SECOND ANNUAL RHINER FESTIVAL
Saturday, Sept. 11th | 8:30am – 6:00pm (and later!)
This year’s theme - “The Country Fair Comes to The Rhine” – pays homage to the bygone days of traveling fairs with family-friendly midway games, circus performers, old-timey music, mystical fortunetellers, food-related competitions, vaudeville performers, and an “after hours” speakeasy.
Scheduled for Saturday, September 11, 2010, this community event welcomes the return of many of last year’s favorites, including free lighthouse cruises aboard the MV Columbia, the Elizabeth Beebe Commemorative Soup Kitchen at Castaways, a silent movie hall, belly dancing performances, a local artists market, and an offbeat cast of costumed characters to help unfurl another interactive “whodunit” mystery - with a special grand prize for the lucky sleuth who solves the carefully constructed “crime”.
On the day of the festival, Alternatives Federal Credit Union will showcase their scale model of Ithaca's old Rhine neighborhood, a detailed re-creation of the city's West End as it looked before Inlet Island was created in the 1960s. The diorama's creator, David Fogel, will also be on hand to present the model to the public from 10:30am to 1:00pm in the 2nd-floor lobby of AFCU on North Fulton Street.
New activities and events include the debut public viewing of the Thomas-Morse S4 Scout plane and an antique car show, as well as a morning filled with Dragon Boating and Cornell Crew Intersquad races. The day's events wind down with a late afternoon, police-escorted parade down Taughannock Boulevard to welcome the AIDS Ride for Life bicyclists’ return from their ride around Cayuga Lake. Following the parade, the Ithaca League of Women Rollers will host the Rhiner Brawl, a “circus style” derby bout between Ithaca’s Sufferjets and BlueStockings at Cass Park Rink.
As nighttime descends, Old Taughannock Blvd, aka ‘Moonshine Island’, will show its bawdier side with speakeasy parties, live music, vaudeville performances, costume parties, and games of chance.
The day promises to be a carnival of sorts… where history meets mystery… and anyone can run away with the circus for a day!
For more information, contact:
The History Center in Tompkins County
401 East State/MLK Street, Suite 100
Ithaca, New York 14850
Phone: (607) 273-8284
community@thehistorycenter.net
www.TheHistoryCenter.net
Saturday, Sept. 11th | 8:30am – 6:00pm (and later!)
Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! Step right this way...
for Ithaca’s Second Annual Rhiner Festival!
Presented by The History Center in Tompkins County and The West End Waterfront District Association of Ithaca, this daylong street fair on and around Inlet Island celebrates the fascinating “bad old days” of Ithaca's West End Waterfront area historically referred to as 'the Rhine,' 'the Flats,' and 'Sodom'. for Ithaca’s Second Annual Rhiner Festival!
This year’s theme - “The Country Fair Comes to The Rhine” – pays homage to the bygone days of traveling fairs with family-friendly midway games, circus performers, old-timey music, mystical fortunetellers, food-related competitions, vaudeville performers, and an “after hours” speakeasy.
Scheduled for Saturday, September 11, 2010, this community event welcomes the return of many of last year’s favorites, including free lighthouse cruises aboard the MV Columbia, the Elizabeth Beebe Commemorative Soup Kitchen at Castaways, a silent movie hall, belly dancing performances, a local artists market, and an offbeat cast of costumed characters to help unfurl another interactive “whodunit” mystery - with a special grand prize for the lucky sleuth who solves the carefully constructed “crime”.
On the day of the festival, Alternatives Federal Credit Union will showcase their scale model of Ithaca's old Rhine neighborhood, a detailed re-creation of the city's West End as it looked before Inlet Island was created in the 1960s. The diorama's creator, David Fogel, will also be on hand to present the model to the public from 10:30am to 1:00pm in the 2nd-floor lobby of AFCU on North Fulton Street.
New activities and events include the debut public viewing of the Thomas-Morse S4 Scout plane and an antique car show, as well as a morning filled with Dragon Boating and Cornell Crew Intersquad races. The day's events wind down with a late afternoon, police-escorted parade down Taughannock Boulevard to welcome the AIDS Ride for Life bicyclists’ return from their ride around Cayuga Lake. Following the parade, the Ithaca League of Women Rollers will host the Rhiner Brawl, a “circus style” derby bout between Ithaca’s Sufferjets and BlueStockings at Cass Park Rink.
As nighttime descends, Old Taughannock Blvd, aka ‘Moonshine Island’, will show its bawdier side with speakeasy parties, live music, vaudeville performances, costume parties, and games of chance.
The day promises to be a carnival of sorts… where history meets mystery… and anyone can run away with the circus for a day!
For more information, contact:
The History Center in Tompkins County
401 East State/MLK Street, Suite 100
Ithaca, New York 14850
Phone: (607) 273-8284
community@thehistorycenter.net
www.TheHistoryCenter.net
RHINER HISTORY 101:
WHAT AREA WAS COLLECTIVELY CONSIDERED THE RHINE?
Silent City - the squatter community called 'Silent City,' is located across the road and around the site on which the Hangar Theatre resides. By the late 1920’s Silent City had burned or been otherwise demolished by the City. Those still living there were relocated to Floral Avenue or just moved elsewhere.
Rhine Heights - a neighborhood of shacks and shanties along Floral Avenue. In many cases one dwelling was built one on top of another - going uphill – and reminiscent of tenement housing. The Rhine inhabitants never had plumbing and few people, if any, had electricity.
Inlet Island - rumored to have been called 'Moonshine Island' back in the day… and now the location of our festival!
Generally speaking, the presence of Inlet dwellers squatting the area dates back to the turn of the 20th century. The population consisted of groups of poverty-stricken immigrants living in shanty dwellings constructed from scraps of lumber collected along the Inlet on land they did not own.
Having found their way to the area along the southwest corner of Cayuga Lake, most likely to find seasonal work with one of the railroad companies or on a canal barge (among other reasons), the Rhiners did what they could to survive by hunting, fishing, trapping, foraging and poaching, and relying upon each other's goodwill. Sometimes, as rumor has it, the Rhiners were known to make moonshine, or in the Silent City days, to entertain themselves by holding cockfighting matches in one of the big, empty buildings located over on Cherry Street. They fought against rivals from up on the hill who bred their own birds specifically for this purpose.
While, depending on who you ask, there are many, often opposing recollections about the nature of the area, there appears to be no argument that Rhiners, despite their diverse range of origins or cultural backgrounds, and despite the extreme poverty, and how they were generally shunned by the majority of the local townspeople throughout the duration of their history, they were marked by an ability join together to work together and help each other under the often adverse conditions they faced living in the Rhine.
CAN I BE A RHINER?
Living descendants of the Rhiner district's inhabitants are proud to share the history of the Rhiners, turn-of-the-century squatters from the southwest corner of Cayuga Lake. But to be a Rhiner, you must fit the following criteria:
1. Have been born before 1967;
2. Have lived within the City of Ithaca limits, on the west side of the (Fulton St.) train tracks.
WHAT'S IN A NAME?
There is a theory that the name 'Rhine' was born from the visual likeness of the landscape at the time, with its meandering inlet, to that of the Rhine River in Germany.
All photos for Rhiner Festival are courtesy of The History Center in Tompkins County
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