The 1890's witnessed a surge of recreational activity on and around the waterfront. On the lake, people were out rowing rowboats and paddling canoes, steamboats were taking people for pleasant excursions up the lake, rowing crews were competing. It was a grand era for enjoying the lake.

Renwick Park

The Ithaca Street Railway Co. (ISR), chartered in 1884, started running trolleys throughout Ithaca in 1893. At this time, trolley companies in many U.S. cities had developed a complementary business scheme - build a park slightly out of town and offer trolley rides to it, thereby reaping the trolley fares as well as revenue at the park. With this is mind, the ISR bought land at the head of the lake from the descendants of James Renwick. The ISR extended a seasonal trolley line - the Cayuga Lake Railway - to the Renwick site by 1894. There, they developed 40 acres as a trolley destination park, complete with bandstand, two pavilions, a water tower, a zoo and vaudeville acts. They offered many attractions. The company advertised that "during the coming season, two nights of the week will be given up to fireworks ... and on alternating nights concerts by the Ithaca band [led by Patsy Conway]... In addition to these regular features, there will be boat races, bicycle races, balloon ascensions and such other attractions as will make Renwick the most popular resort of its kind in the State."

Renwick Park See the trolley arriving at the far left of the photo. Cayuga Lake is to the far right..

Renwick Park opened in June of 1894. On July 4th of that year, 12,000 people gathered at the park to celebrate Independence Day. Many more people enjoyed it over the next several years. In her memoirs, a Child of the Nineties, Edith Horton remembered excursions to the park as the best amusement in town.

'With your family you walked up to Tioga Street and stood waiting importantly for the street-car. Once aboard you went bumping along happily, past the houses, past Percy Field, the smell of the lake growing stronger, around the curve, and there it was, Renwick! You climbed down and ran to find the best table for the picnic. There you put the basket and unpacked it. There were bears to feed, and deer, slender and startled, and a chattering monkey who was always eating peanuts. After you had eaten twilight fell, the sunset turned the lake to rose, then came night, the sound of lapping water, and the twinkling of many lights. The Band climbed into the round stand, Mr. Conway raised his baton, and unforgetable music floated out across the darkness. Row-boats and canoes glided in and out of the shadows near the shore.'

Renwick Park in its heyday, with Patsy Conway and his band.

Part of the impetus to build the park at the Renwick site was the simultaneous rebuilding of the Renwick pier. From there, the steamboats 'Frontenac', 'Iroquois' and 'Mohawk' offered excursions up the lake. Rowboats and canoes could be rented. Tourists at grand hotels and summer resorts along the lake, like Sheldrake House and Frontenac Beach Hotel, came to Renwick Park by steamboat for a day's outing. These tourists were an large part of the park's clientele. The pier was also an important site for cottagers, who traveled back and forth to their cottages from there on the steamboats 'Horton' and 'Kellogg'. These steamboats also provided cottagers with services such as mail, ice and grocery delivery.

As with most development at the waterfront, the building of Renwick Park required fill for the swampy land. James Jeffrey Renwick, great grandson of James Renwick and the park's first caretaker, remembered teams of horse drawn wagons hauling fill from the gravel bank at Old Percy Field and Lake View Cemetery. These teams of horses and wagons were paid $2.50 a day for ten hours work, he recalled.

A postcard from Renwick Pier about 1905. The steamboat

Cascadilla Boathouse and Rowing

At the same time as the Renwick Park development, Cascadilla Preparatory School hired architects Vivian and Gibb (architects for Renwick Park) to design a boathouse for their rowing crew. Work began in 1894 and was completed in 1896 under the direction of Stephen Otiz (also the same contractor who built the Renwick Park pavillions). Though reduced and deteriorated somewhat, the Cascadilla Boathouse stands today as a prime example of a Shingle Style building of that era, and is on the National Register of Historic Places. The city recently completed a Historic Structure Report for this building, and proposes to restore it and develop the first floor as a museum.

The Cascadilla Boathouse construction was underway at a time of rapidly growing interest in the sport of rowing. Cornell began rowing in the early 1870's. By the 1890's the newspapers devoted plenty of coverage to the competitions and rivalries between schools. Many Ithacans followed the fates of the Cornell rowing crew, a highly competitive and successful crew, coached by Charles Courtney from 1885 to 1920. The Cascadilla crew, many of whom moved on to Cornell, was also very successful. Cornell occupied a small boathouse further along the Inlet which was rebuilt in 1890 and again in 1957-1958 (the Collyer boathouse).

Cascadilla Boathouse. Built in 1894, the

Rowing drew thousands of spectators. Observation trains were organized on the Cayuga Lake Railroad (by then part of Lehigh Valley) along the east shore of the lake. These trains ran from 1899 to 1936. Spectators boarded at the Fulton Street railyards (see photo). An engine was hitched at either end of a long series of open cars. For a 1904 Memorial Day race pitting Cornell against Harvard, the crowd was so large they needed 32 train cars. The course had to be lengthened from 2 miles to 5 miles. Of that race, Coach Courtney noted:

The water would have been in fine condition if the steamboats had not run ahead of the crews and made the water very rough. The observation train of 32 cars and two engines made a beautiful sight. Then added to that all of the large steamers and yachts of all kinds and the hundreds of row boats made one of the grandest sights I ever saw. The race itself did not amount to much as Harvard was no match for Cornell.

A rowing competition on the lake from the turn of the century.

Activity along the Inlet at the Turn of the Century

Steamboat Landing experienced a final decline in steamboat traffic after the pier at Renwick resumed. On maps after 1899 the site is no longer identified as "Steamboat Landing". Boat liveries and small private boathouses continued there for another few decades. Today the Johnson boatyard, established in 1908, remains on the north shore of Cascadilla Cove to remind us of its busy boating past.

With the greater use of trains for freight and passenger transport, the Inlet barge builders and boatyards also declined, despite the resurrection of the Barge Canal system at the turn of the century. However, there was a growth in boat liveries and builders of smaller boats made of oak and cedar such as rowboats and canoes. Ithacans and Cornellians would come to the Inlet to rent a rowboat or canoe for a pleasant outing on the lake. Cornell palentological professor Gilbert Harris, founder of the Palentological Research Institute, took his students to the Inlet to board some reknowned boats the Ianthina, the Orthoceras, and the Ecphora for field trips on the Lake and as far away as North Carolina.

The Black Diamond

The Lehigh Valley Black Diamond train made its debut in 1896. A luxurious train, the company billed it as "The Handsomest Train in the World" and advertised its attributes:

Each car on the train is finished in polished Mexican mahogany, with figured mahogany panels and inlaid beveled French plate mirrors. The ceilings are of the new style Empire dome pattern, finished in white and gold.

It was also dubbed the Honeymoon Express as it was a favorite of newlyweds on their way to Niagara Falls. As the Lehigh Valley - Ithaca branch was on the direct route from NYC to Buffalo and Niagara Falls, the Black Diamond train was a familiar sight at the Inlet.

Boarding the 'Observation Train' at the Fulton Street railyard. People dressed well to cheer on their favorite rowing crew.

The Rhine

By the 1890's, at least two neighborhoods had developed on the west side of the Inlet. Immigrant workers lived in simple two-story woodframed houses to the south along Floral Avenue. In a section known as the Rhine, or Silent City, people lived in squatter shacks to the north west as far up as where the Hangar Theater stands now (perhaps up as far as Hog's Hole). Carol Sisler described the squatters as the "poor and uneducated and often the victims of industrial expansion, hired or fired seasonally, perhaps injured by factory work, unable to work, or too sick to work." Albert Curry Sr., once a resident there, remembered it as a very close knit community; he recalled that it was like the bayou of Louisiana, with trees hanging down around a meandering waterway. The residents laid planks over the usually wet ground for walkways. In the squatter community, people got by by fishing, making moonshine, and doing seasonal work. Life was hard and precarious; the water flooded often, and it carried the effluence of tanneries and other industries, as well as that of the human population who had other sanitation systems. Over 40 % of the typhoid cases in the 1903 epidemic were among 'Rhiners', as were a quarter of all of Ithaca's tuberculosis cases around the same time.

Another aspect of boat building at the Inlet. 20th c. wartime ships, made with

Most other Ithacans scorned and avoided this community; a few, however, were sympathetic and worked to aid its residents. Elizabeth Beebe spearheaded an effort to provide Christian works and services to the Inlet residents through the creation of the Inlet Mission. In 1882, the Inlet Chapel was built on the corner of State Street and Buffalo Street. Elizabeth Beebe provided nondenominational services there, in addition to personally visiting and caring for those sick and in need. When Beebe died in 1905 of pneumonia at the age of 62, the Chapel was renamed in her honor. In 1916, it was rebuilt on Cliff Street, close to its old location. (see report of Inlet Committee's maps).

The Rhine. A 1905 photo of

The Williams family, a wealthy family who lived at Cliff Park on West Hill, donated the land for significant west end community projects like the Inlet Chapel, the Williams Playgrounds, Brindley Park, and the Westside House (built in 1918). Three sisters - Augusta, Charlotte and Ella - were instrumental in these developments. Although most of the Williams donated land is now under the flood control channel, the drinking fountain of Brindley Park next to the playground still remains and could become a focal point for remembering this community.

Also of note, writer Grace Miller White was sympathetic to and immortalized the Rhine in her series of Storm Country novels. 'Tess of the Storm Country' was made into a silent movie by Wharton Studios (although it was not filmed here in Ithaca).

Playing ball by the Westside House on Williams Playground. (date unknown - the 1950's?)