Ithaca, New York

Cascadilla Creek gorge

Perspective map of Ithaca published in 1882

Native Americans lived in this area for thousands of years. When reached by Europeans, this area was controlled by the Cayuga tribe of Indians, one of the Five Nations of the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois League. Jesuit missionaries from New France (Quebec) are said to have had a mission to convert the Cayuga as early as 1657.[5]

Saponi and Tutelo peoples, Siouan-speaking tribes, later occupied lands at the south end of Cayuga Lake. Dependent tributaries of the Cayuga, they had been permitted to settle on the tribe's hunting lands at the south end of Cayuga Lake, as well as in Pony (originally Sapony) Hollow of what is known as present-day Newfield, New York. Remnants of these tribes had been forced from Virginia and North Carolina by tribal conflicts and European colonial settlement. Similarly, the Tuscarora people, an Iroquoian-speaking tribe from the Carolinas, migrated after defeat in the Yamasee War; they settled with the Oneida people and became the sixth nation of the Haudenosaunee, with chiefs stating the migration was complete in 1722.

During the American Revolutionary War, four of the then six Iroquois nations helped the British attempt to crush the revolution, although bands made decisions on fighting in a highly decentralized way. Conflict with the rebel colonists was fierce throughout the Mohawk Valley and western New York. In retaliation for conflicts to the east and resentment at the way in which the Iroquois made war, the 1779 Sullivan Expedition was conducted against the Iroquois in the west of the state, destroying more than 40 villages and stored winter crops and forcing their retreat from the area.[6] It destroyed the Tutelo village of Coregonal, located near what is now the junction of state routes 13 and 13A just south of the Ithaca city limits. Most Iroquois were forced from the state after the Revolutionary War, but some remnants remained. The state sold off the former Iroquois lands to stimulate development and settlement by non-indigenous Americans; lands were also granted as payment to veterans of the war.

Within the current boundaries of Ithaca, Native Americans maintained a temporary hunting camp at the base of Cascadilla Gorge. In 1788, eleven men from Kingston, New York, came to the area with two Delaware people (Lenape) guides, to explore what they considered wilderness. The following year Jacob Yaple, Isaac Dumond, and Peter Hinepaw returned with their families and constructed log cabins.[5] That same year Abraham Bloodgood of Albany obtained a patent from the state for 1,400 acres, which included all of the present downtown west of Tioga Street.[7] In 1790, the federal government and state began an official program to grant land in the area, known as the Central New York Military Tract, as payment for service to the American soldiers of the Revolutionary War, as the government was cash poor. Most local land titles trace back to these Revolutionary war grants. However, the Bloodgood tract was not part of the state bounties to veterans. It was granted originally to a member of the state militia, Martinus Zielie, as a bounty under a different law for recruiting men to enlist in the Continental Army.

As part of this process, the Central New York Military Tract, which included northern Tompkins County, was surveyed under the direction of Simeon De Witt, Bloodgood's son-in-law and the Surveyor General of New York. Simeon commissioned his first cousin, Moses De Witt (after whom DeWitt, New York, Is named) to survey the area around the south end of Cayuga Lake. Both Simeon and Moses were first cousins of DeWitt Clinton through his mother, Mary De Witt, who married James Clinton, brother of Governor George Clinton. The Commissioners of Lands of New York State (chairman Gov. George Clinton) met in 1790. The Military Tract township in which Ithaca is located was named the Town of Ulysses. A few years later De Witt moved to Ithaca, then called variously "The Flats," "The City," or "Sodom";[5][8] he renamed it for the Greek island home of Ulysses in the spirit of the multitude of settlement names in the region derived from classical literature, such as Aurelius, Ovid, and especially of Ulysses, New York, the town that contained Ithaca at the time.[6]

Around 1791, De Witt surveyed what is now the downtown area into lots and sold them at modest prices. That same year John Yaple built a grist mill on Cascadilla Creek. The first frame house was erected in 1800 by Abram Markle.[5] In 1804, the village had a postmaster and, in 1805, a tavern.[9]

State Street in Ithaca, c. 1901

Ithaca Gun Company's Annie Oakley gun, 1916

Ithaca became a transshipping point for salt from curing beds near Salina, New York, to buyers south and east. This prompted construction in 1810 of the Owego Turnpike.[9] When the War of 1812 cut off access to Nova Scotia gypsum, used for fertilizer, Ithaca became the center of trade in Cayuga gypsum.[7] The Cayuga Steamboat Company was organized in 1819 and, in 1820, launched the first steamboat on Cayuga Lake, the Enterprise.[7] In 1821, the village was incorporated at the same time the Town of Ithaca was organized and separated from the parent Town of Ulysses. In 1834, the Ithaca and Owego Railroad's first (horse-drawn) train began service,[6] connecting traffic on the east–west Erie Canal (completed in 1825) with the Susquehanna River to the south to expand the trade network.

With the depression of 1837, the Ithaca and Owego Railroad was re-organized as the Cayuga and Susquehanna Railroad. It was re-engineered with switchbacks downhill into Ithaca in the late 1840s. In the late 20th century, a short section of its abandoned right-of-way in the City and Town of Ithaca was used for the South Hill Recreation Way.

However, easier early railroad routes were constructed that bypassed Ithaca, such as that of the Syracuse, Binghamton & New York (1854). In the decade following the Civil War, railroads were built from Ithaca to the surrounding points of Auburn; Geneva; Cayuga; Cortland; Elmira, New York and Athens, Pennsylvania, mainly with financing from Ezra Cornell. These were all branch-lines, as the geography of the city, on a steep hill by the lake, had prevented it from being directly connected to a major transportation artery. Several decades later, when the Lehigh Valley Railroad built its main, double-track freight line from Van Etten Junction to Geneva (and on to Buffalo, New York), opened in 1892, it bypassed Ithaca and Auburn to the west (running via Burdett and eastern Schuyler County on easier grades), as the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad had also done with its own, new Binghamton-Buffalo mainline extension to the south and west, via Owego, Waverly, Bath and Dansville, in 1882. Two of three daily New York-Buffalo round-trip passenger trains served Ithaca on the older, original LV "Ithaca Branch" between Van Etten Junction and Geneva, until discontinuance of the "Black Diamond" daylight train, on May 11, 1959. On May 25, 1959, the overnight "Maple Leaf" train was shifted back to the Ithaca Branch from the main line via Burdett, and operated on this route until the LV discontinued this last passenger service on February 4, 1961.[10]

In the late 19th century, more industry developed in Ithaca. In 1883, William Henry Baker and his partners started the Ithaca Gun Company, making shotguns. The original factory was located in the Fall Creek neighborhood of the city, on a slope later known as Gun Hill, where the nearby waterfall supplied the main source of energy for the plant. The company became an icon in the hunting and shooting world, its shotguns famous for their fine decorative work. Wooden gunstocks with knots or other imperfections were donated to the high school woodworking shop to be made into lamps.[11] John Philip Sousa and trick-shooter Annie Oakley favored Ithaca guns. In 1937, the company began producing the Ithaca 37, based on a 1915 patent by noted firearms designer John Browning. Its 12-gauge shotguns were the standard used for decades by the New York City Police Department and Los Angeles Police Department.[12]

In 1885, Ithaca Children's Home was established on West Seneca Street. The orphanage had two programs at the time: a residential home for both orphaned and destitute children, and a day nursery.[13] The village established its first trolley in 1887. Ithaca developed as a small manufacturing and retail center and was incorporated as a city in 1888. The largest industrial company in the area was Morse Chain, elements of which were absorbed into Emerson Power Transmission on South Hill and Borg Warner Automotive in Lansing, New York.

Ithaca claims to be the birthplace of the ice cream sundae, created in 1892 when fountain shop owner Chester Platt "served his local priest vanilla ice cream covered in cherry syrup with a dark candied cherry on top. The priest suggested the dessert be named after the day, Sunday—although the spelling was later changed out of fear some would find it offensive."[14] The local Unitarian church, where the priest, Rev. John Scott, preached, has an annual "Sundae Sunday" every September in commemoration.[8][15] Ithaca's claim has long been disputed by Two Rivers, Wisconsin. Also in 1892, the Ithaca Kitty became one of the first mass-produced stuffed animal toys in the United States.[16]

In 1903, a typhoid epidemic resulting from poor sanitation infrastructure devastated the city. Not having access to unpolluted water was one suspicion to the cause of the outbreak because "[r]efuse and the contents of the early sewer system dumped directly into the inlet".[17] One out of ten citizens fell ill or died.[18] Local residents lost fifty-one people to the illness that year, but there was “an average of thirty-nine cases each year” for the consecutive ten years following.[19]

Still from The New Adventures of J. Rufus Wallingford, a 1915 Wharton Studio production

In 1900, Cornell anatomy professor G. S. Moler made an early movie using frame-by-frame technology. For The Skeleton Dance, he took single-frame photos of a human skeleton in varying positions, giving the illusion of a dancing skeleton. During the early 20th century, Ithaca was an important center in the silent film industry. These films often featured the local natural scenery. Many of these films were the work of Leopold Wharton and his brother Theodore; The Wharton Studio was on the site of what is now Stewart Park.[8]

The Star Theatre on East Seneca Street was built in 1911 and became the most popular vaudeville venue in the region. Wharton movies were also filmed and shown there.[20] After the film industry centralized in Hollywood, production in Ithaca effectively ceased. Few of the silent films made in Ithaca have been preserved.

After World War II, the Langmuir Research Labs of General Electric developed as a major employer; the defense industry continued to expand. GE's headquarters were in Schenectady, New York, to the northeast in the Mohawk Valley.

Although Ithaca has a history of Ku Klux Klan activity, including a cross-burning in 1923 and 1924, "the peak years of Klan activity in Ithaca were 1923-1925" and it represented only a fraction of the population.[21] Ithaca is known for its political activism regarding civil rights and environmental issues.[22] “Martin Luther King Jr. came to speak twice in Ithaca, in 1960 and 1961”.[22] The annual Ithaca Festival, which often takes place on the Ithaca Commons or Stewart Park, frequently centers around themes promoting "a political statement into a cultural and festive event”[23]

Ithaca Commons west entrance at Cayuga Street

For decades, the Ithaca Gun Company tested their shotguns behind the plant on Lake Street; the shot fell into the Fall Creek gorge at the base of Ithaca Falls. Lead accumulated in the soil in and around the factory and gorge. A major lead clean-up effort sponsored by the United States Superfund took place from 2002 to 2004, managed through the Environmental Protection Agency.[24] The old Ithaca Gun building has been dismantled. It was scheduled to be replaced by the development of an apartment complex on the cleaned land.

The former Morse Chain company factory on South Hill, now owned by Emerson Power Transmission, was the site of extensive groundwater and soil contamination from its industrial operations.[25] Emerson Power Transmission has been working with the state and South Hill residents to determine the extent and danger of the contamination and aid in cleanup.

In 2004, Gayraud Townsend, a 20-year-old senior in Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, was sworn in as alderman of the city council: the first black male to be elected to the council and the youngest African American to be elected to office in the United States.[26] He served his full term and has mentored other student politicians.[27] In 2011 Cornell Class of 2009 graduate Svante Myrick was elected as the youngest mayor of the city of Ithaca.[28]

The valley in which Cayuga Lake is located is long and narrow with a north–south orientation. Ithaca is located at the southern end (the "head") of the lake, but the valley continues to the southwest behind the city. Originally a river valley, it was deepened and widened by the action of Pleistocene ice sheets over the last several hundred thousand years.[29] These ice sheets gouged the land crosswise to preexisting streams, producing hanging valleys. Once the last ice sheets receded — around twenty or thirty thousand years ago — these streams cut deep into the steep hillsides, forming the many distinctive gorges, rapids, and waterfalls seen in the region; examples include Fall and Cascadilla Creeks in Ithaca, and nearby Buttermilk Falls, Enfield Gorge, and Taughannock Falls.[29] Cayuga Lake is the most recent lake in a long series of lakes which developed as the ice retreated northward.[29] The lake drains to the north, and was formed behind a dam of glacial debris called a moraine.

Rock in the region is predominantly Devonian shale and sandstone.[29] North of Ithaca, it is relatively fossil rich. The world-renowned fossils found in this area can be examined at the Museum of the Earth. Glacial erratics can also be found in the area.

Ithaca was founded on flat land just south of the lake — land that formed in fairly recent geological times when silt filled the southern end of the lake. The city ultimately spread to the adjacent hillsides, which rise several hundred feet above the central flats: East Hill, West Hill, and South Hill. The Cornell campus is loosely bounded to the north and south by Fall and Cascadilla Creeks, respectively.

The natural vegetation of the Ithaca area is northern temperate broadleaf forest. It is dominated by deciduous trees, including maple, sycamore, black walnut, birch, and oak; coniferous trees include white pine, Norway spruce, and eastern hemlock.[30] The city of Ithaca has a rich diversity of tree plantings, with over 190 species, including cherry, southern magnolia, and ginkgo.[30] In addition to visual beauty, this species diversification helps reduce the impact of arboreal epidemics, such as that caused by the emerald ash borer.

According to the Köppen climate classification method, Ithaca experiences a warm-summer humid continental climate, also known as a hemiboreal climate (Dfb). Summers are warm but brief, and it is cool-to-cold the rest of the year, with long, snowy winters; an average of 67 in (170 cm) of snow falls per year. In addition, frost may occur any time of year except mid-summer.

Winter is typically characterized by freezing temperatures, cloudy skies and light-to-moderate snows, with some heavier falls; the largest snowfall in one day was 26.0 in (66 cm) on February 14, 1914. But the season is also variable; there can be short mild periods with some rain, but also outbreaks of frigid air with night temperatures down to −10 °F (−23 °C) or lower. Summers usually bring sunshine, along with moderate heat and humidity, but also frequent afternoon thunderstorms. Nights are pleasant and sometimes cool. Occasionally, there can be heatwaves, with temperatures rising into the 90 °F (32 °C) to 95 °F (35 °C) range, but they tend to be brief.

The average date of the first freeze is October 5, and the average date of the last freeze is May 15, giving Ithaca a growing season of 141 days. The average date of the first and last snowfalls are November 12 and April 7, respectively. The hardiness zone is between 5b and 6a. Extreme temperatures range from −25 °F (−32 °C) as recently as February 2, 1961, up to 103 °F (39 °C) on July 9, 1936.[31]

The valley flatland has slightly cooler weather in winter, and occasionally Ithaca residents experience simultaneous snow on the hills and rain in the valley. The phenomenon of mixed precipitation (rain, wind, and snow), common in the late fall and early spring, is known tongue-in-cheek as ithacation to many of the local residents.[32]

Due to the microclimates created by the impact of the lakes, the region surrounding Ithaca (Finger Lakes American Viticultural Area) experiences a short but adequate growing season for winemaking similar to the Rhine Valley wine district of Germany. As such, the region is home to many wineries.

Location of the Ithaca-Cortland census designated area and its components:

  Ithaca Metropolitan Statistical Area

  Cortland Micropolitan Statistical Area

The term "Greater Ithaca" encompasses both the City and Town of Ithaca, as well as several smaller settled places within or adjacent to the Town:

Municipalities

Census-designated places

Politically, the majority of the city's voters (many of them students) have supported liberalism and the Democratic Party. A November 2004 study by ePodunk lists it as New York's most liberal city.[43] This contrasts with the more conservative leanings of the generally rural Upstate New York region; the city's voters are also more liberal than those in the rest of Tompkins County. In 2008, Barack Obama, running against New York State's US Senator Hillary Clinton, won Tompkins County in the Democratic Presidential Primary, the only county that he won in New York State.[44] Obama won Tompkins County (including Ithaca) by a wide margin of 41% over his opponent John McCain in the November 2008 election.

Ithaca is a sister city of:

• Eldoret, Kenya[45]

Ithaca is a major educational center in Central New York. The two major post-secondary educational institutions located in Ithaca were each founded in the late nineteenth century. In 1865, Ezra Cornell founded Cornell University, which overlooks the town from East Hill. It was opened as a coeducational institution. Women first enrolled in 1870. Ezra Cornell also established a public library for the city. Ithaca College was founded as the Ithaca Conservatory of Music in 1892.[46] Ithaca College was originally located in the downtown area but relocated to South Hill in the 1960s. In 2018, there were 23,600 students enrolled at Cornell and 6,700 at Ithaca College.[47] Tompkins Cortland Community College is located in the neighboring town of Dryden, and has an extension center in downtown Ithaca. Empire State College offers non-traditional college courses to adults in downtown Ithaca.

The Ithaca City School District, based in Ithaca, encompasses the city and its surrounding area and enrolls about 5,500 K-12 students in eight elementary schools (roughly one for every neighborhood), two middle schools (Boynton and Dewitt), Ithaca High School and the Lehman Alternative Community School, a combined middle and high school. Several private elementary and secondary schools are located in the Ithaca area, including the Roman Catholic Immaculate Conception School, the Cascadilla School, the New Roots Charter School, the Elizabeth Ann Clune Montessori School, the Namaste Montessori School (in the Trumansburg area) and the Ithaca Waldorf School. Ithaca has two networks for supporting its home-schooling families: Loving Education At Home (LEAH) and the Northern Light Learning Center (NLLC). TST BOCES is located in Tompkins County.

Tompkins County Public Library

The Tompkins County Public Library, located at 101 East Green Street, serves as the public library for Tompkins County and is the Central Library for the Finger Lakes Library System. The library serves over 38,000 registered borrowers and contains nearly 260,000 items in its circulating collection, and circulates about 800,000 items annually.[48]

Ithaca, home to the Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, has a deep connection to Central New York's farming and dairy industries. About 60 small farms are located in the greater Ithaca/Trumansburg area,[53] including a number of research farms managed by the Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station.[54] Cornell's Dairy Research Facility is a center of research and support for New York's large and growing milk and yogurt industries.[55]

Ithaca is the home of the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra.

The Cornell Concert Series[67] has been hosting musicians and ensembles of international stature since 1903. For its initial 84 years, the series featured Western classical artists exclusively. In 1987, however, the series broke with tradition to present Ravi Shankar and has since grown to encompass a broader spectrum of the world's great music. Now, it balances a mix of Western classical music, traditions from around the world, jazz, and new music in these genres. In a single season, Cornell Concert Series presents performers ranging from the Leipzig Tomanerchor and Danish Quartet to Simon Shaheen, Vida Guitar Quartet, and Eighth Blackbird.[68]

The School of Music at Ithaca College was founded in 1892 by William Egbert as a music conservatory on Buffalo Street. Among the degree programs offered are those in Performance, Theory, Music Education and Composition. Since 1941, the School of Music has been accredited by the National Association of Schools of Music.[69]

Ithaca's Suzuki school, Ithaca Talent Education, provides musical training for children of all ages and also teacher training for undergraduate and graduate-level students. The Community School of Music and Art uses an extensive scholarship system to offer classes and lessons to any student, regardless of age, background, economic status or artistic ability.[70]

A number of musicians call Ithaca home, most notably Samite of Uganda, The Burns Sisters, The Horse Flies, Johnny Dowd, Mary Lorson, cellist Hank Roberts, Anna Coogan, John Brown's Body, Kurt Riley, X Ambassadors, and Alex Kresovich. Old-time music is a staple, and folk music is featured weekly on WVBR-FM's Bound for Glory, North America's longest-running live folk concert broadcast. The Finger Lakes GrassRoots Festival of Music and Dance, hosted by local band Donna the Buffalo, is held annually during the third week in July in the nearby village of Trumansburg, with more than 60 local, national and international acts.

Ithaca is the center of a thriving live music scene, featuring more than 200 groups playing most genres of American popular and world music, the predominant genres being folk, rock, blues, jazz, country, lo-fi and reggae.[71] There are more than 80 live music venues within a 40-mile radius of the city, including cafes, pubs, clubs and concert halls.[71]

A TCAT bus

Route 13 in Ithaca as photographed for an image included on the Voyager Golden Record

Ithaca is in the rural Finger Lakes region about 225 miles (362 km) northwest of New York City; the nearest larger cities, Binghamton and Syracuse, are an hour's drive away by car, Rochester and Scranton are two hours, Buffalo and Albany are three. New York City, Philadelphia, Toronto, and Ottawa are approximately four hours away.

Ithaca lies at over a half-hour's drive from any interstate highway, and all car trips to Ithaca involve some driving on two-lane state rural highways. The city is at the convergence of many regional two-lane state highways: Routes 13, 13A, 34, 79, 89, 96, 96B and 366. These are usually not congested except in Ithaca proper. However, Route 79 between the I-81 access at Whitney Point and Ithaca receives a significant amount of Ithaca-bound congestion right before Ithaca's colleges reopen after breaks.

In July 2008, a non-profit called Ithaca Carshare began a carsharing service in Ithaca. Ithaca Carshare has a fleet of vehicles shared by over 1500 members as of July, 2015 and has become a popular service among both city residents and the college communities. Vehicles are located throughout Ithaca downtown and at the two major institutions. With Ithaca Carshare as the first locally-run carsharing organization in New York State, others have since launched in Buffalo, Albany, and Syracuse.

Rideshare services to promote carpooling and vanpooling are operated by ZIMRIDE and VRIDE. A community mobility education program, Way2Go, is operated by Cornell Cooperative Extension of Tompkins County. Way2Go's website provides consumer information and videos. Way2Go works collaboratively to help people save money, stress less, go green and improve mobility options.[74] The 2-1-1 Tompkins/Cortland Help line connects people with services, including transportation, in the community, by telephone and web on a 24/7 basis. The information and referral service is operated by the Human Services Coalition of Tompkins County, Inc. Together, 2-1-1 Information and Referral and Way2Go are a one-call, one-click resource designed to mobility services information for Ithaca and throughout Tompkins County.

As a growing urban area, Ithaca is facing steady increases in levels of vehicular traffic on the city grid and on the state highways. Outlying areas have limited bus service, and many people consider a car essential. However, many consider Ithaca a walkable and bikeable community. One positive trend for the health of downtown Ithaca is the new wave of increasing urban density in and around the Ithaca Commons. Because the downtown area is the region's central business district, dense mixed-use development that includes housing may increase the proportion of people who can walk to work and recreation and mitigate the likely-increased pressure on already-busy roads as Ithaca grows. The downtown area is also the area best-served by frequent public transportation. Still, traffic congestion around the Commons is likely to progressively increase.

There is frequent intercity bus service by Greyhound Lines, New York Trailways, OurBus, FlixBus, and Shortline (Coach USA), particularly to Binghamton and New York City, with limited service to Rochester, Buffalo and Syracuse, and (via connections in Binghamton) to Utica and Albany. OurBus also provides limited holiday services to Allentown, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC. Cornell University runs a premium campus-to-campus bus between its Ithaca campus and its medical school in Manhattan, New York City which is open to the public. Starting in September, 2019, intercity buses serving Ithaca operate from the downtown bus stop at 131 East Green Street, as the former Greyhound bus station on West State Street closed due to staff retirement and building maintenance issues.[75][76][77] However, OurBus now picks up and drops off on Seneca Street, near the downtown Starbucks and Hilton Garden Inn.

Ithaca is the center of an extensive bus public transportation network. Tompkins Consolidated Area Transit, Inc. (TCAT, Inc.) is a not-for-profit corporation that provides public transportation for Tompkins County, New York. TCAT was reorganized as a non-profit corporation in 2004 and is primarily supported locally by Cornell University, the City of Ithaca and Tompkins County. TCAT's ridership increased from 2.7 million in 2004 to 4.4 million in 2013.[78] TCAT operates 34 routes, many running seven days a week. It has frequent service to downtown, Cornell University, Ithaca College, and the Shops at Ithaca Mall in the Town of Lansing, but less-frequent service to many residential and rural areas, including Trumansburg and Newfield. Chemung County Transit (C-TRAN) runs weekday commuter service from Chemung County to Ithaca. Cortland Transit runs commuter service to Cornell University. Tioga County Public Transit operated three routes to Ithaca and Cornell, but ceased operations on November 30, 2014.

GADABOUT Transportation Services, Inc. provides demand-response paratransit service for seniors over 60 and people with disabilities. Ithaca Dispatch provides local and regional taxi service. In addition, Ithaca Airline Limousine and IthaCar Service connect to the local airports.

Ithaca Tompkins International Airport viewed from a taxiing plane

Ithaca is served by Ithaca Tompkins International Airport, located about three miles to the northeast of the city center. In late 2019, the airport completed a major $34.8 million renovation which included a larger terminal with additional passenger gates and jet bridges, expanded passenger amenities and a 5,000 square feet (460 m²) customs facility that enables it to receive international charter and private flights.[79]

American Airlines pulled out of Ithaca on September 7, 2022, citing pilot shortages. Delta Connection provides service to and from John F. Kennedy International Airport, operated by its commuter partner Endeavor Air, using the Bombardier CRJ200 commuter-jet. United Express offers daily flights to its hub at Newark Liberty Airport, operated by its commuter partner GoJet Airlines, using the two-class Bombardier CRJ550 commuter-jet.

Lehigh Valley Railroad station, built in 1898, has been refurbished and is now a Chemung Canal Trust Company bank branch

Into the mid-twentieth century, it was possible to reach Ithaca by passenger rail. At least two trains per day serviced Ithaca along either the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad (until March 31, 1942) or the Lehigh Valley Railroad. The trip took "about seven hours" from New York City, "about eight hours" from Philadelphia, and "about three hours" from Buffalo.[80] There has been no passenger rail service since February 4, 1961. From the 1870s-on, there were trains to Buffalo via Geneva, New York; to New York City via Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania (both Lehigh Valley Railroad); to Hoboken, New Jersey, with a train-change in Owego and a routing via Binghamton and Scranton, Pennsylvania (DL&W); and to the US northeast via Cortland, New York (Lehigh Valley Railroad).[81][82][83] The Lehigh Valley's top New York City-Ithaca-Buffalo passenger train, the daylight Black Diamond, was optimistically publicized as 'The Handsomest Train in the World', perhaps to compensate for its roundabout route to New York City (south to Waverly, New York; southeast to Wilkes-Barre and Easton, Pennsylvania; then east across New Jersey). It was named after the railroad's largest commodity, anthracite coal, and made its last run on May 11, 1959.

Until March 31, 1942, the Lackawanna Railroad operated two shuttle trains a day between Ithaca and Owego, where passengers could transfer to trains to Buffalo and Chicago to the west and eastbound to Binghamton, Scranton, Pennsylvania and Hoboken, New Jersey: across the Hudson River from New York City.[84] Until September 15, 1958, the Lackawanna maintained Syracuse-Binghamton service through nearby Cortland, to the east.[85] Until May 11, 1959, two Lehigh Valley trains a day made both westbound and eastbound stops in Ithaca.[86] The last passenger train making stops in Ithaca was the Lehigh Valley's overnight Maple Leaf, discontinued on February 4, 1961.[87][88]

A streetcar passes Eddy Gate, the main entrance to Cornell University at the time.

Within Ithaca, electric railways ran along Stewart Avenue and Eddy Street.[80] Ithaca was the fourth community in New York state with a street railway; streetcars ran from 1887 until the summer of 1935.[89][90]

A Norfolk Southern Railway locomotive

On December 8, 2018, the Ithaca Central Railroad, a Watco subsidiary, took over operation via lease of the 48.8-mile (78.5 km) Norfolk Southern Ithaca Secondary line from Sayre, Pennsylvania to the Cargill Salt mine site on the eastern shore of Cayuga Lake, near Myers Point. Unit coal trains carrying bituminous coal were delivered to the Ithaca Central at Sayre by Norfolk Southern for less than eight months afterward, traveling to the Ridge site of the Cayuga Operating Company: a coal-burning power plant (known as Milliken Station during NYSEG ownership). Unit trains of coal are now gone, as the power plant closed on August 29, 2019, when it ran out of coal, and was officially retired in October, 2019. (As of 2022, there are ambitious, proposed plans to convert its brownfield site into a major data center.) The main rail freight traffic is now salt from the Cargill salt mine farther north. The Norfolk Southern tracks, headed north on the former Lehigh Valley Auburn and Ithaca Branch, include a distinctive section in Ithaca that runs along the side of Fulton St. (NY13 southbound), although not in the street itself.