Andrew Dickson White House

The Andrew Dickson White House, commonly called the A.D. White House, is a High Victorian Gothic building on the campus of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. It was designed by architects William Henry Miller and Charles Babcock and commissioned in 1871 by Andrew Dickson White, Cornell co-founder and first president, as both his residence and a source of artistic inspiration for students, with elaborate stone carvings reflecting his aesthetic tastes. White bequeathed the house to the university on his death for the use of future presidents, and its southeast study remains available as a private office and retreat for the university presidents. In 1953 the building became the University Art Museum, with its former carriage house converted into a graduate student lounge known as the Big Red Barn. It served as an art museum until 1973, when a proposal to demolish it was defeated after advocacy by Henry Guerlac, director of the Society for the Humanities, leading to its listing on the National Register of Historic Places that year. The house now holds offices for the Society for the Humanities, and its library is named the Guerlac Room in his honor.