On October 18, New York State Senator Tom O’Mara attended an event in Ithaca celebrating a $450 thousand grant from the state government that will fund the construction of a museum at Stewart Park. The museum will be housed in the building that once was home to the Wharton Studio, a silent film production studio. The museum will celebrate the role that Ithaca and the Finger Lakes region played in the development and production of silent films. At one point, Ithaca was the heart of the silent movie industry—filming on Cayuga Lake was commonplace, and many action scenes were filmed in gorges around town.
The Wharton Studio, which was active in Ithaca from 1914 to 1919, was one of the giants of the silent movie industry. Formed by Theodore and Leopold Wharton, two brothers who came across Ithaca and Cornell when visiting family in Upstate New York, the studio filmed almost 30 films during its time in Ithaca. Ithaca’s gorges were the perfect setting for stunts in movies produced by the Wharton brothers—the museum’s website notes that one of their most famous stunts featured a trolley car falling off the Stewart Avenue bridge and landing into Fall Creek. Ithaca’s role as a center of production of early airplanes was another asset that the community provided to the Wharton brothers. The airplane manufacturer Thomas-Morse had several of its S4-C models featured in later Wharton Studio films.
The nightly train between Ithaca and New York City brought the most famous actors of the 1910s to the Wharton brothers’ studio. Actors like Lionel Barrymore, who went on to star in It’s a Wonderful Life, and Pearl White, who was dominant in the silent film industry, stayed for long periods of time while acting in Wharton Studio productions.
Around 1917, the Wharton Studio lost the backing of one of its major financial investors, marking the start of their demise. The brothers took out loans to film the studio’s final movies in Ithaca, and in 1919, they filmed their final movie as they underwent foreclosure proceedings. In the same time period, many silent film studios relocated to California to be able to film year-round.
Although the Wharton Studio Museum is currently under construction, their website, whartonstudiomuseum.org, contains many articles, videos, and links that further describe the history of the silent film industry in Ithaca. The studio’s history will also be represented in exhibits housed in the Tompkins Center for History and Culture, a museum opening on the Commons in early 2019.