I admit it. I had not set foot in Statler Hall prior to the first day of this semester’s Intro to Wines class. To me, the Hotel School was a foreign place with familiar names: Nestlé, Marriott, Pillsbury and the like. But — partly because I have a Hotelie roommate and partly because I’m a history nerd — this week’s column charts the history of the nation’s first four-year college degree program devoted to the field of hotel education.
The first hotel management curriculum was established in 1922 and most sources choose to mark the founding of the Hotel School with this same date. During the early 1920s, hotel leaders were looking to create a course of study in hotel management and a way to profit from the advances in technology that might help the industry. Interestingly, the “hotelmen” chose the publicly funded College of Home Economics (now Human Ecology) to house their privately funded program. With only one professor — Howard Meek — and less than 25 students, the Hotel School was born.
The establishment of Cornell’s Hotel School was not without controversy and the School endured a stream of criticism in its early years. Critics though that a “trade school” had no place in the Ivy League. In another college, a professor asked Hotelies in his class to stand up; he then suggested they drop the course because he could not guarantee they would pass. Ouch! As the Hotel School grew into the top school of its kind, the ridicule died down, though Hotelies today continue to endure perhaps more than their fair share of good-natured teasing.
Earlier this month, present-day Hotelies participated in one of Cornell’s oldest annual events: Hotel Ezra Cornell (HEC). The first HEC was held in Risley in 1926 and over 80 years later, the weekend-long event continues to attract leaders in the hospitality industry from around the globe. One early HEC guest of particular note was Ellsworth M. Statler, a man who made his millions by founding the largest hotel chain of his day. Statler attended the second annual HEC in 1927 and was incredibly impressed with the Hotel School. Statler died of pneumonia just one year later, but his wife Alice, in part thanks to stipulations left in Ellsworth’s will, became one of the Hotel School’s largest and most important benefactors.
Although Statler is the name most students associate with the Hotel School today, Howard Meek deserves much of the credit for developing the school into the number one hotel administration program in the world. Meek convinced leaders in the hotel industry to teach courses in Ithaca even if it meant they had to commute from New York City. Today, a modified form of this teaching style exists in “Java with Johnson,” more formally known as the Dean’s Distinguished Lecture Series. Meek was also a proponent of the “learn by doing” philosophy and required hotel students to spend their summers working in the industry.
This teaching philosophy worked and the proof (perhaps quite literally in some cases) is in the pudding. Beginning with its earliest graduates, Hotelies have always fared quite well when it comes to employment. All of the graduates from the Hotel School’s first two classes found management level position in the hotel industry. By 1928, the first graduating class (class of ’25) was earning an average annual income of $3,543 — a hefty sum for the times. The late Cornell historian, Morris Bishop writes that the Hotel School “never knew a depression.” At a time when most Americans were devastated by the Great Depression, a 1935 survey reported that 98 percent of Hotel School alums still had jobs. Maybe the Hotelies should fear the country’s imminent recession less than the rest of us.
Think Hotelies are only about wining, dining and housing the elite? Think again. During WW II, Hotel grads were running base facilities, supervising military housing and feeding, and working with the Naval Supply Corps. As the war ended and campus life returned to normal, Cornell broke ground on the Statler Hall. In 1950, the Department of Hotel Administration became the School of Hotel Administration and Statler Hall was dedicated. As the name suggests, Cornell has the Statler Foundation to thank for funding the building. Statler Hall housed not only classrooms, but a 50-room inn as well. The hall and inn cost $2.5 million to construct and required that the University demolish four faculty cottages. By 1954, the School of Hotel Administration finally left the College of Home Economics and become a separate college.
The School of Hotel Administration has only thrived in its new location. In 1973, the school began to offer the first and only master’s degree for the industry and in 1986, the 150-room Statler Hotel and J. Willard Marriott Executive Education Center was constructed on the site where the original inn once stood. (Today, the Statler Hotel boasts 153 rooms.) More recently, the Hotel School has partnered with Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the famed Culinary Institute of America.
The Hotel School is also home to one Cornell’s most unusual collections: the Oscar Tschirky Menu Collection. Though you’ll have to head to the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections in Kroch Library if you want to see it, the collection might give you a few ideas for what to bring to your next potluck. However, if you’re looking for something simple, you’ll be out of luck; Tschirky only collected menus from high quality restaurants and events. Two collection highlights include the menu from a 1909 “Game Dinner” honoring Teddy Roosevelt and an 1851 menu – the collection’s oldest – printed on silk and featuring 13 courses! Turtle soup, anyone?
So quit giving the Hotelies a hard time — sure, some of them are sipping fine wines for their 10:10 class, but very few industries demand the breadth and depth of knowledge the hotel school imparts. Besides, who else but a Hotelie will make you a birthday cake from scratch?
Sarah Olesiuk is a senior in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. She can be contacted at solesiuk@cornellsun.com. Archive This! appears alternate Fridays.