A park in the Finger Lakes is now on the National Historic Register. Stewart Park dates to the late 1800s, and now it’s officially recognized as a historic place.
“Stewart Park was one of the first places I drove to when I moved here and when I was figuring out if I was going to live here," said Diana Riesman, board president of Friends of Stewart Park.
Riesman is invested in Stewart Park, in Ithaca. Friends of Stewart Park work hard on improvements.
“I loved the park immediately and then to be able for the last more than a decade work on improving the park, I mean, it’s beautiful the way it is. There’s so much natural beauty and all that, but the park really needed some TLC. It needed some attention," said Riesman.
The park was originally developed in the 1890s.
“The first building to go in was the Cascadilla Boathouse," said Rick Manning, executive director of Friends of Stewart Park. “Restored the exterior of the boathouse, and now we’re thinking of how to reuse the upstairs, but it’s used as a boathouse by the Cascadilla Boat Club.”
The boathouse has been on the historic register for years and recently got a facelift.
“We made lots of improvements including a paint job, fixing the verandas, accessibility to the restrooms, changing up a corner that was deteriorating because of the water," said Susan Holland, executive director of Historic Ithaca.
“Because of this location on the lakefront and the types of weather we have today with the wind and rain and wet, it can have an impact on the buildings so maintenance, upkeep, occasional restoration is really important, and that’s the kind of work that friends of Stewart Park does," said Manning.
Another recent project was redoing the playground area, making it an accessible playground. An accessible restroom is soon to come.
“The splash pad you see in front of us, this is about 75 years old; we will be redoing that," said Manning. “So we’re going to do a larger structure that has some overhead features and more bells and whistles.”
For the park’s historic attributes, earlier this year, it was placed on both the state and national registers of historic places, which might help them get more funding for future projects.
“So it'll be a little place to have a coffee and also learn about the very cool movie history that happened here," said Riesman.
The next change to come is renovating a historic motion picture studio, the Wharton Studio Museum, from its current life as storage space.
“We’re going to build a café in this corner over there, and then all of this area will be exhibit space for all kinds of multimedia exhibits on the history of the Wharton Studio and the history of Stewart Park," said Riesman.
The new splash pad with pictures of each of the Finger Lakes is expected to open summer of 2024. There’s going to be a capital campaign to renovate the Wharton Studio into a café and exhibit space, with a goal of raising $2.5 million, with construction expected to begin in the spring of 2025.
For more information, head to https://www.friendsofstewartpark.org/