Wharton Studio: When Hollywood Was Ithaca
Near Ithaca, New York
Before Hollywood ruled the movies, one of America's busiest film studios sat right here on the shore of Cayuga Lake. In the lakeside grounds that are now Stewart Park, two brothers, Theodore and Leopold Wharton, built Wharton Studio and cranked out silent films from about nineteen fourteen to nineteen nineteen. They came to Ithaca for the same reason you did, the scenery.
The gorges, waterfalls, cliffs, and lake gave filmmakers dramatic backdrops that a flat studio lot never could, perfect for the cliffhanger serials that thrilled audiences week after week. Their biggest hit was The Exploits of Elaine, released in nineteen fourteen and starring the daring Pearl White, a serial so beloved it was later added to the National Film Registry. Real trains, real cliffs, and real gorges made the Whartons' pictures feel dangerous, because often they genuinely were.
One common myth is worth correcting. Pearl White's most famous serial, The Perils of Pauline, was actually made by a different company, not the Whartons. By the end of the decade the film industry drifted west to the reliable sunshine of California, and Ithaca's brief moment as a movie capital faded.
Today the Wharton Studio Museum keeps that flickering history alive, right where the cameras once rolled beside the water.
