OUR STORY

Established in 1966 as a community response to threats to downtown Ithaca landmarks, Historic Ithaca is the non-profit voice for preservation in Tompkins County and the Finger Lakes Region. We engage in preservation advocacy and provide various preservation-related services to individuals, businesses, and municipalities throughout Tompkins County and beyond. We maintain a Library of the Built Environment, sponsor tours and lectures, and conduct hands-on workshops for all ages on a range of topics.

Each year we also celebrate preservation beyond our walls by holding an awards process and ceremony wherein local projects, authors, businesses and advocates are nominated by the community itself.

Since 1991 we have operated Significant Elements, a non-profit architectural salvage store, the premier historic salvage center in the region that focuses not only on unique, historic items, but expert knowledge around them. We also pass this knowledge on to local youth and young adults with barriers to employment via our Work Preserve program which teaches preservation-skills in a dynamic and supportive workshop environment right on site.

Our headquarters are located at 210 and 212 Center Street in Ithaca’s historic Southside neighborhood. Our complex consists of a 130-year old manufacturing building at 212, and our offices and library are next door at 210 inside a former neighborhood grocery. We're proud to find our home in a rare surviving example of one of Ithaca's timber-frame industrial buildings.

Mission:

Historic Ithaca promotes the value, vitality and sustainability of our built heritage, neighborhoods, and community in Ithaca and Tompkins County through education, advocacy and action.

WAREHOUSE HISTORY

Historic Ithaca acknowledges that our warehouse is located on the traditional, ancestral, and contemporary lands of the Gayogo̱hó:nǫ' Nation one of the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. In our human history, the Confederacy precedes the establishment of white settlements both locally and throughout the United States.

We recognize the painful history of Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ' dispossession, and honor the ongoing connection of Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ' people, past and present, to the land and waters of the region. Our warehouse ultimately exists on stolen land and acknowledgment alone does not fix this past, nor heal its wounds. As preservationists we pledge to continue doing the work to not only save buildings, but save the stories of what came before them, even when the story is not beautiful, easy, nor complementary.

The current 3-story warehouse that stands as Historic Ithaca's home today was built in 1888 as a factory for the Electric Seamless Hosiery Company. Over its 130+ years, the building has been home to carriage manufacturing, blacksmithing, a corset company, warehousing, a shipping company, and even served as Thomas-Morse Aircraft Corporation's engine design facility during WWI.

A brief timeline:

1888: constructed for Electric Seamless Hosiery Company
ca. 1900-1914: Pritchard & Son, carriages and wagons, [repository and factory]
ca. 1915-1917: Burns Bros., blacksmiths, horse-shoers, wood and iron workers
ca. 1917-1919: Thomas-Morse Aircraft Corporation experimental plant
ca. 1919-1922: Miller Corset Company factory
ca. 1940-1941: Rothschild Bros. warehouse
ca. 1942-1956: Ithaca Delivery & Storage, motor freight company (see their original painted metal sign on our front desk)!
ca. 1957-1977: Harbeck Paper, paper and janitorial supplies, retail & wholesale
ca. 1979-2003: ICC Furniture Company
2003-present: Significant Elements Architectural Salvage Warehouse (Historic Ithaca)

We hope you stop by and "feel" the history in the structure and land as you shop, research, or take a class!