Thorn Hill/Robin Hill
511 Cayuga Heights Road
(Current home of Cornell president)
Year Built: 1923
Architect: J. Lakin Baldridge
Landscape architect: Edward Lawson
Style: English Tudor
Full House History: Elizabeth Rawlings, The History of the Cornell University President's House
Renamed in 1944 for the house that Soames Forsyte built for beautiful Irene in The Forsyte Saga, Robin Hill was originally architect J. Lakin Baldridge's own home, which he called Thorn Hill. When the Baldridges sold Thorn Hill to Robert E. and Carolyn S. Treman in 1944, the Tremans gave the mansion its current name.
In 1963, the university purchased the house, and Cornell President James Perkins and family moved in. The change of the president's residence from 205 Oak Hill Road may have been occasioned by the university administration's wish to move the president farther from campus, out of easy reach by students, given an incident at the Oak Hill address in 1958.
The half-timbered house is built of locally quarried Llenroc (Cornell spelled backwards) stone, and stucco, with leaded glass windows, large and small slate roof tiles, and copper water pipes, indicating the high-quality standards used. A monument to the pre-Depression era, the house boasts 9,000 square feet, has seventeen rooms, nine fireplaces, eight bathrooms, and closets as large as entire rooms. The History of the Cornell University President's House by Elizabeth Rawlings gives great details about the house.
Similar to the grand mansions downtown, these early palatial homes usually had servants quarters, and of course this help made it much easier for these owners to achieve success and live a privileged life. A quick glance at the 1917 Ithaca Directory lists, for example, Elizabeth Hanis, Highland Road, cook; Anna Nelson, Overlook Road, maid; Grant Hurlbutt, The Parkway, chauffeur; and Marcella Jacobsen, The Parkway, domestic. (Marcella married Frederick Hasenjager in 1917, a cylinder pressman and printer from her native Norway, ten years her junior, and is thereafter no longer listed as a domestic.)
511 Cayuga Heights Road
(Current home of Cornell president)
Year Built: 1923
Architect: J. Lakin Baldridge
Landscape architect: Edward Lawson
Style: English Tudor
Full House History: Elizabeth Rawlings, The History of the Cornell University President's House
Renamed in 1944 for the house that Soames Forsyte built for beautiful Irene in The Forsyte Saga, Robin Hill was originally architect J. Lakin Baldridge's own home, which he called Thorn Hill. When the Baldridges sold Thorn Hill to Robert E. and Carolyn S. Treman in 1944, the Tremans gave the mansion its current name.
In 1963, the university purchased the house, and Cornell President James Perkins and family moved in. The change of the president's residence from 205 Oak Hill Road may have been occasioned by the university administration's wish to move the president farther from campus, out of easy reach by students, given an incident at the Oak Hill address in 1958.
The half-timbered house is built of locally quarried Llenroc (Cornell spelled backwards) stone, and stucco, with leaded glass windows, large and small slate roof tiles, and copper water pipes, indicating the high-quality standards used. A monument to the pre-Depression era, the house boasts 9,000 square feet, has seventeen rooms, nine fireplaces, eight bathrooms, and closets as large as entire rooms. The History of the Cornell University President's House by Elizabeth Rawlings gives great details about the house.
Similar to the grand mansions downtown, these early palatial homes usually had servants quarters, and of course this help made it much easier for these owners to achieve success and live a privileged life. A quick glance at the 1917 Ithaca Directory lists, for example, Elizabeth Hanis, Highland Road, cook; Anna Nelson, Overlook Road, maid; Grant Hurlbutt, The Parkway, chauffeur; and Marcella Jacobsen, The Parkway, domestic. (Marcella married Frederick Hasenjager in 1917, a cylinder pressman and printer from her native Norway, ten years her junior, and is thereafter no longer listed as a domestic.)
