Began in 1833, St. James African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church is the earliest surviving church building in Ithaca. It was an important station on New York’s Underground Railroad and continues to serve as a center for Ithaca’s African American community. Eleanor E. Washington, born August 24, 1901, and died on June 29, 1935, was a direct descendant of the nationally renowned abolitionist Harriet Tubman, a conductor on the Underground Railroad.