What is the Liberty Hyde Bailey Conservatory Greenhouse?
The Liberty Hyde Bailey Conservatory Greenhouse (henceforth Conservatory) is the large greenhouse that faces Tower Road and is attached to the Plant Science Building. It is flanked by Minns Garden on one side and a row of newer greenhouses—the Purple Greenhouses—on the other side. Constructed in 1931 as a “glass house laboratory” for students of horticulture and to house and display a collection of palms begun by Liberty Hyde Bailey, the founder of the College of Agriculture and a prominent palm taxonomist, the Conservatory was manufactured by greenhouse designer Lord & Burnham Company. Its present Palm Collection represents the palm research begun by Bailey in the 1920s, when his research interests began to focus on palms, and later by Harold E. Moore, who joined Bailey at Cornell in 1948. Bailey and Moore’s palm research was continued by Prof. Natalie Uhl, culminating in 1987 with the publishing of the comprehensive Genera Palmarum. What is its function today? The Conservatory serves
