Two years ago, the McGraw Pumpkin returned to the top of the clock tower, 26 years after the original appeared. In 1997, the original stately orange sphere weathered Ithaca weather for five months, drawing the national eye to Cornell’s campus and prompting a 24/7 webcam (at the time, viewed more than 200,000 times in a month).
The mysterious orange blob inspired speculation on whether it was actually the pumpkin it seemed to be. The mystery was finally answered when the University sent the provost, Don M. Randel, up in a crane to retrieve the fruit.
The provost, however, was never able to extricate the pumpkin from the spire. During a wayward practice run, the empty crane cage swung into the peak of the tower, and the now-squashed squash plummeted 20 feet (along with the tower lightning rod) onto scaffolding below the steeple.
The provost still ascended nearly 173 feet in the crane to retrieve the pumpkin remains. After his descent, the decayed mass was rushed to a Cornell plant scientist, John Kingsbury, who confirmed that the hardy orange ball on top of the tower was, indeed, a pumpkin.
The original McGraw Pumpkin was the “greatest prank Cornell has ever known.” Attempts to uncover the person who planted the plant have been unsuccessful (though people speculate it is a secret passed down the line of university archivists, a rumor which the archivists have neither confirmed nor denied).
The pumpkin famously returned in 2023. While Review reporters could not confirm the “genetic material” of the sphere, the appearance of it strongly indicated a cucurbitaceous origin.
The scaffolding on the tower is the common denominator between the two “pumpkin-ings.” In 1997 as in 2023, McGraw tower was covered in scaffolding. However, in 1997, it did not quite reach the top of the tower, adding an impressive allure of mystery to the original prank (How did they REALLY get up the roof?). The skeletal structure nearly reached the spire in 2023, making the task potentially easier than in the original attempt.
This suggests that the scaffolding was what made it possible to safely impale the apex of the tower with a pumpkin on both attempts. Yet, despite the scaffolding’s continued presence in 2024, another pumpkin (unfortunately) did not appear.
Construction on the clock tower officially ended in August. Is the termination of the tower repairs the end of the McGraw pumpkin for the foreseeable future? Possibly. However, the legend of the pumpkin lives on in Cornell mythology, a mystery likely to remain in the (circular) shadows of Cornell history.
