112 Oak Hill Road
Year Built: 1931
Architect: J. Lakin Baldridge
Style: Colonial Revival
Home of professor and Cayuga Heights mayor, Frederick Marcham. Though built during the Great Depression, the house is so solid, it still retains its structural integrity, and was built with extra thick walls. While millions lost their jobs and their money in the Crash, Cornell faculty salaries were cut only 6-10%, leaving them with the means to hire the available labor to continue to build comfortable homes.
Initially, garages in the Heights were required to face away from the street, however, people often did not even have a car. Since that time, most garages have been changed to face the street, and many have been expanded to fit two cars and now, recycling bins.
Of living in this area in the 1930s, Marcham writes in his account, "Memories of Cayuga Heights, N.Y.," of a "typical Cayuga Heights Street": "My wife and I had chosen a place in Oak Hill Road that would allow our children a half mile walk to school and give me a one mile walk to the Cornell campus. For the walk I had friends; two of my neighbors joined me in walking, and one of them, like myself, owned no car. . . . Their wives walked down Oak Hill Road westward to Highland Road and then south to the bus stop on Thurston Avenue. For a time, in the 1930s, milkmen and men who delivered ice, and the leading grocers in Ithaca, allowed us to order goods and brought them to us and to other persons around the City of Ithaca. If you were sick you would not go to the doctor; he or she came to you, the doctor with the little black bag. And once or twice a year the coalman came and poured tons of coal down a chute into your cellar."
Year Built: 1931
Architect: J. Lakin Baldridge
Style: Colonial Revival
Home of professor and Cayuga Heights mayor, Frederick Marcham. Though built during the Great Depression, the house is so solid, it still retains its structural integrity, and was built with extra thick walls. While millions lost their jobs and their money in the Crash, Cornell faculty salaries were cut only 6-10%, leaving them with the means to hire the available labor to continue to build comfortable homes.
Initially, garages in the Heights were required to face away from the street, however, people often did not even have a car. Since that time, most garages have been changed to face the street, and many have been expanded to fit two cars and now, recycling bins.
Of living in this area in the 1930s, Marcham writes in his account, "Memories of Cayuga Heights, N.Y.," of a "typical Cayuga Heights Street": "My wife and I had chosen a place in Oak Hill Road that would allow our children a half mile walk to school and give me a one mile walk to the Cornell campus. For the walk I had friends; two of my neighbors joined me in walking, and one of them, like myself, owned no car. . . . Their wives walked down Oak Hill Road westward to Highland Road and then south to the bus stop on Thurston Avenue. For a time, in the 1930s, milkmen and men who delivered ice, and the leading grocers in Ithaca, allowed us to order goods and brought them to us and to other persons around the City of Ithaca. If you were sick you would not go to the doctor; he or she came to you, the doctor with the little black bag. And once or twice a year the coalman came and poured tons of coal down a chute into your cellar."