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909 Wyckoff Road
Date Built: 1983 Architect: Robert B. Leathers Style: Contemporary |
On the wooded slope below Sunset Park, internationally known playground architect Robert B. Leathers designed this light-filled Contemporary as his family home and as his and artist/landscape architect Cheryl Nickel’s office. The multiple levels and integrated decks are reminiscent of the playful wooden structures of the thousands of community playgrounds his company designed across the United States and in other countries.
In 1971, the architect launched his playground architecture career in Ithaca with a design for the Henry St. John School playground where his son attended elementary school. Over 40 years, Leathers followed a design and construction model in which children gave input to the playground design process, and community members raised funds and provided “sweat equity” to build the play structures. Leathers likened the process to an old-style barn raising.
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In the 1980s, at the height of the wooden playground craze, the Leathers and Associates-designed Belle Sherman playground was featured on “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” and another Leathers-coordinated playground was covered on an episode of “Sesame Street.”
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The Leathers aesthetic can be seen throughout Tompkins County in home designs (including the two homes that adjoin 909 Wyckoff Road) and in school and residential playgrounds. Leathers redesigned the former Ithaca sewage treatment plant to house the Sciencenter, a wildly popular attraction for children and caregivers, that was completed in 1993. Nickel coordinated the construction of the Cayuga Nature Center’s Treetops treehouse, which the Ithaca High School senior class of 2000 sponsored and helped design.
Leathers and Nickel sold the home at 909 Wyckoff Road in 1989, and they developed the Eastlake subdivision and Eastlake Recreation Club in Lansing in the late 1980s. Leathers’ son Marc took over Leather and Associates in 2005.
Patricia Longoria
Deputy Historian
2017
SOURCES
S.W. Bell, “America’s northeast becomes a playground for Ithaca designer,” Ithaca Journal, March 28, 1984, p. 3; Margaret Claiborne, “IHS Senior Class, Branching Out; Students Go to the Treetops for their Class of 2000 Gift,” Ithaca Journal, September 18, 1999;
Timothy Dougherty, “Mister Rogers is in our neighborhood,” Ithaca Journal, October 1, 1985, p. 1;
“Editorial: The house that donations built,” Ithaca Journal, May 25, 1993, p. 8;
Helen Mundell, “Eastlake gets financially fit; Recreation club membership is on the rise,” Ithaca Journal, May 24, 1993, p. 10;
Playgrounds by Leathers; Dream. Build. Play!, http://leathersassociates.com/;
Space 4 Art, http://www.sdspace4art.org/;
Tompkins County Deed Book 461, Page 94, Gray Thoron to Robert S. Leathers and Cheryl Ann Nickel, January 14, 1966.
S.W. Bell, “America’s northeast becomes a playground for Ithaca designer,” Ithaca Journal, March 28, 1984, p. 3; Margaret Claiborne, “IHS Senior Class, Branching Out; Students Go to the Treetops for their Class of 2000 Gift,” Ithaca Journal, September 18, 1999;
Timothy Dougherty, “Mister Rogers is in our neighborhood,” Ithaca Journal, October 1, 1985, p. 1;
“Editorial: The house that donations built,” Ithaca Journal, May 25, 1993, p. 8;
Helen Mundell, “Eastlake gets financially fit; Recreation club membership is on the rise,” Ithaca Journal, May 24, 1993, p. 10;
Playgrounds by Leathers; Dream. Build. Play!, http://leathersassociates.com/;
Space 4 Art, http://www.sdspace4art.org/;
Tompkins County Deed Book 461, Page 94, Gray Thoron to Robert S. Leathers and Cheryl Ann Nickel, January 14, 1966.
