Hundreds of films and TV shows are filmed in New York City every year. The procedural police drama practically lives in the Big Apple. No one would contest, however, that the crown of the entertainment industry today belongs to Los Angeles. Walk, or drive (why on earth would you walk?) down Sunset Boulevard and you’ll notice the air is a little different than its East Coast counterpart. No, it is not the pollution (that is another conversation, another department) but the stars that dominate the conversation, airwaves, and, quite literally, the sidewalks. Now take a breath. What if this crisp, quite cool Cayuga air hosted the same buzz? 

Strangely enough, it once did. Back in the mid to late 1910s, Ithaca, New York, housed its own studio system prototype, forming the Tinseltown image before it was aware of its own existence. The studio was located within 5 minutes of the Cornell campus, due west at Stewart Park. But, like so many great things, it started here.

It was fall of 1912 when Theodore Wharton entered Ithaca and filmed one reel of footage of the football game between Cornell and Penn State. The aptly-titled Football Days of Cornell would be the first of many short, and long, features filmed in this town by the Wharton. Essanay Studios, of which Wharton was a contracted producer, director and writer in, paid the university a then-serious 300 dollars for rights of the film. Ted returned next year, cast and crew in tow, to film a short film called The Hermit of Lonely Gulch. A house at 202 Thurston Avenue — a street name all will recognize — was the sight for the filmed drama between famed stage and silent film actor Francis X. Bushman and popular actress Beverly Bayne. The naturally stunning gorges and waterfalls of Cornell Heights, the western area of North Campus, provided an exquisite backdrop. The days of early film revolved around images more than narrative, and the spectacle of literal moving pictures — and of swaying leaves and running water no less — was an attraction of its own. 

Leopold Wharton, Ted’s brother, moved in, and within the year The Whartons Studio was born. Their film studio was located in Renwick Park — what we now call Stewart Park — and took advantage of both the picaresque view of Cayuga Lake and the general Ithaca populace. A large pavilion complex in the park built in 1894 by Vivian & Gibbs, students of famed Cornell architect William Henry Miller, held the Wharton studio lots and offices. Local artisans, electricians and folks just wanting to help, pitched in on constructing sets and maintaining crews during filming. Many Ithacans of the time are preserved on the film itself. The Whartons pulled locals to fill the ranks of an angry mob, or even borrowed real firefighters for use in a scene. Even Edward Buck, Ithaca chief of police at the time, played the fitting role of sheriff in For Old Time’s Sake. 

In a stunt combining the inherent beauty and danger of the environment with the efforts of the Ithaca community, the Wharton brothers bought an old trolley car from the Ithaca Traction Corporation and filmed it hurtling off the Stewart Avenue Bridge. Over one thousand spectators watched the car plummet into the Fall Creek Gorge, all for the sake of a film, A Prince of India. And this was all in the first months of operation.

A film titled A Prince of India would suggest that the purported setting of some of the films did not always lie in the brutal meteorological parameters of our lovely Ithaca. Indeed, the studio drew much praise for its clever manipulation of location. The New York Morning Telegraph of the time declared, “Had Aladdin been a motion picture producer, he could not possibly have conjured enchanted production grounds more perfect than where the Whartons work,” and that thanks to the varied architecture of Cornell University, “any American scene can be laid, from that of a Southern village to a thriving Northern city.” Upon first setting foot in town in 1912, Theodore himself said Ithaca is “the garden spot of the east.” 

The heyday of the Whartons Studio was bright but brief. The fecund year of 1914 also saw the release of The Exploits of Elaine, the first film serial in history to break $1 million in box office returns. The successor, The Romance of Elaine, was released next year, and starred Pearl White and a young Lionel Barrymore (yes, granduncle of Drew), both of whom interacted with the local, eager public. The largest Wharton endeavor, Patria, a serial in 15 parts, boasted one of the largest budgets of its time at $85,000, about one million in today’s discourse. The film industry energized Tompkins County unlike anything before it, as those in Ithaca “look[ed] upon our company as their own,” according to Ted Wharton. 

As the current state of affairs here in Ithaca implies, the Wharton Studio could not survive forever. By 1920, the financially troubled studio foreclosed and sublimated its space to Cayuga Pictures, Inc. The new company would make one film and no more. Leo Wharton moved to San Antonio in 1919, before the proceedings finished, while Ted found work in Los Angeles at MGM. Both, unfortunately, died of illness by 1931. Nearly all of the films were destroyed in a fire in 1929, though the efforts of the Ithaca Motion Picture Project are working to restore what is left and inform the public of the significance this town holds in film history. All told, the Whartons Studio produced over 100 films here in Ithaca and reshaped the city’s image as well as the film industry as a whole. 

I visited Stewart Park this past Monday to take in the space that once was bustling with filmmakers, stars and Ithacans alike. The bare, immediate views of Cayuga Lake, with nodding weeping willows in the foreground, promoted a sense of zen. Then I walked to the far west end, reaching a building holding remnants of equipment used by the studio almost one hundred years ago. I wanted to get inside, but the doors were locked. The same can be said for the former glorious industry that once called Ithaca home:  it can be seen no longer, but its memories survive in the foundation.