Boyce Thompson Institute celebrates CU silver anniversary with open house

The Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research Inc. (BTI) this month celebrates 25 years of affiliation with Cornell.

To mark the occasion, BTI will hold an open house reception May 19 at 3:30 p.m. in the atrium lobby of the BTI building on campus. The open house will be followed by short lectures about the history and science of the institute.

Beginning in 1924 the institute was headquartered on a campuslike setting in Yonkers, N.Y. In the early 1970s, facing urban sprawl and soaring real estate tax rates, the decision was made to move. The late George L. McNew, then managing director of the independent institute, favored affiliating BTI with a university.

The institute narrowed its search for a new home to Cornell and Oregon State University at Corvallis. Roy Young, a vice president at Oregon State and one of McNew's former graduate students had persuaded Oregon Gov. Tom McCall to support the move, and the Oregon Legislature passed a bill authorizing $6.75 million for the construction of headquarters and greenhouses in Oregon.

However, there was a time limit for BTI to accept the offer. Neither New York Lt. Gov. Malcolm Wilson, a native of Yonkers, nor Ernest L. Boyer, chancellor of the State University of New York, wanted BTI to leave the state. In July 1973 Gov. Nelson Rockefeller introduced special legislation in the New York State Legislature. A month later $8.5 million was authorized for the construction of a facility if the institute would agree to relocate to Cornell.

BTI accepted New York's offer on May 28, 1974, and the institute moved into its new home four years later.

The idea for establishing BTI was planted when mining magnate William Boyce Thompson returned from a visit to Russia in 1917, just after the overthrow of the czarist monarchy. As a member of the American Red Cross delegation, he was able to see firshand how the new government was unable to feed the hungry.

Thompson's experience in Russia convinced him that agriculture, food supply and social justice were inherently linked. He endowed the institute with $10 million of his money -- a fortune in the early 1920s.

BTI was established to study "why and how plants grow, why they languish or thrive, how their diseases may be conquered, how their development may be stimulated by the regulation of the elements which contribute to their life," Thompson wrote. He knew the United States and other countries would need this botanical-agricultural information to feed growing populations. The institute continues to study plant genetics, plant nutrition, disease resistance and making more-viable agricultural seeds.