June 20, 1966

On June 20, 1966, Helen Duprey Bullock of the National Trust for Historic Preservation spoke to a group of about 35 people, mostly members of the Downtown Business Women association, at Reinhardt Interiors, Inc. Bullock was in Ithaca for a Cornell University Summer Institute session, called Planning for Preservation. In that same week, following many months of debate and protest, Ithaca’s 1844 City Hall was demolished to make way for a parking lot. In her talk, Bullock suggested that citizens concerned about the preservation of historic buildings form an affiliate group of the National Trust, and that the group call itself Historic Ithaca, Inc. After this talk, a small group of attendees resolved to do exactly that, and Historic Ithaca was founded.