The first building devoted entirely to instruction in landscape architecture on the Cornell campus was truly “for the birds.” Occupied in the late winter of 1913, the building had originally been constructed by Ag students under the direction of Professor James Rice, the founder of the Poultry Department in the Ag School. Noted as the first structure in this country devoted to the study of poultry science, the wooded frame building, located on the present site of Rice Hall, was soon too small to serve the educational needs of the rapidly expanding department. Offered to the Department of Landscape Art, which was looking for a permanent location on the Ag Quad, the building was given with the instructions that it be moved and renovated for no more than $3,000.

A new location in a wooded area overlooking Beebe Lake (roughly on or near the knoll behind Warren Hall and just northwest of the Deans’ Garden) was secured and the move was accomplished in the late summer of 1912. Dean Liberty Hyde Bailey was adamant that the building and department remain visible to the rest of the Ag School. He observed: “This building should not be removed from the main line of travel. I want all our people constantly aware of the Department of Landscape Art; and I want the Department of Landscape Art to exercise its continuing influence in College. The new building ought to be placed where people will be passing it every day...”


As with most projects, the remodeling work proceeded more slowly and was more costly than had been anticipated. Intentions to move in by the beginning of classes moved to Thanksgiving and finally were not realized until early the next year. Once in, however, the building seemed to answer many of the space issues which had troubled the department throughout its early years of existence. Writing in May 1914, Professor Eugene Montillion presented a glowing description of what had been accomplished in the preceding months:

The Landscape Art Department occupies its own building, one recently reconstructed for their use. The first floor accommodates (sic) the Department offices and a lecture room seating seventy persons, equipped with a stereoptican lantern. The second story is sixty feet, which in addition to preceding accommodation (sic) for about thirty-five students in design and other drafting courses, has a section devoted to the work of planning the college campus, over which the department has supervision. In the basement of the building, the hillside site which allows ample light, is located the department library and a large exhibition room for the hanging and judgment of student problems in design and other courses and the occasional placing of special exhibitions.

Beautiful as the accommodations were, the Department would enjoy them for less than ten years. With the resignation of Dean Bailey in 1913 and the changing of the old guard in the college administration, the Department felt increasingly vulnerable to the possibility of being phased out of the Ag School. Thus, when an opportunity arose in the early 1920s to become part of the College of Architecture, the Department moved to a new home down on the Arts Quad and vacated the remodeled poultry building overlooking Beebe Lake.