Bill Gates Hall > goodbye Hoy Field?

[Liz '05]

[quote David Harding]
Having the intramural fields (Upper Alumni) right around the corner from classes and relatively central to north, west, and south housing seemed to  me a great benefit.  There is still a little open land there, isn't there?  

In what shape are the ILR buildings along the west side of Garden Avenue?  They don't strike me as architecturally significant.  [/quote]

Yes, and under renovation.

[Robb]

[quote Liz '05] my personal favorite, NROTC's CU Invitational Drill Competition/Military Excellence Competition/Hoops Tournement.  Okay, so there are approx. 3 people on this board that have heard of it, but we have teams from about 35 schools (roughly 1000 people?) that come to Cornell each November and compete in drill and physical fitness events.  Go Navy
[/quote]
I'm one of the 3!  My sister's roommate was on Cornell's 4-person physical fitness team in '97 or so.  IIRC, she was the only woman on any of the 35 teams.  Not only did Cornell's team win the competition, but she placed first in two of the events (situps and pullups).  Yikes.

[nyc94]

Maybe they should consider replacing some of the older engineering buildings.  Carpenter is a waste of land at two stories and the library is not too inviting (ever go into the basement stacks?)

[billhoward]

The elevator is one of the world's underappreciated inventions.

For all the hate New York City engenders (by virtue of its existing), by going vertical rather than horizontal, it avoided the sprawl of Los Angeles. Perhaps Cornell would be a better place with a 9 story building, a 5 story building, and open land than 4 stories, 5 stories, and 5 stories with no open land. New York, unfortunately, went vertical and then gobbled up most land anyway ... soemthing Cornell might be tempted to do, too.

OK, Lynah fans do recall Otis and Carrier a couple times a game referring to penalties.









("We got the shaft.")

[nyc94]

[quote billhoward]Perhaps Cornell would be a better place with a 9 story building, a 5 story building, and open land than 4 stories, 5 stories, and 5 stories with no open land. New York, unfortunately, went vertical and then gobbled up most land anyway ... soemthing Cornell might be tempted to do, too.
[/quote]

There are good places and bad places to put a tall building.  Olin Library: bad idea.  However, they could replace the entire back of the engineering quad (Upson, Kimball, Thurston) with taller buildings.  I don't think that would mar the view of too many people and since the land isn't on the street it would not create a New York City feeling of claustrophobia.  And it would be doing the art of architecture a huge favor.

[billhoward]

Top of Libe Slope, worst place for tall buildings. But, yeah, back of the engineering quad would be an awesome place for tall (or tallish in the Ithaca context) buildings, especially if the first three levels are parking. (Cornell's biggest endangered species now. Anybody can grow a tree, given a couple decades, but those parking spaces in front of Lynah, they're lost forever.)

Tom Wolfe in his Bauhaus to Our House book that so annoyed architects, maybe because it made sense to normal people, points out the density is good in urban areas, up to a point. Even in Ithaca, there's going to be an urban flavor when you put 20,000 people in one square mile and most of them in perhaps a third of that area.

If that happens, I hope they install high-speed elevators. Nothing like living on the 10th floor of a dorm that uses hospital-speed elevators.

[jtwcornell91]

Does anyone remember the story in the Lunatic circa 1990 about how Uris Hall was going to be converted into a parking garage?  Complete with an "artist's misconception" which included cars driving off a fourth-floor ramp into empty space?

[Lowell '99]

Barton hall is (at least partially) a New York State building, making any renovations/demolitions/replacements complicated.  And of course, replacing it would likely displace the band, so I'm against it.  :-)

[Scott Kominkiewicz]

Hoy Field?!  I remember when Cornell destroyed the JV baseball field adjacent to Lynah the summer of my freshman year (1980).  Can't say that I like to see ballfields go by the wayside.

[Ben Rocky '04]

Apparently not....?

http://www.theithacajournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060823/NEWS01/608230331/1002

[nyc94]

[q]Unlike the days of Gehrig, after the project is complete players will compete on artificial turf, which is expected to improve drainage.[/q]  ::yark::

[KeithK]

Well, I guess artifical turf makes it more similar to a wrestling mat.  So Andy must like the idea.

[David Harding]

I'm glad that the field will survive as green space, but the artificial turf bothers me, too.  That the orientation relative to the afternoon sun is, shall we say, non-standard.  Traditionally you keep the sun out of the batter's eyes.

[ithacat]

[quote David Harding]I'm glad that the field will survive as green space...quote]

I would have liked to see a combined project that had a new hockey rink on one side & a new bookstore/cafe on the other side. With direct access from the parking garage, townies could leave their coats in the car and Lynah would really be a sea of red. Of course, I'm also foolish enough to think that Ithaca could attract a NYP team (currently in cities such as Batavia, Elmira, Oneonta) and that Cornell and the city could develop a nice little facility that both could use. However, I need a little  ::help::

[Trotsky]

I don't think it's foolish at all to think Ithaca support an A or AA team.  Lots of disposable income floating around, lots of 20-somethings to sell beer to.  I'm pretty surprised Ithaca has not, in my memory, ever had a team.