Llenroc

Llenroc is a Gothic Revival villa at 100 Cornell Avenue in Ithaca, New York, built for Ezra Cornell, the founder of Cornell University, and named for his surname spelled backward. The Albany firm Nichols and Brown designed it in 1865; construction ran from 1869 to 1876. Its three-foot-thick masonry walls of local bluestone and limestone carry carved capitals, arches and turrets, and the interior includes Georgia pine and black walnut woodwork, molded plaster ceilings, a carved Gothic staircase and nine fireplaces. Ezra Cornell employed English woodcarvers and German stonemasons on the work. His family left in the early twentieth century, the Pi chapter of the Delta Phi fraternity bought the house in 1911, and it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.