Help Us Secure and Launch
The Liberty Hyde Bailey Center
in Ithaca, NY

Photo, taken by Bailey, showing the historic Bailey complex in Ithaca, NY, ca. 1910. From L-R: carriage house turned herbarium, horse stable turned office, greenhouse, and Bailey home. All structures remain in good repair. Image courtesy of the Liberty Hyde Bailey Museum & Gardens, South Haven, Michigan.

  • "New York State cannot well afford to lose a resource of such cultural significance to the nation—particularly in light of the potential this project brings forth for it."

    —Theodore Roosevelt IV, Conservationist and Managing Director in Investment Banking at Barclays

  • "CCETC's vision for the Bailey Center serves as a powerful catalyst for systemic equity and social cohesion. It will drive equitable asset distribution and deliver tangible benefits to the greater Ithaca area and the Southern Tier, Finger Lakes region. This scalable framework establishes a repeatable model of inclusive advancement for communities across New York. The profound equity goals of this project match the property's rich historic legacy."

    —Leon Holden, President of the Diversity Consortium of Tompkins County; Chief Equity and Diversity Officer, Tompkins County Administration

  • "Bailey taught me that when judging the validity of my rural poultry farm to not only look at the bottom line. He believed there’s so much more to the quality of a good life that can’t be measured by dollars. Bailey’s visionary philosophies and teachings are profoundly applicable today. Let’s make them available to our communities through the LHB Center, which can serve as a much needed gathering place to explore our differences and common goals."

    —Barbara Martin, Martin’s Landscape Gardening and Park’s Hill Poultry

  • "As President of Ithaca College, I recognize the importance of preserving places that connect us with our shared history while also creating opportunities to address the challenges of the future. The vision for the Bailey Center reflects both of these priorities by honoring the remarkable legacy of Liberty Hyde Bailey and establishing a center dedicated to education, environmental stewardship, civic engagement, and community collaboration."

    —La Jerne Terry Cornish, President of Ithaca College

About the project

We seek financial support to purchase and restore the house and herbarium complex of Liberty Hyde Bailey and to launch The Liberty Hyde Bailey Center in upstate New York, a new kind of public institution established in close partnership with Cornell University, which will do the following:

  • Address the interlinked crises of climate change and democratic unravelling together, strengthening and mobilizing democratic civic action on issues related to climate in rural America through a robust Rural-Urban Dialogue Initiative and public deployment of the arts and humanities.

  • Leverage the public trust held by Cornell Cooperative Extension, as well as its geographical reach in every county of New York State, to bridge rural-urban, red-blue, and other polarizing divides through interdisciplinary programming that empowers and works alongside local communities.

  • Develop a model and a growing set of resources to catalyze similar work across the national land-grant university system and networks of independent rural organizations.

  • Ground these initiatives in Bailey’s rich and provocative body of work by making that work both accessible and relevant to the challenges and opportunities of our moment.

  • Preserve and restore the historic gardens and buildings in Ithaca, NY, featuring architecture designed by William Henry Miller, Clarence A. “Pa” Martin, and Bailey himself, and open them all as a public resource and education center.

In its start-up phase, the Bailey Center is a project of Cornell Cooperative Extension Tompkins County, an independent 501c3 nonprofit organization with 113 years of leadership in the greater Ithaca area.

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Detail of a late-life photograph of Liberty Hyde Bailey walking in front of his now-historic property on Sage Place, Ithaca, NY. An evening shadow stretches in front of Bailey along the sidewalk.

Bailey walking in front of the home complex in Ithaca late in life, ca. 1940s. Visible are the converted carriage house at left and the home at right. Not visible between them are the horse-stable-turned-office and greenhouse. Photo courtesy of the personal collection of Scott Peters.

The Need

We only have a limited time to raise the funds necessary to secure the two conjoined Bailey properties, appraised at $1.46M, while the current owner—Cornell University—holds them off the market for us. With $545,400 raised to date, we seek $3M to complete the purchase of the property and related fees and to launch the Bailey Center with an initial staff. Please share this website with anyone you can think of who should know about it, and, if you can, consider making a donation today.

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Do you have questions about donating, or have ideas about who might like to support this project? Can you help in other ways? Have some general questions for us? Fill out this form and we will be in touch shortly. We can’t wait to hear from you!