Alumni magazine moves into new downtown office

By Franklin Crawford

It's back to the future for the Cornell Alumni Magazine. In September the magazine moved its offices from 55 Brown Road in the Cornell Business and Technology Park to new digs on the third floor of the newly renovated Gateway Center building at 401 E. State St. in downtown Ithaca. The six-story building sits near the foot of State Street, one block east of the Ithaca Commons. It is the former site of the Dean Moving and Storage warehouse and houses the Tompkins County Museum, as well as other offices.

Jim Roberts, Cornell Alumni Magazine editor and publisher, researched the history of the magazine's travels since it was founded in 1899 as the Cornell Alumni News. Combing through the mastheads of back issues, Roberts reports his findings in an editorial for the upcoming issue. He writes:

"Cornell Alumni Magazine ... began its odyssey in downtown Ithaca, at 16 South Tioga Street. Shortly afterward it moved to quarters in Morrill Hall, but before long it had migrated back down the hill, shifting among several locations before settling in for a 10-year run at 110 North Tioga Street, starting in 1907. Then it was on to State Street -- four years at 220 East State ("directly opposite the Ithaca Hotel"), then six at 123 West State -- before a 12-year stint at 113 East Green Street, in the building that also housed the Cayuga Press.

"In 1939 the CAN staff moved up the hill to share space with the university's Alumni Office at 3 East Avenue, in what had once been a faculty cottage. They moved together to Day Hall (1947-66) and then to the former Delta Delta Delta house at 626 Thurston Avenue (1966-90), where the Alumni Affairs staff still labors. A space crunch sent the magazine packing again, in April 1990, to a modernistic building at 55 Brown Road in the Cornell Business and Technology Park, near the airport."

Sections of the Gateway Center are still under construction, and magazine staff are still settling into their new home. Roberts said the transition will take a little getting used to, but "it's nice to be able to go outside and feel like you're part of the town."

Cornell Alumni Magazine is owned and published by the Cornell Alumni Federation. It is editorially independent of the university and publishes six issues per year. Between 28,000 and 30,000 copies of the magazine are distributed to paying subscribers. It also publishes triennial issues of Weill Cornell Medicine, the official magazine of the Joan and Sanford I. Weill College and Graduate School of Medical Sciences of Cornell in New York City.