Ithaca College

Specialties

From day one, Ithaca College prepares students for success through hands-​on experience with internships, research and study abroad. The College is home to 6,100 undergraduate and 400 graduate students.

History

Established in 1892.

Ithaca-​area native William Grant Egbert was a young, homesick violinist studying in Europe when it occurred to him that the best way to live at home and still make a living would be to do what he did best. He could play his violin, and do it in Ithaca, if he taught music on a grander scale. So he wrote a letter to an Ithaca friend, instructing him to sell $ 50 shares in a new conservatory of music. There weren’t many takers.

Nonetheless, on September 19, 1892, the first students trooped into four rented rooms in a house on East Seneca Street to begin their lessons. On that first evening, the faculty of the Ithaca Conservatory of Music gave a free concert in the Unitarian Church, the beginning of a tradition of public performances. Conservatory officers busily set about finding boarding for their new students, who studied everything from solfeggio and composition to guitar, mandolin, and even china painting.