Tower’s Renovations Are Complete Gothic Castle on the Hill: Fascinating Facts about Risley Hall The mansion was completed in 1881, but the couple never lived there: McGraw, who suffered from tuberculosis, died overseas that same year. It sat unoccupied for a decade and a half and was ultimately sold to Chi Psi fraternity. (Tragedy ensued in 1906, when rags in the unused elevator shaft caught fire and engulfed the mansion in flames, destroying it and taking the lives of four students and three Ithaca firefighters.) Miller went on to become one of the University’s most notable and prolific architects, designing some of the young campus’s most recognizable buildings. Perhaps his most enduring and monumental creation: McGraw Tower and Uris Library, which opened in October 1891. White, by then president emeritus, described the Romanesque Revival design as “the noblest structure in the land” and “a marvel of good planning, in which fitness is wedded to beauty.” Peace Corps candidates run through Eddy Gate in 1963. The spacious and airy library neatly incorporated the slope of the hillside. It featured multiple seminar rooms and efficient, fireproof shelving with space for up to 400,000 volumes. And of course, it was home to the intricate cast-iron stacks of the A.D. White Reading Room, to which its namesake donated much of his own library. As President Charles Kendall Adams declared at the library’s dedication: “We come together with glad hearts to celebrate the completion of what must for all time be the most important structure on these grounds.” Uris Library and McGraw Tower in the 1890s—with Boardman Hall, which Miller designed in a matching style. Miller was also the creative mind behind Stimson and Boardman halls; the latter, the Law School’s first home, stood until the late 1950s, when it was replaced by Olin Library. He designed many fraternity houses and several notable churches and other buildings in Ithaca, including the original high school (now downtown’s DeWitt Mall, home to the famed Moosewood Restaurant) and the Henry Sage House, off East State Street, where Cornell University Press is headquartered. We come together with glad hearts to celebrate the completion of what must for all time be the most important structure on these grounds. President Charles Kendall Adams, at the University Library's dedication According to Mary Raddant Tomlan, MA ’71, former City of Ithaca historian and the author of the 2025 book William H. Miller, Architect: Making the World Beautiful, nearly 60 of the buildings and homes Miller designed in Tompkins County still stand. (An additional 28 have been lost to demolition or fire.) Miller’s architectural footprint reached well beyond Tompkins County. A sampling of his other works includes the Main Building at (the now shuttered) Wells College in Aurora, NY; the Toutorsky Mansion in Washington, DC; the William H. Wells House in Detroit; and a significant 1887 expansion of Iviswold Castle in Rutherford, NJ. 'Imaginative and Playful': Some of Miller's Designs wikimedia commonsA postcard of Ithaca High, now the DeWitt Mall. Boardman Hall included an elegant law library on its top floor. Risley was originally built to be a women's dorm. The McGraw-Fiske mansion's grand entrance, on a stereo card. Miller designed his own home on Eddy Street. Since 1999, the elaborate William Henry Miller Inn—originally called the Stowell Mansion—on Ithaca’s North Aurora Street pays tribute to the architect’s legacy. Miller’s own family lived in a house on Eddy Street, for which he designed seven additions as more children arrived. After his heirs sold it in the early 1930s, it became a popular boarding house for architecture students and was subsequently owned by the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning until 2024. Miller—an accomplished organist—playing at home, with his daughter on the harp. The house now belongs to Denise Green ’07, an associate professor of human centered design in Human Ecology, and her partner. She has been restoring some of its original stained glass and documenting life in the home on Instagram. The Insta feed includes a photo, created in the same manner as a vintage tintype, celebrating the arrival of the couple’s daughter—whom, the post observes, is the house’s “first infant inhabitant since the 19th century.” (Top: Photo illustration by Ashley Osburn / Cornell University. All images courtesy of Rare and Manuscript Collections, unless otherwise indicated.) Published September 12, 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 6 Questions For ... 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