Ithaca Commons

The name came from a contest. An Ithaca High School senior entered "The Commons" after visiting Boston Common, won the prize, and the city kept the extra S — no one is entirely sure why. That origin story tells you something about the place: a pedestrian mall born in 1975 from a 1971 mayor's proposal, shaped like an inverted T along State Street, and still the city's working cultural and commercial center. Street performers, public art, independent shops — and the Sagan Planet Walk, which begins here and stretches toward the Sciencenter, named for the Cornell astronomer who made this region a little more famous than its gorges already had.