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Collegetown’s Landmark Sign May Return Home
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Like many Cornell alumni, Alderperson Mary Tomlan (D-4th Ward) has fond memories of the neon sign that once marked the entrance to Johnny’s Big Red Grill.
“I first came here as a grad student in the mid-1960s, and I used to go to Johnny’s,” Tomlan recalls. “It was a nice place to go late at night for a good sandwich.”
The picture on the sign features Cornell’s mascot, the Big Red Bear, which marked Johnny’s as a link between Cornell and the local community. Celebrities who attended Cornell, like Peter Yarrow ’59 of the band Peter, Paul and Mary, often stopped by the restaurant when they came back to visit Ithaca.
Thus, when the sign was removed last spring due to its structural instability and auctioned off on eBay, some viewed it as the end of an era.