900 Stewart Avenue is a building in Ithaca, New York, noted for its Egyptian Revival architecture, its dramatic placement partway down a cliff, and being the residence of astronomer Carl Sagan.

[1][2] One of just two Egyptian Revival buildings in Tompkins County, along with the Masonic Temple in downtown Ithaca, it is part of the Cornell Heights Historic District.

A journalist described the eeriness of being inside it: The entrance through a doorway on the monumental side, flanked by ornamental stone pillars beneath Egyptian symbols on the lintel and the frieze set the stage.

[4]Eventually, the tomb became less useful to the society, due to the lack of nearby parking, and the increased property taxes and maintenance costs.

"I'd been trying to buy it for the last eight years," Mensch told The Cornell Daily Sun: The first thing that attracted me to the place was that it's so bizarre, it's such a fantasy structure.

"It's a good deal more like finding an unsuspected open-air museum set in the midst of a small but lovely park overlooking the city.

"[4] Astronomer Carl Sagan bought it in 1981, on returning to Cornell from several years in Los Angeles making the documentary Cosmos.

The architects designed a new, separate residence for Sagan in Cayuga Heights, and prepared an extensive, two-stage redesign plan for the tomb to turn it into a study for him and his wife, Ann Druyan.

On top of the tomb, a small teak penthouse was built, inspired by "images of canal barges and of boats on the lake."

across the gorge at him,[7] although other accounts suggest the sign actually read "E-A-T M-E."[8][9] A popular (and inaccurate) local rumor was that there was a secret tunnel between the house and Cornell, so that Sagan could drive his Porsche to campus unmolested.