Cornell: Glorious to View

The steep hills and dramatic gorges of Ithaca were the setting for a revolution in American education when, in the 1860s, a self-made man sought "to do the most good... to the poor and to posterity." Ezra Cornell's philanthropy, enhanced with funds from the Morrill Land Grant Act and enlarged by the vision of educator Andrew Dickson White, created what has been called the first American university—'a modern, democratic, research-oriented institution open to young men and women of all creeds...