History of the American School 1939-1980- Chapter II

Chapter II: The Chairmanship of Charles Hill Morgan, 1950–1960

Chapter II: The Chairmanship of Charles Hill Morgan, 1950–1960

When Charles Hill Morgan (Pl. 10, c) of Amherst College became Chairman of the Managing Committee on July 1, 1950, the staff of the School in Athens, with which he was to lead an outstanding near decade in the School’s history, had been working together for a year and were ripe and ready for the highly successful achievements to come.

1950–1959 Greece

That staff in the first year of Caskey’s (Pl. 12, d) Directorship (1949-50) remained in large part the same throughout the next nine years. Eugene Vanderpool (Pl. 13, b) continued as Professor of Archaeology in residence and not only shared with Caskey the duties of instruction, taking over more and more of the long fall trips and the winter courses as well as advising and working with the students on their individual research problems as the demands of administration ate more and more into the Director’s days and thoughts, but also assumed those administrative duties whenever Caskey was absent. This happened regularly every two years when he went to America for a month in mid-winter to meet with both Chairman and the whole Managing Committee. Morgan, Caskey and Vanderpool made an admirably effective team in dealing equally successfully with the ever more complex administrative matters concerning the numerous Greek Government Agencies, Ministries and Services and with the more varied academic responsibilities that came with the diversified ages, training, interests and requirements of the members of the School.

In addition to the course on the Topography and Monuments of Athens, which remained as always the chief winter activity along with that of the day trips to the sites of Attica, both of which Caskey and Vanderpool shared, Caskey gave lectures on prehistoric pottery and Vanderpool on Greek epigraphy.

But it was not just a triumvirate who carried the School along so notably, for these were the years when the work which had been resumed in the Athenian Agora became one of the major activities of the School and when the harmonious cooperation of the Agora with the other work of the School was of the best. That fourth man who worked so happily with the other three was the Field Director of the Agora, Homer Armstrong Thompson (Pl. 13, b), to whom Vanderpool was also Deputy Director, so that at the times when both Caskey and Thompson were in the United States Vanderpool was the sole director of the whole of the School’s activity in instruction, research and business administration. Thompson, in spite of being only half a year in residence and heavily occupied in the excavation of the Agora and the restoration of the Stoa of Attalos, found time to make the students at home in the Agora, to lecture to them in the Agora and elsewhere and to direct the work of those students who took on Agora assignments for their spring activity.

The Director Emeritus Bert Hodge Hill (he carried that official title from 1950 till his death in 1958), the other two Professors of Archaeology, Carl Blegen and Oscar Broneer, and the Honorary Architect Gorham P. Stevens were occupied chiefly with their own research or excavation or both (respectively, Peirene and the other Springs at Corinth; Pylos; Corinth and then Isthmia; the buildings on the Acropolis), but were available and always happy to lecture to the students on their special interests and to work with them; they lectured regularly in the Topography and Monuments course. Another regular officer of the School also stood ready to assist those members with interests served by the collections in the Gennadeion Library. Shirley Weber, who continued as Librarian of the Gennadeion to June 30, 1953, worked especially in those last years of his term on the catalogue of the travelers to Greece but continued to offer instruction in numismatics; his successor Peter Topping worked on mediaeval history, particularly on a social and economic history of the Frankish Peloponnese. The assistance of these men went chiefly to the many Greek and foreign scholars who made use of the library’s treasures, but they too were available to all members of the School for advice and assistance. In addition Elizabeth Caskey, each year after Professor Weber left, found time from her Librarian’s duties in the School Library to guide the students in numismatics, and Alison Frantz of the Agora staff gave lectures on Byzantine art and history.

Finally of the instructional staff there were the Annual and Visiting Professors, the Special Research Fellows as they were now officially termed, chosen each year by the Managing Committee from its own membership to spend a year at the School. Although there have never been any formal instructional responsibilities assigned to these scholars and it has been expected that they will engage in their own research, in actual practice they have normally offered a course during the winter months as well as been available for consultation and informal assistance to students throughout the year. The variety of their interests offers a wide range in the specialities to which students are exposed.

In these nine years the following courses were offered: 1950-51: Herodotos (Clark Hopkins); 1951-52: The Odyssey, studies in the storerooms of the National Museum and a trip to Crete (George E. Mylonas); 1952-53: Aeschylus, Persae, Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus, Euripides, Suppliants and Aristotle, Poetics (Alfred C. Schlesinger) and Homer and Modern Greek heroic oral poetry (James A. Notopoulos); 1953-54: Style in various areas of Classical art and the interpretation of style in terms of mental attitudes (Robert L. Scranton); 1954-55: Attic epigraphy in the Epigraphical and Agora Museums (Benjamin D. Meritt); 1955-56: Aeschines, Against Ktesiphon and Demosthenes, On the Crown (William E. Gwatkin, Jr.) and Periclean buildings on the Acropolis and their predecessors, as part of the regular topography of Athens course (William B. Dinsmoor); 1956-57: Prehistoric pottery and an elementary course in Homer (Hazel D. Hansen) and Greek Sculpture in the National and Acropolis Museums (Rhys Carpenter); 1957-58: Literary selections concerning Delphi from the Homeric Hymn to Apollo to Plutarch (Barbara P. McCarthy) and Menander (Arthur M. Young); 1958-59: Demosthenes, Philippic I and Olynthiacs, Aeschylus, Agamemnon, Herodotos, I and Plato, Republic with four different groups of students (Herbert S. Long) and architectural discussions (J. Walter Graham for the second term only).

Once the revolutionary activity in Greece had terminated and the bridges destroyed during the war had been rebuilt, the roads repaired and new ones built where none had existed before, it was possible in 1950 to resume the traditional pre-war trips to the principal sites of central Greece, i.e. Boiotia, Euboia, Phokis as far north as Thermopylai and of the Peloponnese, i.e. the Corinthia, the Argolid, Arkadia, Lakonia, Messenia and Olympia. It was, in fact, already possible in 1950 for the so-called “Northern” trip to drive west from Delphi through Naupaktos to Agrinion and Messolonghi, cross by ferry to Rhion and return along the south shore of the gulf. In succeeding years the core group of the old Central Greece and Peloponnesian sites was always visited, but the order and the combinations varied each year as other areas were added from time to time: Crete in 1951; Pylos in 1951 and later; an extended northwest trip as far as Kassope in 1953 and 1954; in 1955 a trip from Corinth to Olympia and then from Patras through the sites of the northwest to Ioannina and over the Pindos to Thessaly; in 1956 a spring trip to Delphi, on to the Northwest, over the Pindos to Metsova, Pharsalos, Lamia and back to Athens; in 1957 Thessaly was linked with the central Greece trip, the Northwest with Olympia; and in 1958 the islands of Delos and Mykonos replaced the Northwest. The means of transportation in 1950 were still the School’s station wagon, a hired taxi and private cars plus the train to Olympia; in 1951 a bus was added to the private cars as an experiment which proved so satisfactory and so much less costly than the cars that in 1952 the two long trips were made by bus. Thereafter the bus became regular for all trips including Olympia which was from 1953 linked to either the Northwest or the western Peloponnesian sites.

Who were the members of the School to whom this rich offering of study was made by the Staff? There continued to be the groups of senior research scholars on the one hand and on the other the junior students including both the first-year people and those who were able to stay a second or third year to work on projects begun in the first year. From 1950 to 1959, the total of these two groups each year numbered between 25 and 32, the juniors usually a few more than half the total. Of the seniors, the Agora Fellows numbered between four and seven each year, including both the indoor and outdoor staff, the cataloguers, excavators, and those working up material for publication, the same personnel each year so that the continuity of experience gave the greatest possible benefit (see below, pp. 176-177). The other senior fellows included some who worked on Agora or on Corinth material, but they were mostly concerned with various research problems from their own interests, which sometimes had been begun earlier as students of the School. They were scholars already established in teaching or research positions; they came financed by Senior Fulbright Fellowships (four in 1950-51, six in 1951-52 but only one or none annually later) or increasingly by the Guggenheim Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Bollingen Foundation, the American Association of University Women, the American Philosophical Society, or their own resources, and they represented a wide geographical spread in the United States. Their presence added a tremendous amount of intellectual interest and vitality to the work of the junior members already engaged (as noted above) on a richly varied curriculum. These junior members included Fulbright holders, the numbers of whom dropped from nine in 1950-51 to four in 1958-59, the School’s own fellows which rose from one in 1950-51 to a regular two or three, or even four in some years with special funds, and an increasing number holding fellowships from their own institutions, notably the Charles Eliot Norton, Corey and Shelby Fellowships of Harvard University, the Ella Riegel of Bryn Mawr College, the Edward Ryerson of the University of Chicago, the Abby Leach of Vassar College, the Hyneman of the University of Pennsylvania and the Arnold Fellowship of Brown University, as well as the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Fellow. There were also those who came on their own resources, almost all of whom were from the Cooperating Institutions.

The quality and seriousness of purpose of most of these students were consistently high even if from time to time a few fell below the usual standards. They worked hard with both profit and pleasure on their reports for the trips and the winter courses as well as their own individual studies. And they learned to know and to love the land and its people. At times they were even identified with them, as when during a session of the topography course at the Olympieion a tourist was heard to call out “Yes, yes, I’m coming but I want to take a picture as soon as these peasants get out of the way.”

The heart of all the activity of the School (trips, courses, individual work, excavation) is of course the School’s Library. We have seen that several persons had labored to bring it back from the war status quo to the kind of working library the School had to have, but it was the tireless, devoted, highly skilled and knowledgeable attention and the good judgment of the Librarian of the decade 1948–1958 that brought it up and kept it up to the standard without which the School’s work could not have proceeded. Elizabeth Gwyn Caskey, on a budget all too painfully restricted, succeeded in adding new periodicals, as they appeared and proved their worth, by arranging exchanges with the School’s journal Hesperia and in acquiring the most essential books, cataloguing them and somehow shelving them in the more and more crowded cases which filled every available bit of space in the building; using an equally effective shoehorn she fitted into the limited seats the ever increasing number of readers, both members of the School and the many visitors, Greek and foreign archaeologists, coming to find resources unavailable elsewhere. When Mary Zelia Pease Philippides (Pl. 14, d) took over the Librarianship in 1958 the problem of crowding was acute, but luxurious relief was in sight; the Arthur Vining Davis Wing was under construction (see below, pp. 64-67).

The studies undertaken by the junior members of the School ranged over a wide field of ancient Greek literature, history and most of the branches of archaeology as well as some mediaeval and modern studies. They resulted in School papers in many cases, not a few of which were published in Hesperia; others led to dissertations and later books. In the decade under consideration there were many studies of topography and architecture, including the Temple of Ares in Athens and surveys of little or unknown areas and monuments in Attica, the Argolid, Boiotia, Euboia, Kephallenia and Seriphos, some of which resulted in significant later excavations and further studies, e.g. Prasiai and Leipsydrion in Attica, the Phokikon in Phokis, the Hermionid in the Argolid. Studies in sculpture included early Classical kouroi, architectural sculpture from the Temple of Ares in Athens and the Argive Heraion, and the oriental origin of sirens on bronze cauldrons; in pottery, Early and Middle Helladic, Geometric and red figured; terracotta figurines, bronzes, coins and mosaics were considered, as well as Attic and other epigraphy. Among the literary studies on Homer, Aeschylus, Pindar, Aristophanes, Plato and Demosthenes was the publication of an unedited MS of Aeschylus on Mt. Athos; there was also one on Modern Greek poetry. Historical studies included Athens in the time of Cicero and Corinth in the time of St. Paul (see below, p. 154). The senior scholars’ work comprised much of the publication of the finds from the excavations of the Athenian Agora, Corinth, the Argive Heraion, Lerna, Halai and Isthmia but included also Greek philosophy, Hellenistic history, mediaeval and modern history of Greece, Linear B, linguistic structure of modern Greek, Mycenaean and Geometric art, prehistoric Skyros, early Cycladic material, analytical examination of Greek art and culture, topography of religious festivals, setting of Greek temples, the Parthenon frieze, numismatics, especially the coinage of Euboia, ancient glass, ancient weights and measures, Aristotle and the Dikasteria, deme representation in Athens, Homer in the light of modern archaeology, Frankish and Venetian castles in the Morea, Islamic remains on Crete, ancient and modern Greek dance. The breadth of the interest in Greek studies of the members of the School, both younger and older, is thus well attested, from Bronze Age to modern times, in literature, history, philosophy, art and excavation and its results.

Before we consider the other activity of the spring, excavation, let us go back to the staff. The volume of administrative work had grown to absorb so large a proportion of the Director’s time that in 1951 a Secretary of the School was appointed, Gerald J. Sullivan, who was so valuable an assistant to the Director that he was to have served a second year had it not been necessary for him to return to America in August 1952. The need for administrative assistance in answering certain correspondence, acting as room clerk for Loring Hall, and assisting in other ways with the many visitors who came was such that in 1953-54 the Capps Fellow of the School, C. W. J. Eliot, was appointed with the understanding that he would act as assistant to the Director. He continued the work carrying the title Secretary from 1954 to 1957 when Colin N. Edmonson assumed the duties till 1960. Mr. Eliot also gave some lectures in the topography course and led some of the trips in Attica; he had become thoroughly at home in Attica through his studies of its demes and its forts, particularly Leipsydrion. He took part in the popular lecture series for American Government Mission personnel, conducted weekly tours of the Agora for visitors, and collaborated with Mabel Lang in writing the first edition of the Guide to the Athenian Agora. Mr. Edmonson also took part in the popular lectures beside his administrative duties.

The staff also included several veterans in the School’s service each of whom continued his or her highly valuable work for the School. Eurydice Demetracopoulou, Assistant in the Gennadeion since 1937 (who would occupy the position of Assistant Librarian from 1962 till 1969), carried on her work of cataloguing. John Travlos, Architect of School Excavations, continued to divide his time between the Agora and Corinth, but as work on the reconstruction of the Stoa of Attalos proceeded he gave almost full time to that (see below, p. 184).

Aristides Kyriakides, the bulwark of the School as Administrator during the war years, continued to be the legal adviser, counselor and friend of the School, handling with infinite patience, tact and effectiveness the many problems constantly arising as the School expanded its activities and its building programs. From 1951 he bore the title better suited to his services than earlier ones he had carried, namely, Legal Representative.

Also a member of the staff from July 1, 1950, ranked with the Professor of Archaeology but resident in the United States, was the Editor of Publications, Lucy T. Shoe.

Spring programs, as we have noted, concentrated on the School’s excavations, recognized since the founding of the School as one of its purposes. After a number of smaller excavations of one or a few years, Corinth had been settled upon as the main site and from 1896 had been the School’s major and much of the time only expedition. Although a great area of Corinth in Roman times had been investigated by 1940, much of significance clearly remained undisclosed, especially the levels of the Greek city. Work at Corinth had been rewarding both to the cause of Greek scholarship and to individual members of the School; the School’s record there was an enviable one and it also felt a strong responsibility to continue. Meanwhile work carried on by and for the School, but with special funds, in the Athenian Agora since 1931 had yielded results of high historical significance, and the whole enterprise had brought much acclaim to the School; for this also there was a heavy responsibility to complete properly excavation of the area undertaken and to leave it with museum and landscaping as the agreement with the Greek Government provided (see below, pp. 175, 182).

The special funds for the Agora had been exhausted in 1942. The School’s regular funds, already overtaxed for the routine expenses of the School because of higher costs everywhere after the war, were inadequate to cover excavation costs of both Corinth and the Athenian Agora. In the years immediately after the war the Trustees and the Managing Committee had felt their commitment to complete the Agora, had funneled all available funds to it and had temporarily curtailed further excavation at Corinth. By 1950 it was clear that new special funds must be found to finish the Agora responsibility and all efforts were bent to that purpose. Corinth was to lie fallow for this decade except for small investigations in connection with publication of areas already excavated. The small sum of School funds available for excavation it was decided to allocate to a new investigation, definitely limited to five years, of a site of that Bronze Age which was the Director’s special proficiency and interest, Lerna (see below, pp. 205-206).

The School’s own excavations, then, in this decade were primarily of the Athenian Agora, but from 1952 to 1958 also at Lerna; to these numerous students of the School were invited to bring their spring-season effort. One season, 1953, saw limited work at Corinth under the direction of the Chairman of the Managing Committee, Charles Morgan, in which students of the School assisted. Finally in spring 1959 normal-scale work was resumed at Corinth by the Assistant Director Henry S. Robinson who as Director in the following decade was to revive Corinth as a major center of the School’s activities. In 1954 a cemetery discovered by a bulldozer near the main highway south of Lechaion was turned over by S. Charitonides, the Ephor, to C. W. J. Eliot and his wife Mary Williamson Eliot, a former member of the British School, to excavate. Supplementary work at Miss Goldman’s old site of Eutresis was carried out by the Director and Mrs. Caskey for a few weeks in September 1958 at the request and expense of Miss Goldman (see below, p. 204).

There were in addition other excavations sponsored by the School but conducted by individual universities (see below, Chapter IX); at Samothrace again after cessation of the war, from 1952 at Isthmia directed by Professor Broneer and at Pylos, conducted with the Greek Archaeological Service, directed by Professor Blegen, again from 1952 after the war break, but these latter three in general had their own staffs; occasionally a student at the School joined the Isthmia team. The School had other one-way connections with excavations. Professor Mylonas who served as Annual Professor in 1951-52 did supplementary digging at Aghios Kosmas in December 1951, dug for the Greek Archaeological Society at Eleusis in March 1952, at Mycenae, the second grave circle, with J. Papademetriou in summer 1953, and in fall 1952 with S. A. Dontas and Chr. Karouzos directed the sea investigation of the ship found earlier off Artemision, this latter actually with a permit issued to the American School (see below, p. 204). In another kind of arrangement members of the School who were University of Pennsylvania students frequently went to Turkey or Cyprus to participate in the Gordion and Kourion expeditions.

The School’s services to others than its own members continued in no small degree. The series of popular lectures given by members of the staff for American Government Mission personnel, begun in 1947-48 (see above, pp. 34, 41, 47), continued to be organized by the American Women’s Organization of Greece, set up by Elizabeth Blegen and Clae (Mrs. Paul) Jenkins (Paul Jenkins was with the Marshall Plan from 1948 to 1952). Attendance numbered around 100 to 200 or more each year and at the end of each season a welcome monetary gift (usually between $200 and $400, but once $600) was presented to the School for its excavation funds. The officers of the School were frequently called upon to lecture to both Greek and American groups either formally at meetings of these groups or on the sites of ancient monuments; on one occasion, for example, Caskey escorted the officers of the U.S.S. Roanoke over the Acropolis with appropriate comment. With the increase in number of travelers coming to Greece, the Agora excavations attracted many both foreign and American interested non-archaeologists who wanted some direction and assistance. There was instituted, therefore, in 1951-52 the Wednesday afternoon tour of the excavations, museum and workrooms of the Agora which was usually attended by some 50 people and was conducted first by Richard H. Howland and later by Henry S. Robinson and Cedric Boulter (1951-52) and from 1952 by C. W. J. Eliot and Judith Perlzweig, assisted at times by Mabel Lang, Evelyn Harrison, Marian Holland (later McAllister), and others. These continued until the dedication of the Museum in 1956 and the turning over of the whole area to the Greek authorities on June 3, 1957.

An important occasion (sometimes twice) each spring for the whole international archaeological community in Athens and many other friends of the School was the Open Meeting at which the Director gave a report on the School’s activities of the year past and another member of the School gave a paper on a more detailed subject. (“The gift of a 1000-watt projector from the Alumni Association in 1951 provided brilliant illustrations commensurate with the talks,” wrote the Director.) These included Clark Hopkins on the Early Invasions of Greece and Kevin Andrews on Castles of the Morea, Homer A. Thompson on the Altar of Pity, all 1951; Caskey, a review of the School year including Samothrace, and Thompson on the Athenian Agora in 1952; Thompson, Agora excavations of 1952 and Caskey and Blegen on Lerna and Pylos, respectively, in 1953; reports on the Agora, Lerna and Pylos again in 1954; Caskey, general report, and Thompson, Agora, in 1955; Broneer, Caskey and Blegen on Isthmia, Lerna and Pylos, respectively, in 1956; Caskey on Lerna and Eliot on the Deme of Aixone in 1957; Thompson on the Athenian Agora A.D. 267-600 in 1958; Caskey, a review of the excavations at Lerna in 1959. These Open Meetings were nearly always graced by the presence of some of the Court, usually Their Majesties the King and Queen themselves with others of the Royal Family whose interest in the work of the School was far more than protocol required.

This genuine personal concern for the affairs of the School was shown on numerous both formal and informal occasions. On February 14, 1951 the King and Queen visited Corinth informally and unheralded and with evident interest and pleasure in the archaeological problems; they were shown the excavations and museum and shared a picnic lunch in Oakley House garden. They returned for another visit on November 29, 1952 with the President of Turkey Celal Bayar, paying a visit of state, and his daughter, a student of ancient Greek. Most notable of the formal affairs were the inauguration of the program of landscaping in the Agora when the King planted an oak and the Queen a laurel on either side of the Altar of Zeus on January 4, 1954 (Pl. 7, b) and the opening and dedication of the restored Stoa of Attalos as the Museum of the Agora Excavations on September 3, 1956.

Friendly and sympathetic relations with all branches of the Greek Government as well as with the Greek people everywhere have been a tradition of the School from its inception, and each generation of staff and students has taken up the treasured association and sought always to cement and augment it further. It was therefore with no small pride that the School with other foreign groups received a commemorative scroll from the Archepiscopos at a reception in his palace after the service in the cathedral on March 2, 1952, the Day of Thanksgiving for assistance to Greece by foreigners. It reads, “In grateful remembrance of the succor that their brethren the world over proffered them in their hour of need, all those abiding in the Greek land beseech the giver of every good and perfect gift to bestow upon those dwellers in his kingdom the blessedness of the eternal for the temporal, the heavenly for the earthly, the imperishable for the perishable and to receive them into his heavenly kingdom, for was it not His beloved Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ who said, ‘Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me’.”

It was a decade of building, as none before in the School’s history, of museums and a library wing. The needs of the Corinth Museum for more space had been keenly felt before the war, and Mrs. William H. Moore, the generous donor of the Museum in 1931, was pleased to make an additional gift for an additional courtyard and wing. Only excavation for the foundations was completed before the war (above, p. 3), after which costs had risen so that Mrs. Moore added three times her pre-war sum (see above, p. 37). It was only in January 1950 that actual work of construction could begin (see above, p. 47). It was completed in September 1950, but it was not until the spring of 1953 that the new installation in the combined old and new parts of the building could be undertaken by Charles H. Morgan. There was no formal ceremony in connection with this, but two years later the museum built on Samothrace by New York University to house material from their excavations, sponsored by the School, was dedicated on June 24, 1955 with a suitable ceremony (see below, p. 209).

The School’s major activity of the decade, if the measurement is to be in the amount of time, energy and funds of a vast number of people associated with the School, was the rebuilding of the Stoa of Attalos to serve as the Agora museum (Pl. 5, a). A fuller account is most appropriate in the chapter on the Agora (see below, pp. 182-187), but it should be mentioned here that this tremendous undertaking of the School occupied preeminently the thoughts and care of almost everyone connected with the School between summer 1953 and 1956 when the building was structurally complete. The bulk of the collections could only be moved from the old storerooms into the new exhibition or storage areas in the next several months, but since the building was to be complete by September 1956, it was decided by the Trustees to dedicate it as the museum in conjunction with a celebration of the 75th anniversary of the School, on September 1-3, 1956.

The opening session of the celebration held on Saturday evening in the garden of the Gennadeion was attended by some 700 friends and alumni of the School who heard Director Caskey, Mr. Tsatsos, Minister to the Prime Minister of Greece, Professor Carl Blegen with a message from the A. I. A., Mr. Karouzos with a message from the Greek Archaeological Society, and Chairman Morgan. The reception which followed in Loring Hall was prelude to a performance of Medea with Katina Paxinou in the title role in the Odeion of Herodes Atticus where the company were guests of the Greek National Theater through the courtesy of the Ministry of Education. Next day some 130 guests traveled by bus to Corinth. After a general talk by Professor Broneer, lunch was provided by the National Tourist Organization in the new Tourist Pavilion. In the afternoon younger members of the School escorted the guests around the excavation and through the newly (1953) reorganized museum. After the return to Athens dinner was served in the School garden for 104 delegates, trustees, members and alumni who sat down at small tables in the grove and listened to Professor Mason Hammond speaking for the Cooperating Institutions and to Mr. Kyriakides and Mr. Hill speaking for the staff and for the members and alumni.

On Monday morning September 3rd about 1400 people filled the lower colonnade of the Stoa of Attalos (Pl. 5, b) for the dedication ceremonies. After the arrival of the Royal Family, His Beatitude the Archepiscopos of Athens and all Greece gave the opening prayer. Then came speeches by Homer Thompson, Field Director of the Agora excavation, Pausanias S. Katsotas, Mayor of Athens, Eustathios Stikas reading a message from Anastasios Orlandos, Director of the Department of Reconstruction of the Greek Archaeological Service, Ray L. Thurston, Chargé d’affaires of the United States, and Ward M. Canaday, President of the Board of Trustees of the School bringing also a message from President Dwight D. Eisenhower. His Majesty King Paul then cut the ribbon across the entrance to the newly installed gallery and, after inspecting it, climbed to the second storey for lunch, followed by the whole gathering which included the diplomatic corps, the Archaeological Service and Council, the foreign archaeological schools and several hundred of those artisans who had built the Stoa, together with their families, as well as the Trustees, Managing Committee, members and alumni of the School who had attended the earlier functions.

The final event was more private. It was fitting that families and friends should remember especially five members of the School who had over the years, some many some fewer, given of their time, their energy, their hearts and heads and hands, their full devotion to the School and in particular the Agora; memorials were dedicated to Edward Capps, T. Leslie Shear, Anastasios Adossides, Margaret MacVeagh and H. Lamar Crosby.

It was a great occasion; in the face of tremendous odds the various parts of the School had pulled together to bring about an amazing achievement; all had sacrificed something to bring into being a monument which they believed would stand as a contribution of first rank to classical scholarship and as an expression of American friendship for Greece. All the years of struggle and despair, hard work and driving energy, particularly of the four men most responsible for the achievement, seemed worth it to the whole company and must have to those four: Ward M. Canaday, Charles H. Morgan, Homer A. Thompson and John L. Caskey (Pl. 9, b). The many citations and awards bestowed on the School by various Greek organizations and societies and by the Greek Government further emphasized the appreciation expressed by the assembled company; there were resolutions from the University of Athens, the Polemon Society, the Community of Pergamon in Mytilene, the Archaeological Society of Athens which elected twelve members of the School to honorary membership, and the City of Athens which bestowed nine honorary citizenships; to crown it all King Paul presented a generous number of decorations.

Transferral of the finds from the old storerooms to the Stoa continued through the year 1956-57, and on June 3, 1957 occurred the formal turning over to the Greek Ministry of Education of the excavations and park and of the rebuilt Stoa of Attalos and Church of the Holy Apostles. The Government thus took over responsibility for guarding and administering both excavations and museum, but the School retained control of the workrooms and study collections.

Another ceremony of turning over areas excavated by the School to the Greek archaeological authorities took place at Lerna on July 2, 1959. The retiring Director of the School who had been the Director of the excavations at Lerna, John L. Caskey, handed the key of the area to the representative of the Greek Government, the Director of Antiquities, in the presence of the American Chargé d’affaires and other members of the United States Embassy, Greek and foreign archaeologists, and local officials of the Argolid. All then repaired to the Argos Museum to which the finds had been transferred from the Corinth Museum where they had been kept for easy access for study during the period of the excavation.

The other great building program of the School in these years was the Arthur Vining Davis Wing of the Library in the Main Building of the School. Reference has been made more than once to the desperate need for more space for the Library. Already in the years before the war the need was recognized, and various suggestions and plans had been considered, even some actual architectural plans had been tentatively drawn by Mr. Stevens. As the School came to renewed vigorous activity and enlarged membership after the war and the ever increasing output of archaeological books and periodicals was acquired, space for both books and readers became at a premium. Many less frequently consulted volumes were stored away after every available nook and cranny in accessible parts of the building had been filled with shelves; still, books had to be left piled on tables already overflowing, with at least six readers trying to work at them. No one felt this critical situation more keenly than the Chairman of the Managing Committee who dedicated himself to finding funds for a new Library wing as soon as the Agora Stoa project was financed. His tireless and tactful efforts to interest Trustee Arthur Vining Davis in this serious plight of the School, at the very heart of its work, bore fruit when Mr. Davis gave $150,000 in 1957 for the construction and furnishing of a wing to be added to the north of the east end of the existing building. Many months of study had already gone into plans which would provide much-needed office, study and drafting rooms on the first floor as well as two floors of stacks for the library above and storage rooms on the ground floor below. The general design, the basic plan and many of the working drawings were prepared by W. Stuart Thompson, alumnus of the School, who had in 1913 been given charge of building the east end of the main building (Pl. 2, a) to which this wing would be attached. (That first addition to the School building, completed in April 1915, had been built principally as the first enlargement of the Library.) At the north end which faced across the street to the Gennadeion an Ionic colonnade (Pl. 6, b) was designed to tie the building stylistically to the Gennadeion; these handsome marble columns were the specific request of the donor whose keen eye sensed even from photographs (he was to visit Athens for the first time at the dedication of his gift) what this architectural detail would add to the dignity and beauty of the complex of the School buildings. The whole wing (Pl. 2, b) runs parallel to Gennadius Street on the east side of the School, not quite at right angles to the original building erected in 1887-88 (Pl. 1) before streets had been established. This solution to a difficult topographical problem had been visualized by B. H. Hill and proposed to Stuart Thompson who gladly adopted it in his design, which thus gains more internal space at the same time that it makes a harmonious use of the land and the consequent external appearance.

By August 6, 1958 the design had been agreed upon, working plans had been drawn, Paul Mylonas, an Athenian architect, had been engaged as construction architect, and all was ready for ground breaking. Mr. Hill, given his choice of tools by Mr. Morgan, chose a pick and made the first break (Pl. 7, a); Mr. Morgan followed with a hefty spadeful and Mr. Caskey added his, in the company of a group of the staff and members of the School. Construction proceeded rapidly through the final year of Mr. Caskey’s Directorship; the traditional cross of flowers marking completion of the roof was set in place according to Greek custom on November 8th. By June 1959 the officers of the School had moved into their new offices on the first floor, and at the end of the month books were being moved into their new quarters. The dedication, however, did not take place until August 24, 1959 when Henry S. Robinson had assumed the Directorship; it was his first major official act.

The dedication of the Arthur Vining Davis Wing of the Library (Pls. 2, b; 6, b) was a festive occasion, not only because of the joy every member of the School felt in the comfort and convenience which new space would add immeasurably to the successful work of all members for years to come, but specifically because Mr. Davis himself had come to join in the ceremony. It was his first visit to Greece (Pl. 7, c) and so to the School to which as a Trustee since 1939 he had been so generous of his time, his sage counsel, his vision and his monetary benefactions. The School rejoiced at the opportunity to express to him personally and in situ its deep gratitude. A ceremony took place in the garden of the School in front of the new Ionic colonnade where some 50 Greek and foreign archaeologists and members of the School were seated. After Director Robinson welcomed Mr. Davis warmly, Professor Blegen recalled nostalgically the simplicity and rigors but also delights of life in the original building to which he first came in 1910, no heat nor plumbing but charmingly situated out in the country with no houses anywhere near, the only neighbors the monastery across the ravine and the army barracks way off down the hill. After an evening of work in that original library one had to walk to town and back for a glyko to warm up before getting into a cold bed. He recalled too working (as Secretary of the School) with Stuart Thompson in supervision of the 1913–1915 addition which made the library which Charles Morgan, who spoke next, called “the library we all remember.” He went on to pay tribute to Mr. Davis “who knows more classics than most of us” as “one of the wisest and most generous men who had ever graced our Board” and to emphasize the “miracles his gift has brought us.” Mr. Canaday, speaking as President of the Board, commended Mr. Davis as a “leader in support of the School’s progress and an ardent believer in the destiny of service in binding closer the peoples of Greece and the United States, an outstanding citizen of great achievement, vision and honor in the United States, [who] has maintained a high ambition for the standard of the School’s work” and read a letter of congratulation from President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The Honorable Ellis Briggs, American Ambassador to Greece, then spoke appreciatively of the School’s past achievements and dedicated the Arthur Vining Davis Wing in confidence that “the work so nobly inaugurated may be carried forward with increased effectiveness.” Mr. Davis responded graciously, and Mr. John Papademetriou, Director of the Antiquities Service of the Ministry of Education of the Greek Government, gave a brief address of appreciation after which the assembled company visited the new wing.

The following day another ceremony of the School commemorated the 100th Anniversary of the beginning of Archaeological Exploration in the Athenian Agora (see below, p. 191).

The Davis Wing was the only new building constructed in the main School property (i.e., not counting the Gennadeion, Corinth or the Agora) during the last 40 years of its first century, but constant attention and repair were of course always necessary for the existing plant (Pl. 6, a). The rigid economies of the 1950’s put off to the 1960’s the major over-all painting and repair needed after the war years, but some interior painting begun by Blegen in 1948-49 (see above, pp. 41-42) was continued; cases for the small collection of antiquities the School has accumulated over the years were built in the lecture room in 1950; new lighting for the Library, gift of the Alumni, was installed in 1950-51, and new lighter-weight ladders for the Library in 1951-52; a cabinet for maps was given by the Alumni in 1954-55; a new boiler for the Gennadeion was required in 1952; and in 1955 the basement of Loring Hall West House was remodeled to create on the south a separate, two-room apartment with its own entrance and to the north a maid’s room and laundry, the kitchen being moved upstairs next to the dining room of the house; this gave a most welcome extra apartment for rent to senior members or visiting scholars.

Other events of interest in these years include the showing in the widely attended Architectural Exhibition in the Zappeion from December 12, 1950 to February 14, 1951 of the School’s models of the Acropolis, the Agora and the Lion of Amphipolis and of drawings by both Gorham Stevens and John Travlos.

Visitors of all ages, both classicists and other friends of the School, came in ever increasing numbers; as many as room could be provided for stayed in Loring Hall and added to the variety of the residents, and many others were shown about, given advice, given Library privileges or entertained in various ways according to their interests. Most of them were sent with recommendations from members of the Trustees or the Managing Committee or sometimes alumni as persons whose interest the School would wish to encourage; they included the great and the small, but to judge from their “thank-yous” all went away the happier and the more devoted to the School. One of them who was shown about by Eugene Vanderpool in January 1953 had come with a letter of introduction from Emerson Swift, member and then Fellow of the School 1912–1915; she was Clara W. Mayer, Dean of the School of Philosophy and Liberal Arts, New School for Social Research, New York. When she left she offered “to do anything to help the School on the other hemisphere,” and in 1974 she donated her home on 72nd Street in New York to the School for a headquarters in the United States (see below, p. 119).

These years saw the loss of many members and friends of the School including the two men who had made it the distinguished academic institution of international repute which it had become in the twenties and thirties, Edward Capps and Bert Hodge Hill (see pp. 69-70, 73-74, 78-79). Unfortunately we cannot name all the others, but mention must be made of a few with especially close connections with the School. Of our non-American friends, Mrs. John Gennadius (a Scottish woman), who was the co-collector of the Gennadius library with her husband and who retained her keen interest and deep concern for it after the gift she and her husband made to the School, died in England on January 14, 1952; two weeks later (January 27, 1952) in Corinth died another woman well known to many generations of old Corinthians, Kalliope Kachrou, whose hospitality with that of her husband George many have shared. On April 11, 1957 died two other Corinthians whose long and devoted service to the School both in Corinth and in Athens is a happy memory. Sophokles Lekkas (Pl. 8, b) was foreman at Corinth and from their beginning in 1931 through the war till his death Chief Foreman of the Agora Excavations; “in his devotion to the enterprise, in his energy, in his skill in the handling of men, in the scrupulous fairness with which he dealt with both Greek and American members of the staff he contributed enormously to the successful prosecution of the undertaking” (76th Annual Report, 1956–1957). On the same day his longtime colleague Joannes Bakoules died, one of the most brilliant technical experts of Greek archaeology, who began his work in Corinth, continued it in the Agora, and went on to work in both the National Museum and the Agora. In the same month one of the American excavators who had worked closely with them died, Agnes Newhall Stillwell, beloved by her friends and respected by all for her excavation, study and publication of the Potters’ Quarter; she was also one of the School’s First Ladies. Two other Directors’ wives closed their long careers of hospitality, encouragement and friendliness to generations of members of the School, the one, Ida Thallon Hill (on December 14, 1954), also scholar of the topography and history of both Athens and Rome, and the other, wife of a Director of both the School and the Academy in Rome, Annette Notara Stevens (on April 24, 1956), equally famous on the tennis court. On April 3, 1959, Corinth was deprived of another of its gifted interpreters and the School community lost a friend in the death of George V. Peschke, artist and architect, whose architectural drawings and paintings of pottery and terracottas are the ornament of many Corinth volumes. And everyone connected with the School mourned the loss on September 29, 1955 of a man who was a myth to many but a warm friend to many others, the first student of the School, Harold North Fowler (see below, p. 95).

When Bert Hodge Hill (Pl. 11, c) died at his home at 9 Plutarch Street in Athens on December 2, 1958, an era of over half a century in the history of the School passed with him. From the day he first went to the School in 1900 as a student, but especially after he became Director in 1906 to serve in that post for 20 years and for over 30 years more as teacher, mentor, friend to all who entered the School, the School community was profoundly influenced by his life, his character, his scholarship, his teaching, his excavation methods, his friendship. Nor did that influence cease with his death, for his standards and his methods have continued to be handed on by those who learned directly from him to succeeding generations of American School students. The tribute paid him by the Managing Committee in its memorial minute by Carl Blegen (78th Annual Report, 1958–1959) can well be recorded, in part, here:

Bert Hill exercised a profound and enduring influence on the American School. As a scholar he stood uncompromisingly for the highest standards in research, insisting always on accuracy in observing and recording the facts that could be ascertained, and on imagination together with sobriety in interpreting them. His work in the excavations at Corinth and on the Acropolis contributed substantially to raise the scientific standing of the School. An incomparable teacher, endowed with the gift of making difficult problems seem simple and interesting, he was also able to stir his listeners to think for themselves. All the generations of students who have passed through the School since 1906 have felt the quickening enlivening force of his spirit; and those who had the privilege of attending his archaeological exercises on the Propylaia, the Parthenon, the Erechtheum, and other buildings will never forget the stimulating impact of his clear mind and personality.

Apart from his unswerving devotion to lofty standards of work and his matchless skill in teaching by the Socratic method, it is also Bert Hill, the kindly understanding friend and counselor, who will never be forgotten by those who knew him. He was unfailingly ready to listen to all who were in trouble and he could always be counted on for words of real sympathy, comfort and encouragement.

Bert Hill possessed a keen sense of humor and an original turn of thought, expressing himself in arresting phrases. He was an admirable raconteur, and many of his stories of travel in Greece and of the early days of excavation at Corinth were classics of wit, insight, human sympathy and understanding. He was also a most gracious and entertaining host, who took infinite pains to please his guests and to make them feel comfortable and at ease.

From the very outset Bert Hill was a perfectionist in all that he himself did. A purist in language, he always sought to find exactly the right word. In research he was never satisfied until the last outstanding detail had been ascertained and fitted into the picture so that the whole could be fully understood and explained. His reluctance to publish anything that was not complete and fit to meet his exacting judgment limited considerably the volume of his publications, but he has left a good many papers and articles, architectural and epigraphical, which will be read with great interest and profit when they appear—-soon, as we hope—-in print. If his own published books are relatively few, his inspiration and influence may be clearly recognized in a stream of publications by his students whose manuscripts he read with patient, conscientious care and with thoughtful, constructive comments and criticism.

Measured by any standards Bert Hill was an outstanding and notable personality. It was not only in the classical field as a scholar, excavator, and teacher of rare distinction that his originality of mind and his power of leadership won wide recognition. He was also an able organizer and administrator, with a good common sense, and at the same time he possessed a rare gift of tact together with an uncanny skill in diplomatic negotiations which were invaluable assets to the School in its growth and expansion.

Among the names of all those who have served the American School since its founding in 1881, the name of Bert Hodge Hill will hold a high and lasting place of honor.

John L. Caskey’s directorship of ten years was the longest since Mr. Hill’s 20-year term (1906–1926); it had been equaled in length otherwise only by that of Rufus B. Richardson (1893–1903; PI. 11, a) who after the initial series of mostly one-year directors was thus enabled to establish the School on its career of service to classical studies, to formulate policies and programs of instruction and assistance to students and of excavations and publication. Caskey was faced with a similar task of re-establishing the School in a postwar world very different in many ways from that of previous years but with the fundamental purposes of the School still properly essentially the same. His achievement of that goal was outstanding, especially in keeping the balance between instruction and excavation. It can hardly be better appreciated than in the words of Chairman Morgan to the Managing Committee on May 9, 1959: “No one knows better than your Chairman the talented devotion, firmness and deftness with which he has carried out the demands of his office through years of unique pressure and complexity, always with a lawyer’s clarity of vision and an indestructible good humor. These talents have immeasurably lightened the implementation of this Committee’s policies and given them a purposeful direction. In all of these activities Elizabeth Caskey has fully shared. To them both go our full measure of appreciation for a superb performance.”

1959–1960 Greece

The final year of Charles Morgan’s chairmanship was marked in Athens by a change of Director. Caskey returned to the University of Cincinnati to head the classics department there, and Henry S. Robinson (Pl. 12, e) from the University of Oklahoma, who had been serving his apprenticeship, so to speak, as Assistant Director in 1958-59, took over in the first year of what was to be also for him a decade of directorship. He had been a Fellow of the School in 1938-39, an Athenian Agora Fellow in 1939-40 and a Senior Fulbright Fellow in 1951-52.

As noted above (p. 66) one of his first official acts was to lead the School as it welcomed Arthur Vining Davis to dedicate the Library wing and also as it marked the centenary of excavation in the Athenian Agora (below, p. 191). Others of the staff remained the same as did the general program of the year. The fall trips began on Delos and included Northwest Greece as well as Central Greece and the Peloponnese as usual. The Annual Professor, Lloyd Stow, offered a seminar in literary sources for battles of the Persian War with special trips to the sites of Marathon, Salamis, Plataia and Thermopylai. There was a large variety of other winter “courses” offered both by members of the staff and by some of the Research Fellows. In the spring the revival of full-scale excavation at Corinth begun the previous year was continued (see below, p. 156). Two Open Meetings were held at which Blegen spoke on the Palace of Nestor and Broneer on the Sanctuary of Poseidon at Isthmia, and the lectures for the American Women’s Organization of Greece were continued.

1950–1960 U.S.A.

The Trustees of the School have never had a more active, personally interested President than the one who took office in 1949. Ward M. Canaday and the new Chairman of the Managing Committee in 1950, Charles H. Morgan, made a unique and unparalleled team in driving the affairs of the School. They both took the bit in their teeth, and ten years later when Morgan retired from the Chairmanship they had won a victory for the School worthy of comparison with any of the ancient Olympic victories. Never had the School faced such a challenge as that posed by the problem of “completing” the Agora excavations (final major digging, landscaping, building of a museum, publication of the original concession). The Trustees as long before as 1942 had committed themselves to the completion of what had been one of the School’s most significant contributions to the scholarly world thus far; now that the work could and must be undertaken, a stupendous task of providing the funds faced all sections of the School’s personnel. A number of the Trustees were most generous in their own contributions; everyone in the School economized. Nearly three million dollars were raised during this decade to carry the project to completion; the unbounded energy, enthusiasm and optimism of Mr. Canaday not only spearheaded the drive but carried it through with Mr. Morgan at his side both literally and figuratively all the way. The Chairman bore the larger half of the burden since he was not only working day and night with prospective donors but was at the same time acting as liaison to the Managing Committee and the staff, the Director of the School and the Field Director of the Excavation (see below for details, pp. 182-186). This liaison included working out each year a budget which would keep all other School expenses within the tight limits of the normal income, allocating most of the available excavation funds to the Agora, and keeping everyone in the School’s various departments happy and eager to economize in their own sector for the benefit of the over-all good; this was a miraculous achievement. One day in retrospect Morgan said of those years, “Short rations for the School but never budgeted a deficit.” Throughout the whole period Morgan constantly emphasized to Trustees and to Managing Committee that though not yet an immediate desperate need, the necessity of a much larger endowment for the School was the most vital. Even toward the end of the decade when the pressure was off so that all available School funds could go to regular School requirements for salaries, fellowships, other excavations, publications and maintenance of the plant, there was not enough for anything but current requirements, nothing to undertake the long-needed repairs of the buildings, and Morgan warned and begged for endowment increase. He was able to raise the funds for the most pressing cause, more library space, by painting so clearly, precisely and soundly the urgency to one of the trustees who had already been the largest benefactor (after the original “donor” John D. Rockefeller; PI. 7, b) to the Agora project, Arthur Vining Davis (Pl. 7, c).

So all pervasive was the drive for funds through much of this period and so omnipresent was the Chairman in soliciting and budgeting them, one might well wonder what else he had time and energy for in the School’s affairs on top of a full-time appointment as Professor of Art at Amherst College. But his thoughts, his time, his personal presence both in Athens and at conferences and meetings of all the Committees of the Managing Committee were an inspiration to every aspect of the School’s work. Never before had a Chairman concerned himself so deeply, informed himself so thoroughly and offered his aid so unstintingly to them all, nor was there ever before such communication and understanding between Trustees and Managing Committee.

Both Canaday and Morgan were constantly aware of the need for more and younger members on the Board of Trustees; they worked hard at the problem. John J. McCloy was elected in 1954. The following year when Louis E. Lord resigned as Secretary-Treasurer of the Board, McCloy was elected to that post which he was to hold until 1980 with the greatest distinction through years of tremendous complexity and every kind of financial distress, the longest term served as Treasurer and the second longest as Secretary in the School’s history. The School’s funds were then transferred to the Chase Manhattan Bank in New York where they continue to be handled. Henry Albert Hill was elected a member in 1955 and became in his brief term of service one of the most valuable in wisdom and advice and faithful in presence and devotion; his death in 1959 was a heavy blow. In December 1957 Fred C. Crawford joined the Board which he was later to serve as President (1963–1971) and Chairman (1971–1975), now Chairman Emeritus (1975-). Finally in the last year of Morgan’s chairmanship (1959) one of his goals was further accomplished when four more new members were elected: John D. Biggers, Nathanael V. Davis, Thomas S. Lamont, Ralph T. Reed; it was eminently fitting that the Board should also elect him who had proved so valuable for ten years ex officio to permanent membership on the Board.

The Board of Trustees and the Managing Committee lost in this decade two members who had served in succession as Chairman of the Managing Committee, Edward Capps and Louis Eleazer Lord. Louis Lord (Pl. 10, b), who had served on the Managing Committee since 1926, as its Chairman 1939–1950, and on the Trustees since 1939 (ex officio until 1950), as its Treasurer from 1950 to 1955, died on January 24, 1957. These services as well as his Directorship of the Summer Session for many years have been noted elsewhere (above, pp. 1-51, 143); they were the expression of a full devotion to the School, both as an institution and as the people who make it. The full measure of his amazing vitality went into both skillful administration and inspiring teaching, but equally into loyal friendship with those who made up the School family.

Lord had succeeded as Chairman of the Managing Committee the man whom he had properly designated as the Second (after the original Charles Eliot Norton) Founder of the School, Edward Capps (Pl. 10, a), who died on August 21, 1950 at the beginning of Charles Morgan’s chairmanship. Capps’ association with the School began as a student in 1893-94; he joined the Managing Committee in 1907, became its Chairman in 1918 and served until 1939, during which time he acted also as Director of the School in 1935-36. Although he was actively interested in many organizations academic and otherwise, it was the American School at Athens which was closest to him and to which he brought the full force of his mind and heart and strength. Louis Lord has ably summarized those dynamic qualities and deeds which deservedly earned that title, Second Founder, in pages 268-270 of his History.

Although the two great men of the School in the twenties often differed with each other, it was the vision, courage and drive of Capps in the United States and the teaching of students and the diplomacy with our colleagues of Hill in Athens which together raised the School, phoenix-like, after World War I to the place of prominence and prestige it attained; both men gave the full measure of their devotion and their talents to the pre-eminent joy of their lives, the School, and in the last years they gave each other the friendship they had long given others of the School.

The Chairman once said of the Executive, Personnel, Placement, and Admissions and Fellowships Committees that “the relatively routine nature of their work rarely admits the spectacular but it supplies the real fundamentals without which the School could not go forward.” These Committees as well as the Publications Committee, whose activity is more like that of the School in Greece in its visible production, were faced with many problems of policy making in these years as was the personnel in Athens, and the joint thinking and planning of the groups on both sides of the water were effectively carried out, again often thanks to the Chairman’s carrying back and forth personally the words of explanation that ironed out misunderstandings of correspondence.

The Committee on Admissions and Fellowships, under the Chairmanship of Gertrude Smith (or Clark Hopkins when she was abroad), always charged with the most fundamentally important policies of the School in selection of its Fellows, was thrust into a wealth of new problems with the inauguration of the Fulbright Act. Working very closely with the Director in Athens through endless files of correspondence, the Committee worked out policies which permitted the admission to the School of the best possible candidates for the benefits the School offers, both as School Fellows and as members holding other fellowships. The change in method of selection of the School’s own Fellows (the omission of examinations beginning in 1950) necessitated by the Fulbright competition has been noted above (p. 44), but as the number of possible Fulbright grants annually decreased and the disadvantages of selection without something as tangible as examinations became ever more apparent, the Committee asked the Managing Committee to authorize them to return to using examination as part of the evidence for its candidates. In May 1952 the Committee was instructed by the Managing Committee to restore examinations as part of the means of selecting fellows and to revise the examination system. Result of the revision was a reduction in the number of examinations from the old five for the archaeology fellowship and three for the language, literature, and history fellowship to two for each: one a two-hour examination on Greek sight reading for both fellowships, the other, a three-hour examination, containing history (the same for both) and archaeology for the archaeology fellowship or history and literature for the language, literature, and history fellowship. These examinations with three letters of recommendation, put into operation in the 1953 competition, were to remain the means of selecting fellows for many years thereafter. The sight-reading requirement for archaeology candidates discouraged many applicants in the following years, as long as other fellowships were available for those wishing to work primarily in archaeology. There were no candidates for the archaeology fellowship in 1954, 1957 and 1960 and only one to four in the other years. This caused the Committee much concern, and in 1958 different examinations in the sight reading of Greek were instituted for the two fellowships.

In 1952 it was decided by the Managing Committee to restrict competition for the White and Seymour School fellowships to pre-doctoral candidates and normally to those who had completed at least one year of graduate study. There was no restriction in regard to marital status, and it was made clear that spouses of Fellows would be welcome but that there was no provision in the School buildings for children, so that if a successful candidate with children should be awarded the fellowship he must be warned that he would have to find living accommodations outside the School.

The Seymour Fellowship in Language, Literature and History was awarded each year in the decade 1950–1960, the White Fellowship in Archaeology for 1952-53, 1953-54, 1955-56, 1958-59, 1959-60, and the Capps Fellowship appointed by the Director each year between 1953 and 1958.

The falling off of applications for fellowships (only four to six for any fellowship in most years) was but one of the circumstances which aroused much thought and discussion, in the Managing Committee and with the Director, throughout this decade on the purpose of the School as it affects those who should or should not be admitted as members. The Trustees too asked the question and considered how the facilities of the School might be made available to more Americans and how its influence might be heightened as a force for expanding the values of classical studies in the United States. Every time these problems were thrashed out the resultant consensus seemed to be that the principal business of the School should be the training of the most able available minds in classical study and research leading toward their future contributions in teaching and research; accordingly, that those admitted either to membership or fellowship should have already shown, if possible by at least one year of graduate study, their seriousness of purpose and their capacity for advanced study as well as potential in it; that one of the measures of this capacity should be an ability to handle the Greek language. Exceptions, it was recognized, must be provided for, especially the cases where a student without graduate study is clearly as able, mature and well trained as other older students and therefore should be allowed to compete for the Fellowships. That the Director should have the discretionary power to include in the membership students or scholars with special proficiencies in fields of definite interest and profit to the regular students but who lack some of the regular requirements was also recognized.

In 1954-55 the Committee on Admissions and Fellowships had added to its duties the award of the newly established John White Field Scholarship for the Summer Session. From then until 1965 much of their time went into matters of admission as well as scholarships for the Summer Session (see below, pp. 144, 148). In 1955-56 when the White Fellowship in Archaeology was not awarded, $1,000 of its funds were used to award two scholarships of $500 each in addition to the Field Scholarship for the summer of 1956.

It was also urged on frequently recurring occasions that funds should be made available for a fellowship in Byzantine or Modern Greek studies or both; the Chairmen of the Fellowship and Gennadeion Committees considered possibilities together, but no action was taken until some years later (see below, p. 91).

The appointments of Annual and Visiting Professors had always been the responsibility of the Chairman of the Managing Committee. Mr. Morgan made his recommendations to the Managing Committee through the Personnel Committee. The small stipend offered to assist in travel expenses was in no way either a salary or a fellowship and in order that the status of these members of the Managing Committee, who were selected to augment the staff each year in a voluntary capacity, should not be misunderstood, the official title was made Special Research Fellow. Applications to the Chairman for these appointments, which have always been thought of as expressions of appreciation for their work on the Managing Committee, were fewer in these years than previously, probably because the availability of a large Fulbright grant for research work in Greece made the School’s less remunerative visiting professorships less attractive to a scholar in a sabbatical year.

All other appointments both to membership, committees and offices of the Managing Committee and to staff offices were the heavy responsibility of the Personnel Committee whose duty it was to review them every year and make nominations to the Managing Committee. For the nominations of Director and Chairman of the Managing Committee, the Personnel Committee of three was augmented by additional members of the Managing Committee. Benjamin D. Meritt served as Chairman of the Committee from 1949 to 1957, Richard Stillwell 1957 to 1968.

The Placement Committee, established in 1940, under the successive Chairmanships of Rollin Tanner 1940–1942, Lucius R. Shero 1942–1949, and David M. Robinson 1949–1956, endeavored to assist returning members of the School to find positions. The need for help from the School in this matter, which had been strongly felt just before the war, decreased and other kinds of assistance became more effective. In May 1956 the Managing Committee decided to discontinue the Committee.

The Managing Committee is empowered by the School’s Regulations to add to its officers a Vice Chairman when need arises. Mr. Morgan in 1951 saw the possibility that he might be recalled to military service and asked that a Vice Chairman be elected. George E. Mylonas was the choice. The position of Secretary of the School provided for by the Regulations had not been filled since before the war; Director Caskey felt the acute need of administrative assistance by 1951 so the office was reactivated for 1951-52, then lapsed. From 1954 it has been filled regularly, except for 1974-75 when there was an Assistant Director but no Secretary; in 1980-81 an Administrative Assistant replaced the Secretary.

By 1958 the Regulations as printed in 1949 were out of date in many respects. They were therefore thoroughly reviewed by the Managing Committee to bring them into accord with practice of the time and printed again in 1959.

One of the most serious concerns of the Managing Committee during the 1950–1960 decade was the Summer Session. Interest in it grew steadily, and it was abundantly clear that this could and should be one of the most significant services of the School to the dissemination of interest in and knowledge of Greek studies. We have already mentioned the establishment of memorial scholarships and the increasing activity of the Committee on Admissions and Fellowships in dealing with these awards (above, p. 76). In May 1956 a Committee was appointed to study problems of the summer work of the School and make recommendations; this report was acted upon a year later (see below, pp. 143-144).

The Auxiliary Fund Association

In 1916 in the Chairmanship of James Rignall Wheeler a member of the Managing Committee representing Princeton University, Edward Capps, recognized that when the war (World War I) allowed the School to resume normal activity, more endowment would be essential. He realized that some steady continuing source of increase to the endowment should be sought as well as large amounts from particular efforts from time to time. He began to gather a group of friends of the School, both former students and others, to plan to agree to contribute regularly to the School’s endowment. “On the first day of February 1917, a self-constituted Committee sent out a statement regarding the financial condition of the American School at Athens. . . . The Committee, which consisted of twenty-seven members and included the Chairman and Treasurer and two other members of the Board of Trustees of the School, drew attention to the pressing need of additions to the permanent funds of the School and invited the friends of the School to join them in establishing an Auxiliary Fund to be built up by as large a number as possible of annual subscriptions. . . . It was proposed that the collections of each year should be placed in the hands of the Trustees of the School . . . and added to the permanent endowment of the institution and that the Organizing Committee should be succeeded by a permanent management of the established Auxiliary Fund, the plan of management to be of such a kind as would be acceptable to the Managing Committee of the School.” So wrote Edward Capps in the First Annual Report of the Auxiliary Fund Association for the support of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. From the initial $170 raised in 1916 the appeal of 1917 increased the amount to $1,053. The organization approved by the Managing Committee in 1918 provides in its Constitution that “the affairs of the Fund shall be managed by a Board of twelve Directors to be appointed for a fixed term of three years by the Chairman of the Managing Committee of the School who shall also designate the Chairman and Treasurer of the Board.” In the earlier years of the Fund both Chairman and Treasurer served only three or four years as did the other Directors. Later these other Directors often served two or more terms. Since the major responsibility for sending appeals and keeping the records resided in the Treasurer, it was soon recognized that experience proved of value and the Treasurer served longer terms when he could be persuaded to do so. Since the second World War the Chairmen also have served longer.

Until 1972, there were 12 Directors (four elected each year) in addition to the two officers; after 1975 no Directors were appointed. These Directors served three years, so that a wide range of age, geographical location, interests and connections with the School has been represented and has made possible a wide range of potential members of the Fund.

The Chairmen have led these efforts to interest more and more supporters. The names of these dedicated Chairmen and Treasurers should be recorded and honored (see below, p. 385).

The resultant addition to the School’s endowment has been strikingly significant. After the initial three years of contributions between one and two thousand dollars, there came a jump to over $4,000, then a banner year (1921) of over $10,000. Through the twenties and thirties the totals were between three and nearly seven thousand, mostly between four and five, a few only between two and three. Through the war years and in the early fifties when there were other heavy campaigns for funds for the School, the contributions slumped back to between one and two thousand. In 1956 Chairman of the Managing Committee Charles H. Morgan saw this Fund as one of the important parts of the School’s activities and set to work to revitalize it. The contributions jumped to $6,300 with Hetty Goldman as Chairman and Josephine Platner Harwood serving as Treasurer.

Mrs. Harwood’s vigorous work to enlarge both number of contributors and total contributions met with conspicuous success. At Mr. Morgan’s suggestion in 1957 a new policy created a variety of categories of membership and made contributions cumulative in determining the category. In the first year of the new policy 91 of the 168 contributors were new and the totals in 1957 and 1958 were nearly seven thousand dollars. In 1959 Priscilla Capps Hill filled the Treasurer’s office, acting for Mrs. Harwood in her absence, and continued as Treasurer from 1960 to 1974. Her fifteen years of devoted service were record breaking in far more than length of service. Mrs. Hill had always been closely associated with the School from the time her father became the Chairman of the Managing Committee in 1918, throughout the long years of her residence in Greece. Back in the United States she was happy to devote her varied administrative experience not only to reviving but to building as never before one of her father’s most cherished projects for the School. Her informative as well as persuasive annual letters to members of the Fund, her untiring search for possible new friends, her indefatigable pursuit of the lost or strayed to bring them back to the fold brought fruit undreamed of in earlier years. From $12,589 82 in 1959 the annual sum remained well over $10,000 most years through 1973 (never below $8,360, in 1961) and reached the record $29,492.36 in 1964. What Mrs. Hill’s drive had meant to the Fund was abundantly clear when illness struck her in 1974. Her imaginative and energetic service was one of the most dedicated voluntary activities the School has known. From 1962 she and Charles Morgan, who took on the Chairmanship of the Auxiliary Fund when he laid down the Chairmanship of the Managing Committee, made a formidable team; Mr. Morgan continued in the Chairmanship until his successor as Chairman of the Managing Committee, Richard H. Howland, succeeded him as Chairman of the Auxiliary Fund in 1975. With Jane Chitty Biers picking up the mantle as Treasurer in 1975, the Fund is again contributing its share in years of the greatest financial need the School has yet experienced.

All contributions to the Auxiliary Fund have gone directly to the endowment of the School. In the first years the whole of each year’s total went to the General Endowment, but beginning in 1923 a portion if not all of each year’s sum was allocated to named endowment funds for special purposes. Until they were built up to principals sufficiently large to yield adequate income, some of the auxiliary funds went into the fellowship funds in memory of the three first Chairmen of the Managing Committee, the John Williams White, the Thomas Day Seymour and the James Rignall Wheeler Fellowship Funds. Some years in the twenties, thirties and forties sums were contributed through the Auxiliary Fund to build the endowments for the annual contribution of some of the Cooperating Institutions, including the University of Cincinnati, the Radcliffe College, the Whitman College, the Oberlin College Funds and the James H. Kirkland Fund for Vanderbilt University. When the Fellowship Funds were in sound condition, attention was concentrated on various Funds for the Library which had also been begun as early as 1923: the Theodore Heermance, the Robert M. Stroock, the Horatio Reynolds, the John Hay, the Walter Miller, and the Gennadius Library Funds. The large sums from 1957 on went, in general, to the General Endowment until in 1968 a special Auxiliary Library Fund was instituted to which contributors could designate their contributions if they wished. In 1973 about $10,000 was designated by contributors for a fund in honor of Lucy Shoe Meritt which was allocated to the endowment for Publications of the School. This was the second bit of endowment raised through the Auxiliary Fund for Publications, since the regular fund for Vanderbilt University’s annual contribution to the School was specifically designated to be allocated to Publications. The Auxiliary Fund, therefore, in its over 60-year life, has added materially not only to the General Endowment but specifically to special endowments for three particular departments of the School’s activities: fellowships, the libraries, and publications.

Summary

To summarize Charles H. Morgan’s services to the American School is a challenge. Something of his mode of action has been suggested at various places above and below, and this is as it should be for he was all pervasive in the activities of the School throughout his Chairmanship. He had been student, member of the Managing Committee, Visiting Professor, Director of the School including Field Director of Corinth Excavations before he became Chairman, but there was more than this wide experience in the School’s affairs; there were his way with people, his deep concern for the School and his integrity. He was at home with and trusted by all groups of the School family—-the Trustees, the Managing Committee and its committees, the staff and the student members—-as well as the large group of people of all kinds and ages whom he interested in the work of the School as he traveled countrywide. There was no aspect of the School’s endeavors which he did not make it his business to understand and to follow in detail, to take an active part in planning and often also in execution. Each member of the School felt Morgan’s genuine sympathy for his particular business and its needs and knew his loyalty and absolute fairness to all; at the same time all recognized his uncanny ability to keep all the threads of the multicolored tapestry each in its proper place in the over-all pattern so that the design of greatness for the School which he had envisaged came out bold and clear and harmonious in the end. The completion of the original phase and initiation of Phase B of the Agora excavations, the Stoa of Attalos, the Arthur Vining Davis Wing of the Library, publications and the revitalization of the Auxiliary Fund were but the most striking of the achievements of the Morgan decade. Even as he is himself an artist-scholar and a businessman kept always in balance, so he kept his magnificent vision of the scholarly potentialities of the School in truly Hellenic proportion to his practical sense of what was financially possible; but he worked as Chairman indefatigably with dauntless courage and faith to increase and improve both, as he has continued to do in the succeeding two decades as Trustee.

Few institutions have had the good fortune the School has enjoyed to have had three great “founders”: Charles Eliot Norton whose vision and drive created it; Edward Capps whose wisdom, foresight, and dynamic force regenerated it after the first World War; and finally Charles Hill Morgan truly a third κτíστηsigmaf; καì εὐεργ&ecgr;της whose whole head, heart, and hand were selflessly devoted to recreating, after the second World War, a School stronger, more versatile, more effective in furthering its purposes, of international stature, which would in the last third of its first century approach fulfillment of the vision and the faith he and the other two had in it.