Tower House Ithaca

In your travels you will find over 150 waterfalls within just 10 square miles of Ithaca, New York. If you look hard enough in Ithaca, New York you will discover a rather unique project going up like nothing else in Ithaca. It's the tower house of Ithaca which is the longest night solstice tower project in Ithaca as well. The tower house is a little bit different different from other houses that you'll be seeing in the city if Ithaca, New York. On a Sunday we met the Architect of this work of art. At first we thought the man working on the house was some poor flunky who got stuck working on the weekend, but after he introduced himself to us we found that we were talking to the actual Architect of this interesting looking house.

At first we thought there were separate apartments on each floor, but even as big as the tower house looks it's actually only a single dwelling house. The lot is only 33 feet by 93 feet, and the tower house consist of two identical towers that are connected by an overhead elevated walkway. There are no windows in the tower house, just doors. I was really amazed by the fact that there were all of these doors throughout the tower house in place of windows. Believe it or not the Architect actually said that it was cheaper to use and install doors than use windows. (Who would have guessed that.) The doors that are above the ground level all open to the inside. We saw the protective outdoor railings being built in front of these doors while we were there, and this was when we realized that there was something just a little bit different about the tower house. All of the photographs in this hub I took personally, and you'll notice that I took some of the pictures here both before and after all of the protective outdoor railings were installed. There's also one foot glass blocks on each floor that serve as small clerestory windows. The lay out for the tower house makes the most out of the space and runs like this - on the first floor of each tower there's a living area, kitchen, and bathroom. The second floor of the tower has two mirrored bedrooms and sinks in the hallway. On the third floor there's the master bedroom with a private bathroom. The very top of the tower house contains the laundry along with storage space.

The Architect actually went around and talked with the neighbors in this close knit neighborhood. He explained with them what he intended on doing with the property, and he was open minded to any of their concerns. He talked with us for a while, and even showed us an actual paper model of the tower house that he keeps on the dash board of his car for inspiration. He was very eager to explain all of his ideas and the different aspects of the tower house. The Architect explained all of these things to us about the tower house without having any idea that a person with us in our group was actually a building contractor. One of the funny things was that this person in our group also didn't want any of us to tell the Architect that he was indeed a building contractor. The Architect also told us that the tower house was built with the alignment of the stars in mind. There are various fruit and nut trees, plants and bushes planted along the side of the tower house property. In front of the tower house what first looked like some sort of weird fence turned out to be, what the Architect described, a confessional bench where the people seated were on opposite sides. It was the dream of the Architect that these two people could sit there and engage in a good conversation while they each enjoyed a cool beverage. I'm not sure if he was implying about them drinking a beer or a tall ice tea.

What was even stranger was the lost cat poster that was tacked to the telephone pole by the tower house. I discovered later that it was actually put there by a nephew of mine. He also hung up some other posters in town which actually made it into the local newspapers. I guess now I know where he gets his sense of humor. You will find all of this located in Ithaca, New York around 504 West Seneca street.

This 1923 New York license plate was found on Connecticut Hill, New York. After over 93 years and almost 2 hours of work this plate saw a brand new Rust-oleum paint job.