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and on it goes.
Anyway: Love having found this site, great kudos to our host and master artist, explorer Mott. Thank You!!

So that is my hometown. I went in there a few years ago to explore, after years away, before collapse. Took a lot of photos to document, but shamed to say they are themselves lost, abandoned on an old cellphone I would guess. It was certainly "unsafe", but totally do-able from the creekbed. (Above commenter, that is Triphammer Falls Ithaca, not Rochester).
To the commenter referencing Frankenstein, that was completely the vibe. The stonework and old woodwork, the verticality, you felt as if you were in the ruins of Dr. Frankenstein's dungeon laboratory.
It was obvious (to my mind anyway) that a (very) ambitious project of renovation could have produced one of the coolest places on earth. I envisioned a multi-tiered cafe/restaurant space. Could've been structurally accomplished with enough money, perserverence, and cooperation from the university. Oh well. A shame.
To other commenter: there are two steep gorges that run through the campus, with multiple bridges spanning them. Students did indeed jump to their deaths onto the shallow creekbeds below, from a few different bridges. The town and university have debated over the years on erecting suicide barriers on the bridges, I believe that has been done on this bridge. The resultant ruining of spectacular views has been the main point of contention. Students at Cornell were in general under a lot of academic pressure. Personally I think our perennially gray skies and long winters played a role as well.
There have also been many tragic swimming and cliff- jumping accidents and deaths over the years, frequently city-kid students not used to the terrain and hydro-dynamics, but also local kids too.
For the paranormally inclined: my father knew a Native American shaman, who with his son would "cleanse" the gorges, walking bottom to top clearing spirits. My own good friend, a very prolific gorge explorer, once claimed to have met a "devil-god" living down there in one of those gorges (on LSD at the time, but hey..). On top of the modern-time deaths we know about, there were also massacres of Natives in early white settlement times, including an entire village of men women and children that was situated at the base of a different gorge (now a state park). So spirits quite possible. The gorges are indeed treacherous, especially in winter ice conditions, with steep crumbly shale on all sides. Beautiful trails exist, sections crumble, the trails are "Closed punishable by law," swimming is outlawed,

I got both of these books for Christmas! Best. Gift. EVER!