Cayuga Heights is an upscale village in the town of Ithaca, in Tompkins County, New York, United States. The population was 4,114 at the 2020 census. The village is located adjacent to Cornell University and is home to many University faculty members, including its president.
In the early 1800s, Ithaca started to grow as a small city and inland port. In 1865, Ezra Cornell started Cornell University. Students and faculty members initially lived on campus and in Ithaca, but rapid expansion in the late 1800s and early 1900s spurred new development north of the Fall Creek gorge. Two trolley bridges were built across the gorge, and a streetcar connected downtown, Cornell, and the budding residential development north of the gorge.
In 1901, local businessmen Charles Newman and Jared Blood bought nearly 1,000 acres of farmland and started the Cayuga Heights Land Company. They hired landscape architect Harold Caparn, who designed the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, to design an organic, curving, park-like layout of roads and trees. Cayuga Heights was incorporated as a village in 1915, consisting of a one-half square mile of land from the City of Ithaca line to what is now Upland Road. In 1924, Cayuga Heights Elementary School was built.
After World War II, Cayuga Heights continued to expand. Community Corners Shopping Center was built as a small suburban shopping plaza for residents in 1947. In 1952, the village opened its wastewater treatment plant on the shore of Cayuga Lake.
The village resisted attempts to be annexed by the growing City of Ithaca. Instead, it more than tripled in size in 1954 when it annexed approximately 1.4 square miles of land in the Town of Ithaca, extending from Upland Road to the Town of Lansing border. A large addition was built onto Cayuga Heights Elementary School in the late 1950s. In 1969, the First Congregational Church relocated from downtown Ithaca to a new building on the former site of the Country Club of Ithaca, which had relocated a mile east.
The village was a founding member of the Bolton Point Water System when it opened in the mid-1970s. In 1980, Cayuga Heights Elementary School closed due to declining enrollment. It reopened in 1988.
In 1995, the last large plot of open land in Cayuga Heights, the former Savage Farm, was developed into a retirement community, Kendal at Ithaca, by the Kendal Corporation.[2][3] Kendal has since become home to many retired Cornell University faculty members; a local joke for many years was that it had the best physics department in the country, as Nobel Prize winner Hans Bethe, along with Boyce McDaniel, Dale Corson, and many other physicists, were long-time residents.[4][5]
On January 12, 2015, the board of trustees of the Village of Cayuga Heights unanimously adopted a resolution declaring freedom from domestic violence to be a fundamental human right.[6]
Government and politics
The main governmental body of the Village of Cayuga Heights is the board of trustees.[7] Meetings are convened by the mayor or by an appointed deputy.[8] The village offices are in Marcham Hall, a stone mansion built by a granddaughter of Ezra Cornell[9]
The Cayuga Heights Fire Department was founded in 1955 and provides fire, rescue, and ALS first-response emergency medical services to the village, areas of the Town of Ithaca, and parts of Cornell University. The department is an all-volunteer agency with response times averaging under three minutes. This is due to the department's dedicated volunteers, as well as the innovative and highly successful "bunker program" that allows for 7-8 Firefighter/EMTs to live in a second-floor dormitory and provide duty shifts in exchange for their room in the station.[12] Unlike conventional membership recruiting/acceptance methods, the department recruits and restricts new member acceptance to bi-annual "recruit classes" in tandem with the academic semesters. As a result, many firefighters are Cornell students.[13]
The department's current home, the Ronald E. Anderson Fire Station, was built in 2000 and named after the then-mayor. (The fire company is technically a 501(c)(3) non-profit independent of the village, which allows it to sponsor annual fundraising drives.)
Police Department
The Cayuga Heights Police Department is a small department consisting of a chief, a sergeant, four full-time officers, a clerk, and several part-time officers and school crossing guards.[14]
Two examples of old-growth oak/hickory forests are in the village: Palmer Woods, on the south side of the village near Cornell campus, and Renwick Slope, on the far western part of the village by Cayuga Lake. Both are managed by Cornell Botanic Gardens.
The village has gotten attention for its large population of white-tailed deer. In addition to deer, the village also hosts foxes, wild turkey, squirrels, chipmunks, and rabbits.
As of the census[17] of 2000, there were 3,273 people, 1,497 households, and 772 families residing in the village. The population density was 1,850.9 inhabitants per square mile (714.6/km2). There were 1,584 housing units at an average density of 895.8 per square mile (345.9/km2). The racial makeup of the village was 85.73% White, 1.86% African American, 0.06% Native American, 8.95% Asian, 0.09% Pacific Islander, 1.19% from other races, and 2.11% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 3.57% of the population.
There were 1,497 households, out of which 17.9% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 47.5% were married couples living together, 2.8% had a female householder with no husband present, and 48.4% were non-families. 38.9% of all households were made up of individuals, and 14.8% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.10, and the average family size was 2.71.
In the village, the population was spread out, with 15.3% under the age of 18, 14.1% from 18 to 24, 24.0% from 25 to 44, 22.6% from 45 to 64, and 24.0% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 42 years. For every 100 females, there were 95.8 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 94.9 males.
The median income for a household in the village was $74,258, and the median income for a family was $122,746. Males had a median income of $70,893 versus $33,621 for females. The per capita income for the village was $47,493. About 1.5% of families and 8.7% of the population were below the poverty line, including none of those under the age of eighteen or sixty-five or over.
Points of interest
Community Corners Shopping Center, a boutique shopping center featuring Gimme! Coffee, The Heights Restaurant, Talbots, and several other businesses
Kendal at Ithaca
Pleasant Grove Cemetery
RaNic Golf Club (formerly the Country Club of Ithaca)
Sunset Park, a scenic village park bordered by stone arches with panoramic views of Ithaca College, the City of Ithaca, West Hill, and Cayuga Lake
Deer controversy
Two tagged white-tail deer in Cayuga Heights
Cayuga Heights has received national attention for its large population of white-tailed deer, as many as 125 per square mile.[18] Efforts to control the deer population have sparked huge controversy in the village.
In 2011, the village Board of Trustees approved a plan to reduce the deer population by sterilizing 20 to 60 does in two years while killing the remaining 160 to 200 deer in the village.[19] Paul Curtis, a Natural Resources Professor at Cornell who has worked with the board of trustees, said "The primary problems that the deer cause to the community are damage to garden plants, deer-vehicle accidents and the potential threat of the spread of foreign diseases.” Opponents of the deer culling program have criticized it as a "war on sweet innocent deer", a "brutal slaughter", and Cayuga Heights as a "constant killing field".[20] Local opposition group CayugaDeer.org has accused the board of trustees' actions as deceptive and dishonest, and sued the village to stop the culling.[21] Few residents agreed to allow the village to cull deer on their property, and in November 2012, the board of trustees abandoned its plan to cull the deer, instead deciding to capture and sterilize does.[22]
^Szekely, Beatrice (June 13, 2015). "The Story of Marcham Hall"(PDF). Cayuga Heights History Project. Archived from the original(PDF) on April 2, 2016. Retrieved March 20, 2016.
United States
New York
