Exterior view of Greystone as originally built, from Cornell Rural School Leaflet, Vol. X, Number 1, September 1916
"Greystone"
106 Cayuga Heights Road
Year Built: 1913
Architect: John Van Pelt, New York City
Teacher Daisy Sandidge (1877-1947), educated at Baylor College in Texas and at the University of Chicago, hired New York architect John Van Pelt to design a home in Cayuga Heights. Contractor William L. Jenks built the grand mansion in 1913.
Sandidge shared the home with Alice G. McCloskey (1850-1915), assistant professor of rural education and the founding editor of Cornell's Rural School Leaflet.
Sandidge sold the home to McCloskey in 1914, and later moved to Evanston, Illinois. There, Sandidge was active in the League of Women Voters after the Nineteenth Amendment, ratified in 1920, granted women the right to vote. Sandidge was elected alderman of the northern Chicago suburb in 1932, the first woman to be selected for this local government position.
106 Cayuga Heights Road
Year Built: 1913
Architect: John Van Pelt, New York City
Teacher Daisy Sandidge (1877-1947), educated at Baylor College in Texas and at the University of Chicago, hired New York architect John Van Pelt to design a home in Cayuga Heights. Contractor William L. Jenks built the grand mansion in 1913.
Sandidge shared the home with Alice G. McCloskey (1850-1915), assistant professor of rural education and the founding editor of Cornell's Rural School Leaflet.
Sandidge sold the home to McCloskey in 1914, and later moved to Evanston, Illinois. There, Sandidge was active in the League of Women Voters after the Nineteenth Amendment, ratified in 1920, granted women the right to vote. Sandidge was elected alderman of the northern Chicago suburb in 1932, the first woman to be selected for this local government position.
McCloskey died in 1915, after a long illness. In a tribute to McCloskey, Liberty Hyde Bailey wrote of her last years spent at Greystone:
From Cornell Rural School Leaflet, Vol. X, Number 1, September 1916
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"Some time before her death Miss McCloskey came into possession of a residence of outstanding character which she and a friend had built in a joint plan. The Graystone House, against the woods and by the ravine beyond the Cornell campus, overlooking the lake and within reach of the chimes, is her spiritual as well as her physical monument. The great room, like a baronial hall, was for her guests and her chosen ones, with the rafters, the fireplace and the crane, the volumes along the side, the creek in the ravine near-by -- a poetic unity of to-day with yesterday and with to-morrow, a harmonious blending of good literature and music with the whirling activities of the day.I hope the Graystone house may long contain her spirit." |
Greystone and the Movies
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Greystone played a role in early cinema history. It gained its first movie fame in 1918, when the home was featured in the film, A Romance of the Air.
Greystone is perhaps best known for its Jazz Age-era owners--Irene Castle (1893-1969), dancer and silent film star, and Robert E. Treman (1888-1953), scion of the prominent family in Ithaca's early business community. Irene starred in movies shot in Ithaca and was often photographed at Greystone in such magazines as Vanity Fair, Vogue, and Town and Country. |
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Mansion to Fraternity
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Having been the scene of a true "Roaring Twenties" lifestyle, the lavish mansion was sold in 1924 to Cornell's Sigma Chi fraternity.
The undated interior photos shown below reveal the changes in furnishings of Greystone's "Great Hall" likely after it became a fraternity house. Compare the upholstered furnishings and the grand circular chandelier to the more spartan look favored by the original owners. |
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Exposed rafters arch across Greystone's "Great Hall."
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A set of chairs and couches flank the more intimate fireplace area of the Great Hall.
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A view of the entire Great Hall
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Exterior views of Greystone, including a concrete swimming pool.
The Great Hall with its towering chimney makes up the south wing of Greystone.
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Irene Castle and Robert Treman built the first private swimming pool in Ithaca at Greystone. (Source: Carol Kammen, Lives Passed: Biographical Sketches from Central New York, Heart of the Lakes Publishing, Interlaken, New York, 1984, p. 136.)
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Stone stairs lead from the house to the pool area.
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(Photos courtesy of Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library)
