To the Ithaca City Mayor, Laura Lewis

And to the Ithaca City Common Council

I am writing about the Ithaca Gun Factory smokestack and the proposed public park on Lake Street. 

I find the proposed park to be little more than a public nuisance and urge that this area not be highlighted as a public and tourist attraction.

I strongly support keeping the smokestack as long as it is maintained and poses no safety issues. The smokestack, with the large ITHACA GUN logo is one of the few reminders that the City of Ithaca and this area was built by working people. The Gun Company began by producing high quality and unique hunting rifles that were used, in many cases, to bring home game that fed families. The company provided jobs that allowed workers to create families, buy homes, and feel a sense of pride in their work as it became a landmark company. 

Ithaca was built by workers who dredged the creeks to contain flood waters, by those who toiled at the two glass companies, by the people who created bicycle chains, or made Ithaca clocks or airplanes. At one time workers in Ithaca built the village into a city with their labor and by creatively making improvements and they were able to live comfortably, raise families, see their children educated in our schools, support churches and fraternal lodges, enjoy our parks and open spaces.

There is little today to mark those who worked to create the city that we now call home. Their gardens have been turned into large structures created that provide little employment, their houses are torn down or have been converted into expensive apartments or parking lots, the products of their handiwork are disappearing.

That history is being obliterated as Ithaca more and more becomes a place too expensive for workers with low wages, and home ownership in the city declines.

Ithaca is famous for its quality of life, its educational institutions, for its full and rich cultural life led along the beauty of Cayuga Lake and the waters that feeds it. We celebrate all this, name streets for the famous, learn about the history of those who achieved fame in many fields.

We should also acknowledge that the word gun is not in itself bad, and the origin of the Ithaca Gun Company was to provide recreation and food enhancement. The Gun Company also, as did just about every manufacturing organization in the country, had government contracts during the two great wars of the 20th century. 

To remove the unique smokestack because of the word gun is to attempt to erase the past, but in doing so, we also erase the working history of this community that allowed it to grow and prosper. We thrive on what the past has given us. To erase that is an attempt to cleanse our presence of a loaded word because of current difficult and tragic events, but it is also to erase the very past that has made the present possible.

Respectfully submitted for your consideration,

Carol Kammen