Then And Now
Sapsucker Woods and the Stuart Observatory
Randolph Scott Little
Have you ever wondered how Sapsucker Woods got its name, or how it came to be preserved as a sanctuary, or how the late Stuart Observatory came to be? In this article for Then & Now you will find the answers to those historical questions.
On the 18th of June, 1909, four intrepid birders - Cornell graduate student Arthur Allen, artist Louis Fuertes, James Gutsell and Francis Harper - found a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker nest in a swamp woodlot at the northeastern corner of the Town of Ithaca.
Is there really something called a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker? Indeed there is. It is a North American woodpecker, midway in size between "our" diminutive resident Downy Woodpecker and the larger resident Hairy Woodpecker, which breeds primarily in Canadian forests and winters in the southeastern United States. It drills horizontal rows of small holes in trees such as apple, alder and aspen, and drinks the oozing sap. Adult males have yellow undersides; hence, their name.
Sapsuckers pass through Ithaca during spring and fall migration, but this was the first nest to be found in the entire Cayuga Lake basin. Fuertes immediately named the spot "Sapsucker Woods."
Upon earning his PhD degree in 1911, Allen was admitted to the faculty of the Graduate School and, in 1915 became the first professor of ornithology at Cornell and arguably the first in the world. "Doc" Allen not only taught ornithology, he popularized bird study in many forms such as bird watching, bird photography and bird conservation. It was his outstanding bird photography that ultimately saved Sapsucker Woods.
Fast forward to 1951, when Dr. Arthur A. Allen's photo-essay "Duck Hunting with a Color Camera" appeared in the October issue of National Geographic Magazine. The idea of shooting ducks through the lens of a camera instead of over the sights of a shotgun immediately gained the admiration of many readers, including Lyman K. Stuart, a very successful businessman from Newark, New York. Stuart had graduated from Cornell in 1921 and remembered "Doc" Allen as Cornell's professor of ornithology. Stuart asked Allen to teach him how to photograph birds.
Two years later, Stuart entered a Life magazine photo-essay contest. In competition with 1,232 contestants from 50 countries he won first prize. The grateful Stuart contacted his mentor, who was then on the verge of retirement, and asked if he had a favorite project at the university with which he could help. Doc mentioned his dream of making a sanctuary of Sapsucker Woods before it was consumed by development. "Cornell shall have it," Lyman said, and with his aunt, Mrs. Edith Stuart, bought and contributed 110 acres.
Neighbors added another 29 adjoining acres, a 10-acre pond was constructed at the northern edge of the woods as an added attraction to waterfowl, trails were established throughout the woods, with boardwalks over the wettest areas, and the entire tract was surrounded by a 3-mile chain link fence. The Sapsucker Woods Sanctuary was preserved at last.
That done, Lyman asked Doc what he would like next, to which the flabbergasted professor replied by describing a wonderful building overlooking the pond where research and public outreach in ornithology could be performed.
The Stuarts and their Arcadia Foundation underwrote the design and construction of just such a facility, the perfect answer to "Doc" Allen's dreams. On May 18, 1957, the new Laboratory of Ornithology building and the surrounding Sapsucker Woods Sanctuary were formally dedicated. The building itself was subsequently rededicated as the Lyman K. Stuart Observatory. For nearly half a century it has been a "must" location for visitors from throughout the world.
The Stuart Observatory served admirably as both a public retreat for enjoyment of nature through large windows overlooking the pond (with the sounds of its birds and frogs piped in from outdoor microphones) and an academic laboratory for the study of birds. Popular interest and research success soon led to a series of expansions of the facility - conversion of the aviary into the Fisk wing for bird population studies, construction of new aviaries across the road where sensitive studies would be less disturbed by public incursion, addition of the Brewster wing with its Fuertes room as a public auditorium, to offer a few examples.
Conversion and expansion, however, could only go so far before the original infrastructure, no matter how forward thinking it was at the time, was being utilized well beyond its reasonable capacity. And double-wide house trailers could not be a long-term solution for overflow office and laboratory space. Thus, in 2003 the Laboratory of Ornithology welcomes its migration into the wonderful new Imogene Powers Johnson Center for Birds and Biodiversity, and affectionately retires the Lyman K. Stuart Observatory which has served so admirably for nearly 50 years.
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This article appeared in The Ithaca Journal, April 13, 2003, p.3B under the title
"Sapsucker Woods fulfilled prof's dream"
©2003 R. S. Little