History of the American School 1939-1980- Chapter I

; (6) John Young be appointed Special Research Assistant; (7) accept the resignation of Franz Filipp, Business Manager and Bursar for the past 11 years, as of October 1, 1939; (8) hold Fellowship examinations for 1940-41 but if conditions become impossible for residence in Athens stipend not to be awarded. By December further action was necessary to suspend Fellowship examinations until it became certain or at least probable that the School would be open and accessible to students traveling from the United States. In May 1940 Broneer was promoted to full Professor of Archaeology, Weber given the additional title of Professor of Classics, John Young appointed John Williams White Fellow for 1940-41, Arthur W. Parsons appointed Director of the School for 1941–1943 and Gorham Phillips Stevens appointed Professor of Architecture for 1941–1943. (Stevens requested this title be changed to Honorary Architect, but as events developed he remained Director till the end of the war; at that time he took on the title of Honorary Architect, which he held until his death.)

The Managing Committee in approving the above actions of the Executive Committee voted that “continuing basis” in an appointment be interpreted by the vote of May 9, 1925 that “appointments shall be explicitly announced either as made for a definite term or as subject to the pleasure of the Managing Committee.” It also voted that in the selection of the Capps Fellow preference be given to candidates primarily interested in language, literature and history rather than archaeology. The Trustees had voted in November 1939 to establish an Edward Capps Fellowship Fund by transferring $30,000 from the Special Reserve Fund, and the Executive Committee had voted in December that the Fellowship be awarded not by examination but on the recommendation of the Executive Committee to the Managing Committee; at the same time they specified that the John Williams White and the A.I.A. Fellowships in Archaeology and the Thomas Day Seymour Fellowship in Greek History, Language and Literature be awarded on the basis of examinations, the James Rignall Wheeler on the recommendation of the Director. The Trustees had transferred funds to bring the White, Seymour and Wheeler funds up to $30,000 each. It was particularly dear to Louis Lord’s heart to establish a and sufficient to give an adequate income for a fellowship in the name of each of the earlier chairmen of the Managing Committee. From this time on the School fellowships have carried these names, although none of these Fellows was to be appointed or to serve in Athens for several years to come.

Edward Capps wrote Gorham Stevens on May 18, 1939, “I am happy to have secured you for the School as my almost last official act”; Capps’s vision was indeed prophetic, for the School could not have been more fortunate than to have him as Director throughout the war years. He and Louis Lord corresponded frequently, promptly in replies, and in meticulous detail on all matters both administrative and academic as long as communications remained open. Operation of an American educational institution in a foreign land during wartime was not new to Stevens; he had guided the American Academy in Rome through World War I.

1940–1941 Greece

One member of the School was not in town on the morning of October 28th to read Mr. Stevens’ Notice. Rodney S.Young was on the crest of Mount Hymettos with workmen excavating a Geometric site. When the planes flew over Athens that morning the men understood the meaning: General Metaxas had defied the Italian ultimatum, and Greece had been invaded by the Italians. They gathered all their tools and walked back to town, many going directly to their mobilization points, Rodney Young to the School, where with Arthur and Gladys Parsons he discussed plans for the School to provide an ambulance to serve on the Albanian front. His cable to Professor Capps, former Chairman of the Managing Committee, for $3,000 for the purchase and equipment of an ambulance which he would drive brought immediate response. The ambulance, christened IASO by Mrs. Lincoln MacVeagh, wife of the American Minister to Greece, was presented to the Greek Red Cross (Pl. 8, a). With Rodney Young at the wheel it saw continuous service on the Albanian front until Mr. Young was critically wounded while driving it back from the line of battle to a Red Cross station; there he was given First Aid until he could be brought back to the Evangelismos Hospital in Athens. The widespread appreciation of his service and that of the School in providing the equipment (the American and Greek flags crossed and the name of the School were painted on the ambulance) was expressed on all sides. IASO remained in service under the supervision of Mrs. Anastasios Adossides, wife of the School’s Counsel and Consultant, who was in charge of one of the Red Cross stations at the front and later in Athens (below, p. 11).

The group of School alumni in Princeton who guaranteed the funds for the ambulance, which Rodney Young’s father Mr. Henry Young immediately advanced, saw the need for much further assistance. At the request of Mr. Lord, Chairman of the Managing Committee, and with the approval of the Executive Committee, they formed The American School Committee for Aid to Greece, Inc.: Edward Capps, Chairman, T. Leslie Shear, Secretary-Treasurer, William C. Vandewater, Counsel, Oscar Broneer, Arthur V. Davis, George W. Elderkin, Hetty Goldman, Louis E. Lord, B. D. MacDonald, Benjamin D. Meritt, Richard Stillwell, Edwin S. Webster. The Committee undertook to raise funds both by written appeal to former members of the School, the A.I.A., the American Philological Association and the American Philosophical Society and by benefits (a concert featuring Greek artists and a lecture accompanying moving pictures of Greece) and through royalties from the picture book This is Greece prepared by Lucy Talcott and Alison Frantz of the Agora staff. Beyond the $3,000 for the ambulance, this Committee forwarded to Director Stevens $21,500 by January 29, 1942. This was used for medical and hospital supplies, woolen clothing and foodstuffs (mainly for four canteens established at the front by the School). After the occupation of Greece when direct communication with the staff of the School in Athens ceased, transfer of funds had to be stopped. The Committee was disbanded and the $2,773.48 balance transferred to the Treasurer of the School to be held for relief purposes in Greece.

Life at the School can best be conveyed by a quotation from Arthur Parsons’ report to the Managing Committee for April 1, 1940 to March 1,1941: “Up to the end of the last academic year, the School enjoyed a reasonably flourishing scholarly life; even at the beginning of the present year, in spite of the steady dwindling of the School community, an atmosphere of scholarship still prevailed, we had some zest for intellectual effort, some hope of a quiet productive winter. But with the invasion of Greece all that was changed; archaeology was put aside, regretfully but of necessity, and since then much of the time and thought of most of the members of the School has been spent in the effort to help Greece.”

Members of the School bought and distributed the supplies for which the Committee in America sent the funds; one of the most important activities was the establishment and maintenance in collaboration with the Red Cross of four canteens near the front. Eugene Vanderpool made trips to the front in his car to see that the shipments from the School reached their destinations as quickly as possible and to report on the most urgent needs. He and Mrs. Vanderpool ran a crèche at Amarousi where children of soldiers at the front received a good meal and medical assistance. To find that food Gene Vanderpool bicycled into and then all over Athens every day ferreting out what food could be found; he once said, “That is the way I came to know the city of Athens.” Professor Shear donated his car to the Greek Red Cross, and the old School camion was lent to them and made many trips to the front.

The Executive Committee of the Managing Committee on December 27, 1940 authorized the Chairman to recommend to the Trustees that the sum of $1,500 be allocated from the Reserve Funds as a gift from the School to the Archaeological Section of the Ministry of Education of the Greek Government. The Trustees on January 9, 1941 voted to appropriate not $1,500 but $2,000 for a gift to the Greek Archaeological Service and that Mr. Stevens be advised and requested to present it with a stipulation that it should be used for some specific purpose which Mr. Stevens was to designate. Stevens’ reply was that the sum would be given to the Greek Government for assistance in the protection of monuments on the Acropolis “less the sum needed to protect the Corinth museum which we will do.” The specific uses to which the $2,000 would be put by the Greek Archaeological Council were listed on March 3, 1941: “1) a reinforced concrete slab to protect certain statues of the Acropolis Museum, 2) reinforced concrete slabs to close the entrance of Socrates’ Prison where valuable antiquities have been stored, 3) protection of the Panathenaic frieze still in situ, 4) protection of the Monument of Lysikrates with sandbags, 5) covering with sand of certain sculptures of the National Museum which have been placed in the basement of the new wing of the museum, itself of reinforced concrete construction.”

The Greek Government appointed a commission of five, including B. H. Hill and Director Stevens, to look after the protection of the Corinth museum, the government supplying the material, the School paying for the labor and extra security, and the School’s workmen doing the actual work; this was superintended in every detail by Mr. Hill, since Mr. Stevens could only go to Corinth once a week. The work included covering the floor of the sculpture gallery with 40 centimeters of sand, removing objects from walls to the ground, packing vases and small objects in boxes, the most valuable pieces and the inventories in the refuge, removing glass from exhibition cases and blocking windows with sandbags. All this appears in detail in the Stevens-Hill correspondence. Mr. Stevens wrote frequently to Mr. Lord of the great assistance Mr. Hill was to him, of the tremendous value to the School of having Mr. Hill on the spot in Corinth not only keeping an ever watchful eye on both excavations and School buildings, but busy actually doing whatever he saw was needed to protect human lives, School property and the antiquities, even before the official protection began. Mr. Hill handled the payroll and once had to bicycle in to New Corinth to get the funds sent by Stevens because an official unfamiliar with Old Corinthians refused to deliver it to George Kachros, the guard. While he was in New Corinth an air-raid warning sounded, and he spent an hour in an air-raid refuge, about which he wrote to Stevens, “the other refugees were intelligent pleasant people so the hour passed agreeably enough.” Back in Old Corinth he made the two basement rooms of Oakley House into a shelter for the villagers since the official refuge in the Museum was only open during museum hours.

Already in November 1940 there was almost no food in Corinth (no rice or beans); Stevens wrote that “if anyone goes to Corinth he will take what eatables can be bought, but it will be sure to be little in quantity.” Mrs. MacVeagh succeeded in finding some rice which she sent to Mr. Hill. By no means all of Mr. Hill’s time and thought went onto current problems. He continued to work on his manuscript on Peirene and frequently asked for notebooks (which had been taken to Athens for safety) to be brought to him. His correspondence with Stevens combines details of payments to workmen with thoughts each had on the roofing of the South Stoa; another time Stevens compares Penrose’s and Balanos’ ideas of the widths and diameters of the triglyphs and columns of the Parthenon and adds his own.

Although most of his time went to the work of the American School Committee for Aid to Greece, along with Mr. Adossides and Mr. and Mrs. Parsons, Mr. Stevens found time not only to think and to correspond with Mr. Hill about ancient architectural problems but also to lecture to British officers and men on the Acropolis on Sunday afternoons. Mr. and Mrs. Weber were active in the local canteen for British troops, Mrs. Weber, Mrs. Stevens and Mrs. Parsons in the American Women’s Bandage Circle. Mr. and Mrs. John Young translated into English a handbook about Greece for British troops and conducted them through the Agora excavations, as well as putting into English the nightly broadcast of the Athens radio station for America; they left Greece just before the Italian invasion of Athens.

Another very considerable service of the School was performed in keeping the two libraries open. Since all other libraries were closed, the School library and the Gennadeion served many Greek students as well as numerous foreign readers. This was much appreciated.

By April 1941 that emergency which had been foreseen two years before arrived. MacVeagh had immediately on October 30, 1940 designated the Gennadeion air-raid shelter as the official shelter for the Legation. Now that Greece had been invaded by the Germans on April 6th and Ioannina had fallen on the 10th, cables from Stevens to Lord tell the story. April 11th: “MacVeagh wishes Legation 1st Secretary to move into Gennadeion West House. I recommend.” April 19th: “All well. Legation has assigned Loring Hall to American colony.” April 26th (after Greece had surrendered on April 24th): “School is Legation annex. Americans staying on. All well.” May 7th: “Everyone well. Properties in good order. Americans planning to return to America at Legation’s advice. Finances in order for time being.” The last was after Athens and all Greece had been occupied by Axis forces.

The scramble for Americans to follow the Legation advice and leave the country was now on, and three officers of the School became members of the five-man American Repatriation Committee. In addition to members of the School there were many other Americans, educators, doctors and visiting Americans of Greek extraction who had been caught in Greece when the country was invaded. It was not until about July 20th that the Italian Legation notified the Committee that Americans would be allowed to leave. An arrangement was then made with the American Red Cross and the American Express Company whereby the Express Company billed the Red Cross through the Repatriation Committee for cost of travel by air Athens to Rome, rail Rome to Geneva, and Geneva to Lisbon via unoccupied France and Spain and for hotel accommodations along the way, as well as subsistence until departure where needed; this was provided for those who could prove they had sufficient funds in America to pay the $300-400 passage from Lisbon to the United States once they reached Lisbon. Mr. Hill served as Chairman of the Committee; the Committee saw applicants in Mr. Parsons’ office at the American School, and all receipts were approved by one or more of the Committee: Bert Hodge Hill, Joseph A. McCroy, Eugene Vanderpool, Arthur W. Parsons, Laird Archer. It was not only the money for the trip that had to be arranged, but a priority list had to be established by which persons were notified when there was space available to get them out of Greece. On May 12th the Trustees of the School voted that the American personnel of the School “be strongly advised and urged to return promptly and that when Mr. Stevens leaves Greece or at any time at his discretion he be authorized to place Mr. Adossides, the School Consultant, in control of School property.” This directive was further assisted by the School’s deposit of $5,000 with the State Department to repatriate the twelve Americans at the School, for expenses until they could leave and for fares to Lisbon and on to the United States. In the last days of July Rodney Young, now sufficiently recovered from his injury at the front to travel, the Webers, and the Parsonses and Mrs. Locke left. Mr. and Mrs. Stevens and the Vanderpool family elected to stay, and Mr. Hill did not consider leaving.

Before they left on August 1st, Arthur and Gladys Locke Parsons made a final report on July 31, 1941 to B. H. Hill on the supply of gasoline and oil belonging to the American Colony which had been on deposit at the American School. The 20 tins and 4 drums of gasoline and 18 tins and 3 drums of motor oil remaining after the Americans left Greece were, by the agreement of the original American Repatriation Committee, to be given to the Greek Red Cross earmarked for special purposes: “1) Transportation of wounded soldiers from hospital to hospital. They are trying to close all outlying hospitals such as Kastri and are not able to do so at present because of lack of benzine. 2) First Aid street accidents which are now being taken to hospitals in pushcarts. 3) Some tins for the maintenance of the School ambulance IASO in the care of Mrs. Adossides. 4) Transportation of the wounded at the British Hospital at Kokkinia. Note most crucial matter at the moment is bringing about 15 men from the 8th hospital where conditions are very bad to Evangelismos. These men need a good plastic surgeon; order for transfer has been given but they are awaiting benzine. If 3 or 4 tins could be sent immediately to First Aid they would use their ambulances.” In B. H. Hill’s handwriting there are added to this report beside the final Note: “3 tins were sent on August 6 to Mrs. Koundouriotes” and beside no. 3 above: “3 tins to Mrs. Adossides 8/8/41.”

Meanwhile before the American Minister Lincoln MacVeagh was ordered home and left Greece early in June he had stored his furniture in Loring Hall. He presented to the School a large framed engraving of Paul Delaroche’s “Parnassus” which had hung in his library and was a special treasure of his; the only condition was that if he ever returned to Athens he might wish to borrow it from the School while he was in Athens. Mr. Reed, the Chargé d’affaires, planned to move the offices of the Legation into Loring Hall in July. The closing of the Legation and expulsion of personnel on July 15th accelerated the moving of all Legation archives, records, movable property, and the furniture and personal possessions of members of the staff into Loring Hall and the main building of the School. This taking over of the School property including the Gennadeion by the American government afforded the best possible protection to it, and the German and Italian authorities recognized the property as that of the United States Government. More and more of the most valuable books in the Gennadeion were removed from the shelves to the vault, and the School’s records and archives were placed there along with those from the Agora Excavations. The American School had been looking after the British School and paying their employees even after the funds left by the Director of the British School had been exhausted. On May 27th the employees had to be let go.

The Axis authorities’ recognition of the School as American government property did not extend to the excavation areas in Athens or Corinth. In the Athenian Agora Sophokles Lekkas (Pl. 8, b), chief foreman, remained in charge and lived in the excavation houses with his family, keeping a constant guardian eye, assisted by two watchmen; Eugene Vanderpool (when he was not scouring Athens on his bicycle for food for the 200 children Mrs. Vanderpool fed each day) and John Travlos continued to work on scholarly material. The Greek Archaeological Service assisted wherever they were able; Georgios Bakalakis moved into the Agora office beside the “Theseum.” In Corinth George Kachros (Pl. 15, b) and Pavlos Daphnis were in charge, and when they reported that Oakley House was about to be occupied by an Italian commander, permission was with difficulty acquired for Mr. Hill (who had come to Athens) to go to Corinth; he persuaded the Italian military that the buildings were American property and the garrison left.

1940–1941 U.S.A.

While the School itself was suffering from such curtailed academic activity in Athens, there was founded in the United States an organ of the School which was to have no little value in the years to come. The inspiration for the suggestion that an Alumni Association be formed came independently to two of the School’s former members from their association also with the American Academy in Rome and its alumni groups. Director Stevens recommended such an association in his report of April 1, 1940, and about the same time Lucy Shoe urged the same thing to Chairman Lord. The Executive Committee on May 10, 1940 recommended that the Managing Committee authorize the Chairman to take steps; the Managing Committee did so, and on November 23, 1940 a committee appointed by Mr. Lord met to draw up a Constitution and By-Laws. This group, chaired by Benjamin D. Meritt and including Mrs. Laurence B. Ellis (Alice Whiting Ellis), C. S. Hartman, Charles Alexander Robinson, Jr. and Lucy T. Shoe, called a meeting of all former members of the School during the annual meetings of the A.P.A. and A.I.A. in Baltimore. Fifty former members were present at that organizational meeting on December 26, 1940 which adopted the Constitution and By-Laws and elected the Alumni Council to consist of C. A. Robinson, Jr. for five years, Chairman, Lucy T. Shoe for four years, Secretary-Treasurer, Richard Stillwell for three years, Dorothy K. Hill for two years, Oscar Broneer for one year. The Association then requested approval by the Executive Committee of the provision for three Council members to be elected by the Managing Committee. Approval was given, and C. S. Hartman was elected for three years, Alfred R. Bellinger for two years, Gladys Davidson for one year. Another provision of the Constitution called for two members of the Association to serve as members of the Managing Committee for a two-year term. (In 1945 this term was amended to three years.) The necessary approval of both Managing Committee and Trustees for this provision was granted. Lucy Talcott and William Campbell were the first two representatives of the Association on the Managing Committee.

There was thus established a formal and close connection between the alumni and the Managing Committee, similar to that of alumni trustees in most colleges and universities in the United States, which has proved of very considerable benefit in promoting understanding and sympathy between the two groups. In an era when a considerable number of the Managing Committee had never attended the School, these alumni representatives were particularly valuable, and the service of not a few of them was such that they were later elected to the Managing Committee as representatives of their institutions and served the School with distinction, e.g. Alfred R. Bellinger, Carl W. Blegen, Rodney S. Young. The stated purpose of the Association is “to establish more effective relations between the Alumni, the School, and its supporting institutions, to cooperate with the School in suggesting or carrying out proposals looking toward its progress and welfare, and to increase the influence and usefulness of the School.”

Further to promote these aims, it was agreed, alumni should be kept informed of the activities and problems of the School. To that end News Letters were to be sent as often as available information made it desirable; under existing conditions no fixed number or time could be decided. The first such letter sent on January 24, 1941 elicited such enthusiastic response and approval for the Association that no doubt of its value could exist. The conviction of the Council was confirmed that one service of the alumni to the School, especially at the time of the founding of the Association, was to keep alive among students of our colleges and universities an interest in the School and its possibilities through a knowledge of the opportunities it offers to Classical students and also, through the Gennadeion, to those interested in post-classical periods in Greece. These News Letters which appeared twice a year for several years and then at least once a year for 35 years were only suspended in 1977 when a different form of information sheet began to be distributed by the President of the Board of Trustees (see below, p. 138).

Of no little assistance to the Chairman of the Managing Committee and to the Executive Committee during the war years while the School was closed were the regular meetings of the Council of the Association twice a year at which the many problems of the time and plans for the future were discussed in detail. The experiences and the opinions of the younger alumni as well as the older were thus made accessible to those who were responsible for making the decisions in managing the School. Throughout the years in time of emergency in the School or in Greece it has been the Alumni Association which was able to rally and organize the assistance all alumni were eager to render (see below, pp. 27, 40). And when no other tangible activity was obvious there has always been, since 1947, an annual gift to the School of “luxuries” the regular School budget could not provide (see below, pp. 393-394 for gifts of the Alumni Association to the School)

1941–1944 Greece

When on July 1, 1941 Arthur Wellesley Parsons assumed the Directorship of the School (to which he had been appointed for a two-year term at the 1939 meeting of the Managing Committee) everyone knew it could be only a short but highly active period actually at the School. A month later, after arranging the departure of all School personnel who wished to leave and the transfer of the American Legation to the School building, he followed instructions from the Trustees and Executive Committee to depart himself and to put the administration of School business in the hands of the Consultant Anastasios Adossides (Pl. 14, a). The three School buildings (Pl. 6, a) had been declared American government property; Mr. and Mrs. Stevens were still living in the Director’s quarters in the Main Building, into the library of which Eurydice Demetracopoulou had moved some of her Gennadeion records and where she continued to come to work; Eugene Vanderpool and John Travlos continued to work in the Agora where Sophokles Lekkas was living and guarding the area; Mr. Hill was in Corinth.

With the entry of the United States into the war on December 7, 1941 the Swiss Legation undertook the protection of American and British interests in Greece, including the property of both the American and British Schools. On December 12th the Swiss authorities agreed with the occupying Italians that Mr. and Mrs. Stevens would be allowed to remain in the Main Building, that the British School, Loring Hall and the Gennadeion would remain sealed, and that the Gennadeion houses would be occupied by the Swiss Chargé d’affaires and another officer of the Swiss legation. Through some differences among the Italian authorities, on that same day officers came to seal the Main Building, not allowing anyone in or out; it was 35 days before the Swiss and Mr. Adossides were able to arrange for a strict list of School personnel by name to be allowed to come in or go out.

Meanwhile on the same December 12th Mr. Hill had been taken into custody in Corinth; he was detained at a carabinieri station until the 27th when he was told he was to be sent to a concentration camp in a Lakonian village but might go to Athens under escort for necessary articles. Back in Corinth he was detained in New Corinth again till January 6th when he was escorted to his home in Athens and released, free to live in his home along with the four German officers then occupying it. This special attention to Mr. Hill was an expression of the international scholarly respect the School itself has always fostered; it is known that it was through the efforts of Otto Walter of the Austrian School that Mr. Hill’s case was given special lenience. The Vanderpools were free to live as they liked from the beginning of those terrible years of starvation and deprivations of all kinds throughout Greece, and Mrs. Vanderpool continued their crèche into 1943 when a general feeding center for the whole population of Amarousi was opened.

Providing some food for the families of the School’s Greek personnel to stave off the starvation which was claiming the lives of so many thousands was one of the consuming concerns of Mr. Adossides. At the same time, he was administering the finances of the School in a staggering, spiraling inflation by borrowing from Greeks on the School’s credit, working with the American and then the Swiss Legation over details of caring for the School’s property and interests. Never has the School had a more devoted, loyal, wise and effective member. A brilliant and distinguished diplomat, he had served as Governor of Macedonia during and after World War I, later as Governor of the Cyclades and Samos, then as Secretary of the Refugee Settlement Commission which supervised, under the auspices of the League of Nations, the exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey; on this commission he formed lasting friendships with Americans and because of one of them, Edward Capps, began his interest in the American School. He was persuaded in 1931 to undertake the position of Business Manager of the Agora Excavations; this involved all the delicate negotiations with the Greek Government and with the land owners which he conducted with consummate tact and patience, maintaining harmonious relations with everyone. When work in the Agora was closed down in 1940, the School was so reluctant to lose his services that he was appointed “Consultant”.

“Only those, perhaps, whose privilege it was to work with him during those grim years of war and occupation can truly appreciate how well he served the School,” wrote Arthur Parsons. Although his position had been thought of as part time, “his loyalty, his conscientiousness, his energy—-the driving energy which for years had conquered his chronic ill health—-would not let him give less than full time” and energy to the School and its people in spite of urgent pleas that he save himself. He would walk the miles from his home in Psychiko to the School in spite of critical illness and undernourishment, often barely able to muster the strength to return. Eugene Vanderpool has reminded us that one of his last services to the School “I think will prove to be his greatest service.” Mr. Adossides feared that even though our buildings and those of the British School were under the protection of the Swiss Legation “such large well appointed empty buildings were a great temptation and he feared some loophole or excuse might one day be found for taking them over,” especially since “every week or so German or Italian officials would come up, examine the seal, read the notices on the gates and look longingly at the buildings.” Since Mr. Adossides had many connections with the Red Cross, when in the summer of 1942 two permanent commissions arrived, a Swiss and a Swedish, he invited them to make use of the buildings. The Swiss group occupied the British School and the West House of Loring Hall, the Swedish the Main Building except for the Director’s apartment occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Stevens (the street on which the School buildings face was renamed Sweden Street and has so remained). With the School’s property thus occupied by persons of international standing, the danger of the buildings being requisitioned became minimal, and with Mr. Stevens in residence keeping an eye on every detail Mr. Adossides felt that the School would come through in the best condition possible. He felt content at least about the property when a short time later his always frail body gave out; after some weeks in the hospital he died on October 9, 1942, truly a martyr to his loyalty to the School.

As had been previously arranged, Mr. Aristides Kyriakides (Pl. 14, b) took over the management of the School. An active lawyer with many responsibilities, he could not give full time to School affairs, so he asked Mr. Stevens and Mr. Vanderpool to form a committee to act with him. They readily agreed, but it turned out that Vanderpool had barely a month to do so, for a few days after Adossides’ death Vanderpool was told “to hold himself in readiness to be taken to Germany for internment.” This was because he lived in Amarousi, one of the few tiny areas where Germans rather than Italians were the occupying force. On November 11th he was taken to a camp at Laufen where for 15 months with some 700 other civilian internees, over 500 British, the others Americans from all over Europe, he kept occupied in an Educational Program organized by the group. Since he had reached for a text of Thucydides which he put in his pocket when he was taken from the Agora, he gave a course on Greek history based on that copy of Thucydides the first winter, one on American Geography and History the second winter. The camp library gradually acquired general reading material from the Y.M.C.A. and the British Red Cross, and he wrote “. . . in the course of my stay at Laufen I read among other things Herodotos, Thucydides (twice), Xenophon’s Hellenica, Aristotle’s Constitution of Athens, Bury’s History of Greece, and Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, so I feel that my time was not altogether wasted.” The generations of American School alumni who know well the Vanderpool laconic understatement will recognize it here. He was released on February 26, 1944 and returned to America. Meanwhile in Athens it was Mr. Kyriakides and Mr. Stevens who held the fort, and Mr. Hill in Corinth; he had succeeded in getting the School buildings there unsealed and in establishing his Greek assistant, Athanasi, and his family in Oakley House, himself in the Annex to keep watch. Mr. and Mrs. Stevens and Mr. Hill received food from Switzerland through the Swiss Legation and the International Red Cross.

Although most of the rare communications which did come through from Athens via the Swiss Legation to the State Department in Washington had to do with the physical and financial state of the School (since the weight was strictly limited, one meticulous financial report was too heavy and never arrived), Mr. Stevens always managed a word about the scholarly activity of the School staff which they somehow managed to keep alive and flourishing in spite of grim conditions. Mr. Stevens even wrote of the 35 days he was confined to the Main Building that he had never had such an uninterrupted opportunity for work. He was busy throughout the years of occupation on a large plaster model of the Acropolis in the 4th century B.C., for which he made over a hundred drawings, supervised the technician who did the plaster work, and wrote several articles on details arising from his studies for the model. Of some of his drawings Mr. Stevens had postcards made which the guards on the Acropolis sold to the occupying military; the proceeds were divided between the guards and the crèches in Athens. This model, several times duplicated for institutions since the war, now graces the Agora museum in the Stoa of Attalos along with the model of the Agora on which Stevens worked together with John Travlos.

Travlos, formerly architect of the Agora, was architect of the School from 1940 on and worked throughout these years not only on Agora architecture but on plans of Corinth, of ancient Athens in general and especially on Byzantine Athens. Miss Demetracopoulou filled many administrative needs at the School as well as acting as Librarian of the Main Library, which remained open. She was working on a study of Samuel Gridley Howe, the American philanthropist who came to Greece in 1824 and 1867, from his papers in the Gennadeion, and assisting John Travlos in his studies of Byzantine monuments in Athens; she also translated portions of Howe’s journal into Modern Greek. Mr. Hill continued his work on the springs of Corinth when he was there, but when the Germans forbade him to go to Corinth he busied himself with several of the Parthenon inventory inscriptions and made new discoveries.

Mr. Stevens saw to it, also, that the School continued its payment through 1940 and 1941 of pew rents in St. Paul’s Anglican Church in Athens for three places for the School and made additional contributions to help with relief.

1941–1945 U.S.A.

The officers of the School who had returned to or were in the United States (Parsons, Weber and Broneer) were engaged in various academic and war-service activities, continuing their study of School material as long as possible without contact with it, then working in various capacities in the State Department. On February 21, 1944 Mr. Broneer accepted the position of Executive Vice President of the Greek War Relief Association; from then until April 1946 he played a significant part in the sending of food and other relief supplies to Greece in Swedish vessels, including wheat from Canada and Argentina, clothing for the thousands of refugees from burned villages, and transportation equipment to distribute the food and clothing.

The Trustees, the Chairman and the Managing Committee, cut off from communication with the School, had to try to carry on their formal duties with only faith that the School would open again at some unpredictable time. One of the most serious problems was financial. The staff in Athens had of course been cut to the bone and no funds could be sent to pay them, but in 1943 when letters began to filter through the Swiss Legation it was clear that Adossides and then Kyriakides were borrowing from Greek friends to pay Stevens, Travlos, Miss Demetracopoulou, Sophokles Lekkas, George Kachros and the few guards (old workmen). No one knew what our indebtedness would amount to when communications were again open, for the occupying government in Greece had again and again ordered “monthly” wages to be paid more and more frequently. The School’s income was being cut sharply !-y the withdrawal of support of an increasing number of Contributing Institutions under the unrealistic conviction that since the School was closed it had no expenses; by May 1944 seven out of 49 had ceased to contribute and four more were paying only a token. Mr. Lord talked, wrote, explained, and begged to keep others from defaulting and constantly urged upon the Executive and Managing Comittees the urgent necessity for economy.

It became possible to put aside some funds for future needs when the proposal to award fellowships for use in the United States as long as the School was closed was declared legally impossible; fellowship funds not expended each year were added to the principals of each fund. The thorny and often confusing problems of whether and when to hold examinations for the fellowship competitions and how to advise those who won them, as well as of administering the examinations, were handled during these years by the veteran Sidney Deane who had from 1932 fulfilled “the exacting duties of the office of Chairman of the Committee on Fellowships with characteristic modesty and complete.success” (memorial minute, Managing Committee) until his sudden death on May 4, 1943; Charles Alexander Robinson, Jr. then acted till June 30, 1945 when Gertrude Smith began her service.

Of the fellowships already awarded in May 1940 for use in 1940-41, the appointee of the A.I.A. Archaeological Fellowship, Louise Dickey, was permitted to hold it in 1941-42 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and it was renewed for 1942-43. No competition was held in 1940-41 for 1941-42, but Heinrich Immerwahr’s German Refugee Fellowship which he had held at Yale in 1940-41 was renewed for 1941-42. Examinations were held in 1941-42 with the thought that fellowships might be held in the United States if Athens remained inaccessible, and Mabel L. Lang was awarded the Seymour Fellowship in Greek history, literature and language. When it was discovered that it could not legally be held in the United States, it was deferred, and Miss Lang occupied the fellowship in Athens finally in 1947-48. There were no competitions for or awards of School fellowships in 1942-43, 1943-44, 1944-45. In May 1944, however, the Managing Committee appointed A. E. Raubitschek as Research Fellow in Epigraphy for 1944–1946 to work in Princeton to assist Benjamin Meritt in the preparation of epigraphical material from the Athenian Agora excavations and reappointed Eugene Vanderpool (now released from concentration camp and back in the United States) as Agora Fellow to prepare Agora material for publication. When the original funds for the Agora excavation were exhausted in 1942, the Managing Committee and Trustees agreed to use regular School funds to carry on the undertaking. Both these appointments were in the category of School staff since the Trustees had ruled that Fellowship funds could not legally be used for study in the United States. No competition was held in 1945-46, but to hold the Seymour, White and Wheeler fellowships and one in Architecture at the School in the first year it was operating after the war, 1946-47, several former members were sent out to begin work on the publication of material at Corinth that was awaiting study. In addition to these scholars, Carl A. Roebuck, Robert L. Scrantcn, Saul S. Weinberg and Leicester B. Holland, one fellowship deferred by the War, the A.I.A. Fellowship for 1939-40, was taken up by Mary Campbell (later Mary Campbell Roebuck). Only in 1946-47 were regular examinations for fellowships held again and the other appointive ones assigned for 1947-48.

Fellowships were one of the thorniest but not the only one of many problems created for the Managing Committee’s decisions during the war years. Since so many personnel and other problems had to be dealt with promptly, the Executive Committee had to act for the Managing Committee in many cases between the regular Managing Committee meetings. The Executive Committee met many times and also conducted considerable business by mail.

The staff members of the School as of July 1, 1941 continued to be reappointed through 1945-46, both those serving in Athens and those in the United States or in war service. Salaries were budgeted except when those not in Athens were receiving salaries from other employment, with the hope that Mr. Kyriakides in Athens was actually managing to find the funds to pay the staff there, as in fact he did, and the loans he had negotiated to do so were paid when funds could be transferred to Athens.

The Library was a deep concern. As the years wore on everyone realized how serious would be the loss to the Library when the School reopened that none of the new books or periodicals could be acquired through the war years. Therefore on January 1, 1944, $2,500 was appropriated to make purchases which would be stored in England and America in readiness for the reopening. Professor Harold North Fowler was appointed to be agent to select and purchase the books.

The Managing Committee took a critical look at its own organization and Regulations through the war years, and some changes were made. Following a suggestion made by the Alumni Association when it was founded, the Chairman of the Managing Committee in 1941 organized a Placement Committee as a sub-Committee of the Managing Committee to assist students in securing positions when they returned from the School. This committee continued until 1956. In December 1944 the Chairman announced the appointment of a Committee to nominate members of the Executive Committee to succeed those whose terms would expire in 1945. The suggestion that such a Nominating Committee for members of the Executive Committee be appointed had also come to the Managing Committee from the Alumni Association. On May 11, 1945 following another suggestion of the Alumni Association that the Managing Committee consider the possible value of Alumni representation on the Executive Committee, the Managing Committee voted that the Chairman of the Alumni Association be made a member e officio of the Executive Committee. At the same meeting it was voted that the term of members of the Executive Committee be increased from the then three to four years and that a committee be appointed by the Chairman to review all the existing Regulations and report at the next Annual Meeting. The committee, George H. Chase, Chairman, Sterling Dow and La Rue Van Hook, presented in May 1946 a Revision of the Regulations incorporating all changes which had been voted since the last published Regulations and offering several suggestions especially for enlarging the interest and experience of the Managing Committee and for defining terms of office and numbers of committee members. Some of the suggestions were approved by the Managing Committee, but by 1949 further changes were necessary (see below, p. 45).

As the war dislocation ended, many problems of personnel faced the Managing Committee not only in Athens but also in the United States. May 1945 brought to an end the notable service of La Rue Van Hook as secretary of the Managing Committee from 1938 to 1945 after acting as Assistant Secretary from 1922 to 1938. His service as secretary of both Managing and Executive Committees throughout the difficult war years with the many meetings and the heavy mail correspondence “was distinguished by his uniform courtesy, his good judgment, his devotion to the interests of the School,” and “his untiring care” which contributed so much “to the efficient management of the School’s business.” Charles Alexander Robinson, Jr. of Brown University was appointed to succeed him and would serve with equal distinction for the next twenty years.

Much time, thought and discussion on the part of all those associated with the School, the staff in Athens, the Chairman, the Executive Committee, the Managing Committee and the Alumni, had gone into consideration of what the School should try to be and to do when it opened again to fulfill its stated purpose when founded of encouraging Greek studies in the United States. Letters, reports and minutes are full of the thoughts expressed. The consensus seemed to be that the School had succeeded well so far in maintaining its high intellectual standards, in its notable achievements in training students who later teach Greek studies and in conducting archaeological research that adds constantly to that body of knowledge of Greek studies, but that more could be done. The general scheme of the School’s program of both winter and summer sessions should be continued as the best basis for future years, but some improvements might be made in reaching more Americans with some consciousness of the values of Greek thought and culture for American education and civilization and in offering more specific aid and encouragement tailored to each and every member of the School, more particularly to those interested primarily in language and literature.

It was always recognized and emphasized that the School is indeed a school of classical studies, that the responsibility of the School is not only twofold: (1) to the linguist, literary man, political historian and (2) to the archaeologist (if one can indeed be separated from the other), but rather manifold. The vital problem is how each individual student should emphasize and divide his time at the School to acquire the most understanding of Greek civilization from what the country and the monuments of Greece itself and the experience and guidance of the School’s staff can offer to him, both for his general knowledge of Greek culture and for his own specific interests and talents. None of the many who were deeply concerned thought for a moment that he had the answers, but all believed that thinking, talking, and recognizing problems were beneficial to those who would have decisions to make when the School could be functioning again. So much had been written and discussed with Chairman Lord throughout the war years that when official peace had been declared he appointed a committee chaired by Rhys Carpenter to consider the Scope and Function of the School. The report presented in May 1946 (65th Annual Report for 1945–1946, pp. 44-48) expresses the general view with admirable clarity and vision.

On October 5, 1942 the Trustees considered what action should be taken since the Rockefeller funds for the excavation of the Athenian Agora had been expended. They recognized that future work would have to be carried on with School funds and should therefore be controlled by the Managing Committee; they voted that the Managing Committee be directed to designate a sub-committee to act on matters concerning the Agora excavation and museum. On May 24, 1943 they ruled that since the Agora Excavation Account had been closed as of June 30, 1942 further charges should be made to the Managing Committee budget. Since there was no question of continuing work during those years, it was only at the meeting of May 12, 1945 that the Managing Committee took definitive action and voted “that the Excavation of the Agora, heretofore conducted under the direction of Professor T. Leslie Shear, be carried on henceforth as a regular School Excavation under the direction of the Director of the School” (see below, Chapter VIII, for further on the Agora).

By the time of the meeting of the Managing Committee on December 29, 1945 the possibility of opening the School in fall 1946 looked real, so it was essential to appoint a Director. Arthur Parsons had held the title of Director since 1941 but had only acted for one month. Although it had once been thought that he might take up the post in earnest when he was free of war service with the State Department, it was clear that his duties with the government were apt to continue for some time. It was therefore decided to appoint him to the position of Professor of Archaeology for 1946-47 and to seek a man experienced in School affairs in the past and also with an active vision of its potential in the future to guide the post-war School, which should be rooted in the past but was bound to face many new challenges. Rhys Carpenter (Pl. 11, d), who had been Director in 1927–1932 and had kept actively associated with the School, was persuaded to accept a four-year appointment, 1946–1950, even though he specified that he could not be in residence during the 1946-47 School year. For the interval until Carpenter could arrive in Athens, Carl Blegen was to be asked to act; if he could not, the Executive Committee were to decide upon an arrangement. Blegen was unable; Mr. Stevens was able, more than well experienced, on the spot, and willing to give one more year of his dedicated service to the School, so he carried on till June 30, 1947.

Meetings of the Board of Trustees, which was incorporated in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on March 23, 1886, had always been held in Boston until the meeting of October 15, 1941 was held in New York City. They were held in New York regularly thereafter except for a meeting on May 24, 1943, held in Boston for the purpose of deleting “in Boston” from Article III of the By-Laws, and others again on November 2 and December 29, 1944 and May 15, 1945.

The Trustees had been led through most of the war years by Edwin S. Webster who was elected President on October 15, 1941. He had been a member of the Trustees since 1926 and served as Vice President under W. Rodman Peabody, who had been President since 1929 and who had died on January 12, 1941. Mr. Webster served as President until May 1947 and remained a member of the Board until his death on May 10, 1950, his “wise counsel and sound advice” at the service of the School.

1944–1945 Greece

Fierce fighting broke out in Athens during the summer of 1944, and preparations were made to receive the Swiss colony in the grounds of the American and British Schools if rioting worsened. Mr. Stevens wrote on October 2, 1944, “Hand grenades explode in the streets about the School, bullets whistle through the trees of the garden, pieces of shells fall on our roofs . . . eight men were killed in the excavations of the Athenian Agora, but not our guards. . . . There has been fighting around our buildings in Old Corinth.” On October 12th the Germans took down their flag from the Acropolis, and on the 14th the English landed at Phaleron and entered Athens. On October 18th the Greek flag flew once more from the Acroplis, and all went well until civil war broke out on December 3rd. In the heavy fighting in the city, bullets passed through windows of our library, of Loring Hall, and of the living-room window of the Gennadeion house in which Ambassador and Mrs. MacVeagh were living; water and power were cut; food prices soared ten times higher than the already astronomical costs; Lykabettos was stormed, but on January 1,1945 Stevens could write, “The Greek Government and English troops now seem to have the situation well in hand. . . . The Administrator, Mr. Kyriakides, has had to use all his skill to steer the School between many angry rocks and foaming shoals. Thank fortune, we are all well. And when we say ‘all well’, we include a number of former members of the School.” Rodney Young with UNRA arrived on October 12th and went to live with Mr. Hill. Then came the MacVeaghs, the Ambassador a Trustee of the School since 1941, and Arthur Parsons, a member of the Embassy, as well as Gladys Davidson Weinberg and Margaret Crosby; they all went into residence in Loring Hall which became a hostel for the American Embassy staff, ably run by Mrs. Karl Rankin, an alumna of the School whose husband as Commercial Attaché was housed in Loring Hall West House. After the first few days the MacVeaghs occupied the Gennadeion East House, the Military Attaché the West House.

During the occupation the arrangement with the United States Government, which was approved by the Trustees on December 11, 1941, had been that the United States Government paid for the necessary repairs and for the guards kept by the Swiss Legation which was in control of the property. These were the most satisfactory possible terms for the School. Now that the Embassy was actually occupying all the buildings except the Gennadeion Library and the Director’s quarters, the United States Government proposed to lease the buildings on a monthly basis at a rental of$1,250 a month, a month’s notice to be given for termination of the lease. This was approved by the Trustees on December 29, 1944 with the added conditions that the government pay the utilities, repairs, and salaries of two watchmen. This rental fee went far toward balancing the budget of the School for more than one year, and the property was kept occupied and protected.

Mr. Stevens’ optimism on New Year’s Day proved premature, for more horror and destruction of property were to come before the Civil War was finally ended. The Agora excavations were a battlefield for a time. At Corinth, even though Athanasi, Mrs. Blegen’s chauffeur (as Mr. Hill always rrferred to him), and his family lived in Oakley House and some room in the Annex had been reserved for Mr. Hill (though he was not allowed to return to Corinth in the latter years of the occupation), the vacant rooms which had been occupied first by Italians, later by Germans, were taken by the revolutionists for a hospital; there was considerable loss of furnishings and equipment. Finally in April 1945, the Corinth buildings were requisitioned by British officers who paid a small rent. The Swiss Red Cross Mission, which had used the School’s old Chevrolet station wagon throughout the war, put it into good condition and returned it when they left. The staff of the School continued the academic activities which had been their concern throughout the occupation, and Mr. Kyriakides and Mr. Stevens, able finally to communicate with America, sent detailed reports and the incredibly complicated financial records for those years. In closing his report on April 2, 1945 Mr. Kyriakides paid moving tribute to Mr. Adossides, his predecessor as Administrator, and to Mr. Stevens, his fellow-administrator whose active cooperation he characterized as “of inestimable value to the School.”

1945–1946 Greece

Although World War II was officially terminated in August 1945 and some members of the staff of the School were physically in Greece the following academic year, conditions in Greece were such that no return to normal School activity was possible. Mr. Stevens and Mr. Kyriakides continued to manage the School property and its affairs, for Mr. Parsons, Mr. Weber and Mr. Broneer continued in their State Department and Greek War Relief positions most of the year. The Managing Committee authorized Mr. Lord to make a trip to Athens in July 1945 to see the state of affairs and discuss with Mr. Stevens and others prospects for resuming the School’s regular business. “Due to the meticulous care and efficient management of Professor Stevens” the three School buildings he found in excellent condition. It was from Professor Broneer (Pl. 12, b) that there came reports of the situation throughout Greece, for as Executive Vice President of the Greek War Relief he traveled all over the country in the summer of 1945 to see for himself just what aid was needed. All bridges were broken, but he always managed to get through and found the warmest possible reception everywhere regardless of the starvation and general destitution of the villages. In Skourophorion near Pyrgos the inhabitants even scurried to find a white sheet when a message had been dropped from a plane instructing him to stand on a white sheet in the plateia if he would give his consent to an operation for Mrs. Broneer, critically ill in New York.

At the School, the rental of Loring Hall and the Gennadeion Houses to the American Embassy was continued, and some rooms in the Main Building were also rented to individuals. Mr. Stevens, Mr. Travlos and Miss Demetracopoulou continued much the same scholarly activity as through the war years, Mr. Stevens on problems of the topography and architecture of the Acropolis, Mr. Travlos concentrating on drawings for use in the model of the Agora and Miss Demetracopoulou from February on adding to her duties in the Main Building the unpacking and shelving of books in the Gennadeion preparatory to reopening.

Mr. Stevens had sent a detailed inventory to indicate what furnishings were needed for the School buildings in both Athens and Corinth. Mr. Broneer, who resigned from the Greek War Relief in April 1946, and his wife made the necessary purchases in the United States and had them sent with War Relief shipments so that they arrived safely if slowly. Equipment for both excavations and an initial shipment of foodstuffs for the staff and members were also sent because of the scarcity and exorbitant prices in Greece. It was almost more difficult for the Broneers to get passage for themselves back to Greece than for the freight. It was Trustee Arthur Vining Davis who came to the rescue at this point as in so many financial crises of the School later; he managed when no one else could.

Other shipments from the United States to Greece which were to continue for some years and be a cause of much gratitude began to arrive in the winter of 1945-46. As soon as the plight of the School’s personnel in regard to clothing was learned in the United States, the Trustees and the Managing Committee made generous contributions of their clothing. This first shipment arrived just before Christmas and was distributed by Mr. Kyriakides. As the need continued through some six succeeding years, the alumni continued to collect clothing, and the distribution to the families of the employees became one of the responsibilities of the Director’s wife. One memorable distribution was made at Corinth in the Agora on St. Paul’s Day in 1947 after the religious service had taken place on the bema; Oscar and Verna Broneer made the distribution.

1946–1947 Greece

At the May meeting of the Managing Committee in 1946 Mr. Lord had predicted accurately, “It may be possible to accommodate a few students in the School in the fall of 1946, but I should expect that the School will not be fully open for American students until the fall of 1947.” Activities of revolutionists kept travel very limited throughout the year; food and supplies generally were scarce and very dear; the American Embassy was eager to continue to occupy Loring Hall and the Gennadeion West House (Professor Weber was back in the East House), and the income from the rental was vital to the School’s finances. It was a wise decision of the Managing Committee to follow Mr. Lord’s observation that that portion of the School’s activities which could be carried on with profit was the study and preparation for publication of the material at Corinth excavated, some of it, many years before and still unpublished. The great concern of Mr. Lord throughout his chairmanship was to get on with and if possible complete the publication of Corinth as then excavated. All his very considerable driving force went into furthering this aim; he had inherited it from Mr. Capps, but he added a much stronger conviction of the School’s scholarly responsibility for this commitment. The situation in Greece in 1946-47 and this great necessity of the School dovetailed very neatly. Four Fellows were appointed to work on Corinthian publication (see above, p. 20), and Oscar Broneer was back in his post of Professor of Archaeology directing the work and himself participating heavily in it. The wives of two of the Fellows accompanied them, and the A.I.A. Fellow, Mary Campbell, whose tenure for 1939-40 had been deferred by the war and who was set to work at Corinth, became the wife of the third of the Corinthian Fellows before the year was out; all three wives worked actively on the Corinthian study.

Since none of the regular School training for first-year students was possible, the two students, Mary Campbell and G. Roger Edwards, were assigned to work in the School’s two excavations under the older scholars, where they were able to learn much and to give much assistance in inventorying and working over the material. No large-scale excavations were permitted by the Greek Government which had decreed that for five years only minor clean-up digging to safeguard or repair damage, with a maximum of six men, could be done. Much time and work went into clearing away the weeds and shrubs of six years; then in Corinth a minimum of further digging was undertaken to clarify the plans of the buildings as they were being studied. Architect and archaeologist working together on each building made most efficient teams and by year’s end the studies were well near completion: the South Stoa by Oscar Broneer with plans by Leicester Holland (Pl. 15, a), the Bema and Central Shops, the Roman Buildings on the West Terrace, and Minor Monuments in the Agora by Robert Scranton, the Southeast Buildings by Saul Weinberg and the Asklepieion by Carl Roebuck, the last three scholars with plans by Elias Skroubelos under the direction of John Travlos, Architect of the School. Gladys Davidson Weinberg began the monumental study of the minor objects from the beginning of the excavation and Mary .Campbell Roebuck that of terracotta roof tiles found since Mrs. Hill’s book (Corinth IV, i). Louise Scranton as Assistant did all the typing of manuscripts and reports and worked on the museum records. The first business in Corinth, however, had been to put the Museum back in order after war-time protective measures. When it could be opened at the beginning of 1947, it was the first classical museum to open in Greece after the war; this brought much favorable comment from Greeks and foreigners.

In the Athenian Agora (see below, p. 177) a special permit allowed up to 20 workmen in 1946 (May to August) for supplementary exploration in areas already cleared. Through the winter Vanderpool, who had returned full time on October 1st, Parsons, before and after he took leave for the State Department again, and Travlos worked on publication and Mammelis on the model. More extensive excavation was permitted in spring 1947 to clear the site chosen for the museum.

Central to all aspects of the work of the School stands the Library. The existing Library had been kept in good condition throughout the war by Miss Demetracopoulou, but of course no accessions could be made. Those volumes which Harold North Fowler had acquired with the $2,500 budgeted in 1944 (above, p. 21) had finally reached the School in 1946, but there was still a tremendous gap to be filled to bring the collections up to date for the kind of working library the School requires. David M. Robinson, who was Annual Professor, devoted his time to the needs of the Library, buying or begging for many books published during the war years and filling some other gaps. More than 900 new books had been acquisitioned by April 15, 1947.

In the late winter when it became possible, Rodney Young took the firstyear student Roger Edwards on the rear seat of his motorcycle for the “trip” of the year to Delphi, Naupaktos, Patras, Tripolis and Corinth.

One particularly pleasant part of the School’s program in earlier years was revived on June 16, 1947 when an Open Meeting was held in the Gennadeion; it was attended by Their Majesties King Paul and Queen Frederika, Her Royal Highness Princess Nicholas and her three daughters. Professor Broneer lectured on the excavation of Corinth and Professor Homer Thompson on that in the Athenian Agora.

On June 27, 1947 when the members of the School gave a farewell party to Mr. and Mrs. Stevens, “who have endeared themselves to all this year,” it was far more than a farewell for 1946-47. It marked the end of Mr. Stevens’ active direction of the School since July 1, 1939, without doubt the most trying eight years in the School’s history, surely the most difficult and challenging any Director has had to face. His acquittal of the assignment (in only three of those years did he carry the official title of Director or Acting Director, but no man was ever more a Director of the School) was one of the highest spots of dedicated, selfless service the School has seen in its century of existence. In each of his Annual Reports Louis Lord pays tribute to Gorham Stevens. He speaks once of his management of the School as “providential” and again and again of what the School owes to him. On May 10, 1947 Lord wrote, “At the close of the war, when communications were opened with Athens, the auditor told me that he had grave misgivings as to his ability ever to straighten out the accounts at Athens, owing to the different rates at which the drachma was valued and the numerous currencies which had to be used in the support of the School. To his surprise he found that the account balanced to a drachma and there was nothing unaccounted for.” Mr. Stevens’ accounts bore the same precision as his architectural drawings of the Erechtheion and his other Acropolis studies. Following the records one gains an enormous admiration for his unceasing care for every meticulous detail, whether of property, finance or scholarship, his faithful oversight of every aspect of the School’s affairs, his foresight, his patience but his firmness, his astuteness in business, his care and keenness, imagination and personal joy in scholarly activity, his personal interest and generosity towards students and colleagues, his genuine humanity, his courtly dignity, his gentleman’s honor. Verily it was one of the blessings of the century that Gorham Stevens held the reins in Athens from 1939 to 1947. He was to continue to serve the School for another sixteen years as Honorary Architect and to give special support and assistance to the restoration of the Stoa of Attalos and the landscaping of the Agora.

1946–1947 U.S.A.

Since it had seemed reasonable to expect that conditions in Greece would be such that first-year students could be accepted for 1947-48, the Fellowship Committee, under the new (since 1945) Chairmanship of Gertrude Smith, in the fall of 1946 announced resumption of fellowship examinations. The precarious situation still existing in Greece discouraged many applicants, and restriction to unmarried citizens of the United States debarred others. No candidate wrote for the literature and history fellowship, but the John Williams White Fellowship in Archaeology was awarded to Hazel Palmer. The A.I.A. had discontinued its Fellowship in Archaeology which had been awarded since the beginning of fellowships offered by the School in 1895. It was John Williams White (Lord, History, pl. opp. p. 1), the first Chairman of the Managing Committee of the School, who after his year at the School as Annual Professor in 1893-94 urged the establishment of two fellowships, one financed by the School, the other by the Institute, both to be awarded on the basis of examination. The A.I.A. Fellowship had been held by a most distinguished group of men and women, some of the most noted of the School’s alumni and of classical scholars in the United States. It was a most regrettable loss to the School and to archaeology in the United States that this fellowship could no longer be awarded.

On the credit side for the School came the return to the fold of three of those institutions which had withdrawn their support, the return to full payment of those who had contributed only a token and, most encouraging, the addition in 1945-46 of three new institutions and in 1946-47 of five more. This was the result of a concerted effort by the Secretary of the Managing Committee, C. Alexander Robinson, Jr., who when he accepted the Secretaryship had promised that he would enter upon a campaign to increase the number of contributing institutions. By indefatigable letter writing and personal contacts he was responsible for a constant increase each year for many years. The $10,500 in contributions for 1946-47 was the largest sum from the cooperating members up to that time in the School’s history

A momentous change occurred in the Board of Trustees this year: Professor William T. Semple was elected President of the Board on May 7, 1947. Although in the earlier years numerous members of the Trustees had been classicists and members of the Managing Committee, this was the first time an active member of the Managing Committee of the School had served as their head officer. No little benefit was foreseen from this closer association and increased understanding between the two bodies charged with the management of the School. The Trustees were pleasantly surprised to receive from the estate of Richard Seager an additional $2,710.85 and to learn that a further $2,000 or so would eventually come to augment the original $45,742.24 which provided such welcome income for excavations.

By spring 1947 it was clear that Mrs. Carpenter’s health would not permit Rhys Carpenter to take up his Directorship of the School in 1947-48. By decision of the Executive Committee, therefore, Lord wrote to Oscar Broneer (Pl. 12, b), Professor of Archaeology at the School since 1940, who had begun as Instructor in 1928 and served continuously as the resident instructor with rising academic rank until 1939 and who had been in charge of Corinth excavations for many years. Lord asked Broneer to assume the full responsibility of the School including the Athenian Agora, Corinth, the Gennadeion, plus a fall visit to the United States to conduct a campaign for funds. Ever driven by his abiding concern to get Corinth published, Lord added that he recognized the weight of all this responsibility and had full confidence in Broneer, but hoped it would not detract from his work on Corinth publication, for he still hoped to see Corinth published within his Chairmanship. After some provisions for assistance by other officers Broneer accepted the Acting Directorship for 1947-48.

1947–1948 Greece

“In many respects the present year has been unusual,” wrote Acting Director Broneer in his Annual Report for 1947-48. Although in summer 1945 it had been predicted that a normal School year might be expected by fall 1947, the abnormal conditions resulting from continued civil disturbances meant that the regular program of the School for first-year students was impossible. There were five first-year members (School Fellows and G.I. Bill of Rights holders) and three former members (including Mr. Edwards from the preceding year), plus a special undergraduate student (son of a man in Athens in government service) during the spring months, and the Agora staff. The usual “Northern” trip to North-Central Greece including Delphi and the trip to the interior of the Peloponnese had to be omitted, but Professor Broneer assisted by Saul Weinberg, Assistant Director, took the group to Delos, Boiotia as far north as Chaironeia and Euboia, Olympia, the Corinthia and the Argolid in the fall and to Crete in March. The traditional study of the sites of Attica and the monuments of Athens was carried on as well as study in such museums as were open and in some still closed to the public but generously made available by special arrangement. Mr. Hill conducted his famous sessions on the reconstruction of the Southwest wing of the Propylaia; this was the last time for this course by which so many generations of American School students had been introduced to architectural reconstruction, for the Archaeological Service had begun the actual reconstruction of this wing.

The new students, the older scholars and the staff all managed without complaint the crowded living conditions necessitated by the continued rental of Loring Hall to the American Embassy. The financial advantage to the School of this arrangement still loomed large, for the cost of maintenance and service continued to increase steadily and steeply out of proportion to the School’s financial resources. The buildings were reported to be badly in need of repairs and repainting, hardly surprising after the long period in which regular upkeep had been impossible, but without sufficient funds for the essential work of the School none of this could be contemplated. Estimates of the cost were made in summer 1947 by Stuart Thompson and again in 1948 by Mr. Stevens.

The year had opened in Athens with a significant international occasion. Ten members of the School as well as other American delegates attended the Centenary Celebration of the French School on September 10th-17th, an elegant series of formal receptions and sessions combined with performances of ancient plays and visits to the excavations at Delos and Epidauros and to the monuments of Athens. B. H. Hill had been appointed the official delegate of the School by the Managing Committee; other members of the School represented other American institutions. A special exhibition of books by the early French travelers was arranged by Professor Weber in the Gennadeion as part of the tribute to the French School.

William B. Dinsmoor served as Annual Professor for the first semester, “completed” his work on the West Shops at Corinth and worked on the Propylaia and the old Athena temple on the Acropolis. In the second semester C. Alexander Robinson, Jr. of Brown University assisted the students in their individual work as well as doing his own historical research. Arthur Parsons, who held the appointment of Professor of Archaeology in residence but who had returned to the State Department in the latter part of the previous year, resigned his appointment with the School and did not serve. His association with the School, which began as a student in 1931–1933, continued as Agora Fellow 1933–1940, as Assistant Director 1939–1941 and Director, by title, 1941–1946 while he was absent on war service. His loss to archaeology both as a skilled field archaeologist and as a dedicated teacher was, through his intimate knowledge of Greece and his sympathetic understanding of its people, a valuable gain to the U.S. Government for whom he played a distinguished role, as a member of the American Delegation on the Commission of the United Nations Security Council to investigate disputes between Greece and her northern neighbors, until his untimely death on September 29, 1948.

At Corinth Professor Broneer, Mr. and Mrs. Weinberg, Mr. Edwards and in the spring Professor and Mrs. Stillwell (see below, pp. 152-153) continued their study and writing, even though activities of the antartai had been stepped up to such an extent that sometimes even the road to Corinth was not safe.

A very important service of the School to Americans outside its own membership began this year and was to continue for the life of the American Mission for Aid to Greece. Professor Broneer and all the staff recognized the opportunity offered the School to fulfill its purpose of encouraging Greek studies in a broader way than ever envisaged by the founders of the School, but in a kind of service suggested by the report of the Committee on Scope and Function in 1946. The staff offered to give the Mission personnel and their families a series of popular lectures on the history and monuments of Athens and to conduct such excursions outside Athens to archaeological sites as security permitted (several of those planned had to be canceled). These lectures were enthusiastically received and deeply appreciated. From an initial attendance of 50 odd the number grew as high as 150 and averaged 75 throughout the 17 lectures given by Broneer, Dinsmoor, Stevens, Vanderpool, S. Weinberg, Weber, C. A. Robinson and B. H. Hill and three excursions to Corinth, Eleusis and Sounion led by Broneer, Weinberg and Vanderpool. A request was made to repeat six of the lectures for new arrivals. Beside the appreciation expressed in words a voluntary donation of $470.55 for the School’s current campaign for funds was made at the end of the scries. The interest awakened in hundreds of Americans on the Mission staff in this and following years in ancient and mediaeval history and monuments and in Greek culture throughout the ages was immeasurable and deserves to be counted as one of the truly significant achievements of the School in its first hundred years.

As was noted above (p. 32) one of the responsibilities Professor Broneer had been asked to assume for the year was to organize a campaign in America of publicity and fund raising for the School. His first act was to prepare, in the summer and fall of 1947, a documentary film on the work of the School, especially excavation in progress both in the Athenian Agora and at Corinth, and of Greek life in general from which students of the School learn to understand so much of ancient as well as modern Greece. Supervision and selection of material was done by Broneer, assisted by Lucy Talcott and others in the Athenian Agora, the camera work by Karl Robinson. The film was produced in New York under the direction of Margaret Thompson, a former member of the Agora staff; through the courtesy of Spyros P. Skouras, a Trustee of the School, the facilities of Fox Movietone with its expert technicians were put at the disposal of the producers (saving some $1,500), and Triumph Over Time was ready to be shown at the meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America in New Haven after Christmas. The film was to be used by Broneer at lectures and rallies in a campaign for funds scheduled for the end of January in cities coast to coast. On January 27th, the critical illness of Mrs. Broneer brought the Acting Director home to Athens for the last two days of life of one who had been one of the School’s most loyal and devoted officers since 1927 and one of its most beloved members. News of the death of Verna Anderson Broneer shocked and deeply grieved generations of alumni and friends of the School both in Greece and in the United States, and sincere sympathy for Oscar Broneer was poured out by Greeks and Americans alike. There was no thought of his returning to America to carry on the campaign.

Verna Broneer came to Athens in 1927 as a bride and from then till her death, except for the war years spent in the United States, was closely associated with the School. She was Librarian of the School from 1930 to 1940 where her knowledge of bibliography coupled with her natural impulse to friendly helpfulness made her a tower of strength to readers. The topographical bibliography was largely her work, and it was she, too, who organized the photographs from Corinth and other School excavations into large volumes where they could be readily found and consulted. At Corinth itself she did a great deal of the record keeping and inventorying throughout the years, and in the later years many of the coins were identified by her. Beloved as she was by everyone who crossed her path at the School, by none was she more appreciated than by the natives of Old Corinth who knew well her kindness and her concern for them. Their spontaneous outpouring of affection and respect at her funeral on January 30, 1948 was one of the most telling of the occasions of close rapport between the School and the village which the School treasures. The village bore all the expense of the funeral including the cost of the plot in the local cemetery; old excavation workmen carried the body from Oakley House to the church where the secretary of the village and representatives of other local groups spoke eulogies and offered wreaths after the local priest had read the service. Then the whole village population, nearly a thousand people, followed the procession through the village down to the cemetery.

There were other losses to the School that year. The death on September 9, 1947 of Mrs. Lincoln MacVeagh and the transfer of the Ambassador to Portugal in spring 1948 deprived the School of the presence of two staunch friends and loyal supporters. Their personal interest in classical scholarship and the work of the School had assured both their personal and their official cooperation and assistance ever since 1932 when they first arrived in Greece, even before Mr. MacVeagh became a Trustee of the School. His special service to the School during the war years has been noted elsewhere (pp. 10, 12, 25, 248); he was to continue his active concern and assistance even though no longer a near neighbor.

1947–1948 U.S.A.

Back in the United States after Mrs. Broneer’s death other members of the School family did what was possible to carry out as much as had already been planned of the lecture and film tour to campaign for funds. Homer A. Thompson, Benjamin D. Meritt, Rhys Carpenter, Margaret Thompson and Charles H. Morgan took over the lectures already arranged. The film was shown in some 13 cities of the United States and also in England and in Greece. A mail campaign also brought results. The total receipts of some seven thousand dollars from the film and $5,000 from the mail campaign did not greatly exceed expenses, but the gain in publicity for the School throughout the country could be measured as definitely positive. In the fund raising in years thereafter, some of the ground work of 1947 bore fruit. The film Triumph Over Time continued to be rented to schools, colleges and other organizations for some years to come; the monetary income was never large, but the publicity for the School, for classical studies, for Greece was significant.

The Managing Committee was putting much thought on three major problems: the Directorship, the need for more space in the Library, and the Agora museum. When Rhys Carpenter, who had been appointed director in 1946 for four years but had been unable to act in Athens from 1946 to 1948, felt that there was no possibility of his filling the position in the remainder of the term, the Managing Committee was deeply disappointed but reluctantly accepted his resignation and began a search for a new Director to guide the revival of the School after the war interlude. After a thorough canvass of all possibilities by a special committee and careful discussion by the Executive Committee, it was recommended to the Managing Committee that Carl W. Blegen be appointed for one year with John L. Caskey as Assistant Director, Caskey at the close of that year, on Blegen’s recommendation, to be appointed for an indefinite period. The mail vote of the Managing Committee was enthusiastic and almost unanimous.

Various proposals and recommendations for increasing library space were made by members of the staff in Athens and by those in America: by turning the top-floor rooms of the School into seminar rooms with shelves, by taking over the public rooms of the Director’s quarters, or by building an addition. Estimates were made, but no action was taken since enforced changes of plan for the Agora museum meant that no expenditure could be made on the Library or on the Corinth Museum addition until the financial picture of the School could be clarified. Mrs. Moore, in the course of the year, gave an additional sum (approximately $30,000) for the Corinth Museum addition to go with the $10,000 given before the war. It was hoped that work on it could begin the following, year (see below, p. 153). The Agora museum problem (see below, pp. 182-187) arose when the site west of the Areopagus selected and approved by the Greek Archaeological Service proved upon excavation to contain archaeological monuments that the Service decreed could not be covered by the museum. A new solution had to be found, and the plans already drawn and revised once by William T. Aldrich of the Board of Trustees to fit requirements of the Service had to be abandoned completely.

The Committee on Fellowships held examinations for candidates. It was gratifying that the number of applicants had increased somewhat over the previous year, but it was a matter of concern and discussion to both the Managing Committee and the Alumni Council that there were not enough first class applicants. More active publicity and enlistment of the best students in classics were urged and promised.

In April 1948 Professor Broneer was offered a one-year Visiting Professorship by the University of Chicago. In reply to his letter to Chairman Lord reporting the offer, Lord wrote highly appreciatively that the School did not want to lose the man who had been its mainstay for so many years, but that if Broneer really wanted to return to America and at the same time to continue at the School, this appeared ideal since a continuing appointment was envisaged with time off in the spring for excavation; he would ask the Managing Committee to grant a leave of absence from Broneer’s position as Professor of Archaeology at the School for 1948-49. The leave was granted.

The question of whether to hold a session of the Summer School in 1948 also occupied the Chairman particularly, since he had been its Director before the war and was prepared to continue to lead the group. In February and March Acting Director of the School Broneer tried to discourage Lord from bringing a summer session since so many museums were still closed, so many sections of the country were unsafe because of antartai activity, and prices of food and transportation were so high. In spite of these difficulties and the further one of reaching Athens (ships were so irregular and expensive and planes still very expensive), it was finally decided to hold the session in 1948 for the ten students, including some undergraduates, eager to go.

A far-reaching change took place in the work of the Publications Committee at the May 1948 meeting. Because it would seriously hamper the School’s control of the academic quality of its publications as well as involve the School in a loss of revenue, approval of the contract now required by the Harvard University Press to continue to act as the School’s publisher was recognized as impossible. The alternative was a momentous decision for the School: to act as its own publisher in future, the Committee to be responsible for all aspects of editing, production, and sales with the attendant bookkeeping (below, pp. 248-249).

Finally, in the field of personnel, the Chairman felt the need of some assistance in the many unusual problems of the future of the School and asked the Managing Committee to approve the appointment of Charles H. Morgan as Vice Chairman for the two remaining years of the Chairman’s term.

A special committee on Suggestions for Benefits to Contributing Institutions, chaired by Robert L. Scranton and including C. S. Hartman and Dorothy Burr Thompson, presented a lengthy report in which emphasis was laid on visual aids (photographs, slides, film strips of the School’s excavations) as the most tangible, effective means of benefiting the institutions, more fellowships especially for teachers and undergraduates in the summer (they could not have foreseen that the Fulbright Act would make this proposal unnecessary for the regular session) and lectures to be given to the Institutions by returning members of the School on the latest material.

1948–1949 Greece

When Carl William Blegen (Pl. 12, c) of the University of Cincinnati assumed the directorship of the School on July 1, 1948, the shadows of civil war and economic disaster continued to cloud Greek skies, and the latter would only increase during the year. In spite of these deterrents the year proved a profitable and successful one for the School and was a prelude to the significant revival in the years to come.

There were five first-year students plus one who came only for the spring, all Fellows of the School or of their own institutions, and three second-year Fellows, as well as the Agora staff of eight plus the Field Director and the staff of the School. This was by and large the pattern of personnel at the School to be followed for many years to come. The number of first-year and of second-or-more year students would increase in relation to the Agora staff and to the School staff but those three main groups made up the School’s company. The staff included beside the one-year Director Blegen, the Assistant Director John L. Caskey who was expected to become Director, Elizabeth G. Caskey who began her outstanding service as the School’s Librarian, Shirley H. Weber continuing as Librarian of the Gennadeion and Professor of Classics, Eurydice Demetracopoulou as Assistant in the Gennadeion, Gorham P. Stevens as Honorary Architect, John Travlos as Architect of School Excavations and Aristides Kyriakides as Business Manager. There was no Professor of Archaeology in residence since Professor Broneer was on leave at the University of Chicago, and the Annual Professor Edward Capps, Jr. came only for the second semester which he devoted to study for publication of the sculpture at Corinth.

The Assistant Director shared the duties of instruction with the Director on the fall trips and conducted most of the winter courses in Topography and Monuments and in Attic sites. Professor Weber read the Odyssey with students in the winter. Activity of the revolutionaries prevented travel to most of the Peloponnese in the fall, but to the traditional “Northern” trip to Central Greece were added trips to Delos and Crete where the generous hospitality of the French and British Schools in housing the members of the group made possible these highly successful days of study on the sites. By the end of March it was safe for Blegen to carry out the Argolid trip and another to Olympia in April, and some members did get to Tripolis, Sparta and Bassai. The older students concentrated and accomplished much on their assignments: Kevin Andrews worked on the study of Venetian fortresses in connection with his publication of the Grimani maps in the Gennadeion (this became Gennadeion Monograph, IV,Castles of the Morea); Hazel Palmer after inventorying material from a well near Temple E at Corinth turned to the study of the Classical graves of the North Cemetery, which had been assigned to her by Mrs. Shear (the largest part of Corinth XIII); Anna Benjamin worked on dialect inscriptions and linguistic problems in the graffiti from the Agora; and Roger Edwards after completing the cataloguing and photographing of the pottery from the South Stoa at Corinth joined the Agora staff. By spring the first-year students also had individual problems to which they turned their attention. In the pre-war program of the School, excavation was the spring activity and some of the students regularly joined the excavation staffs to profit from the training and experience to be gained from such work, while others preferred to follow their own scholarly projects. Excavations had been strictly limited in size by the Greek authorities since the war, but in April 1949 Blegen could write, “All restrictions of recent years which have so hampered digging by the Archaeological Schools have been abolished by the new Minister of Education, Mr. K. Tsatsos.” A. D. Keramopoullos, a long-time friend of the School, had been succeeded by another good friend, Anastasios K. Orlandos, as Director of the Archaeological Service who “has also looked on our problems with his usual cordial understanding sympathy.” The problem of the School was not permission but money; there were no funds for Corinth, but by spring work could proceed in the Athenian Agora thanks to outside assistance (see below, p. 178).

The financial crisis of the School’s budget had arisen because of the phenomenal rise in all costs in Greece. All prices were by 1948-49 far more than three times what they had been in 1938-39, and even though the salaries of the Greek employees had been raised they remained woefully inadequate for their bare necessities; Blegen urged that salaries must be raised further and that the families must be helped directly with clothing. The Alumni Association responded to the latter plea by sending out to its members a list of the names and ages of the members of the families the School needed to help; a very gratifying response enabled the Association to make several large shipments of clothing. Blegen warned that the next year there would be nothing left after the fixed charges for maintenance were met. He urged that the School continue in 1949-50 to rent the main portion and West House of Loring Hall and the Gennadeion West House to the Embassy as in 1948-49 when the Agricultural attaché lived in Loring Hall West House and the Special Assistant to the Ambassador in Gennadeion West House. The ten rooms of the center of Loring Hall had with the rooms in the Main Building been adequate to house the students in 1948-49 and the income from the rental of the rest (some $1,550 a month for 10 months) was all that saved the budget that year.

Help, both financial and otherwise, came to the School at this critical period from the United States and Greek Governments, thanks in large part to the active role played in the planning by Carl Blegen. “In its aim to re-establish the economy of Greece on a self-supporting basis, the ECA Mission has set a high value on the revival of the tourist business as one of the most productive agencies in bringing free foreign exchange into the country. In this conviction the Mission saw its way to grant financial aid to the Ministry of Education for the much needed rehabilitation of the country’s archaeological resources.” Blegen did much during November and December 1948 as a participant in the meetings between the Mission representatives and the Archaeological Service to work out the details of rehabilitating the museums and of repairing and preserving important ancient monuments. Among the grants made was one for the restoration of the Stoa of Attalos; the initial grant allowed for the clearing of the ground in front, removal of the blocks from within the building, rebuilding of the terrace wall in front and some work on the steps of the building. This grant to the Greek Archaeological Service was turned over to the American School’s Agora excavation to administer jointly with the Service and permitted beginning the work toward restoring the Stoa of Attalos to serve as the Agora Museum, a plan which had now been approved by the Archaeological Council. Unfortunately, by February 1949, because of increased military needs, the allotment for the Stoa had been cut from $100,000 to $20,000. Funds to complete the enormously costly undertaking had of course to be raised by the School (see below, pp. 182-183).

The School needed funds for the scientific personnel as well as the workmen, however, and it was another joint United States and Greek Government program which provided the Agora Fellows with their stipends for several years, i.e. the Fulbright Act (see below, pp. 43-44). It was, to be sure, not until March 1949 that official notification was received that Fulbright Research Fellowships had been awarded for the year beginning October 1, 1948 to six members of the Agora staff and a travel grant to the seventh, and there had been no little hardship meanwhile, but gratitude was sincere when word finally came after enormous effort and endless correspondence by Blegen. There was hope that these fellowships in the category of advanced research would be renewed, since there were few openings in Greece for advanced research in fields other than those sponsored by the School. This did in fact happen.

The other category of Fulbright graduate fellowships, for study in the predoctoral phase, was announced in Washington in December 1949 and was to have an enormous influence on the selection of the students who came to the School for a number of years thereafter (see below, pp. 44-45).

The staff of the School, on its part, gave of its scholarly store again to the American Mission personnel as they had first in the preceding year and were to continue to do for several more years. Sixteen lectures were given, three each by Blegen, Caskey and Rodney Young, two each by Stevens and Vander-pool, one each by Alison Frantz, B. H. Hill and Shirley Weber. Once more appreciation of the 30 to 80 (depending on the weather) Mission personnel was expressed by monetary contribution, this time to defray the cost of excavation in connection with the study of some specific problem in the Agora.

The buildings of the School grew no younger or less in need of painting and repair. The most urgent problems, particularly plumbing, were dealt with by the School’s own employees, except for the boiler in the Gennadeion which required a welding firm, and through the skill and industry of one of the permanent School employees, a “one-man repair team,” much repainting was done. Blegen wrote, “This will be continued as long as our supply of paint lasts.” He paid high tribute to the devotion of all the domestic staff who continued to serve cheerfully regardless of failing equipment as well as the disproportionately low wages in relation to their cost of living. The students’ costs, too, were exorbitantly high of course and would have been disastrous without the expert management of the students’ mess by Rodney Young, and later Mrs. Carroll, and the access to the Commissary supplies of the American Council of Voluntary Agencies (founded in April 1948 to help the various American groups in Greece and continued until November 1950 when the food situation had greatly improved).

1948–1949 U.S.A.

The financial situation of the School was helped greatly by the addition of six new cooperating institutions; several others were endeavoring to raise an endowment to fund their institutions permanently, but much more was needed for the permanent endowment of the School to carry on its regular activities as well as specifically for the Athenian Agora and the Agora museum. Attempts were being made to interest a number of potential large donors. Both the Trustees and the Chairman of the Managing Committee were committed to raising a considerable endowment, but they were also trying to attack the problem by soliciting funds for specific portions of the School’s programs. In the end it was the individual items, specifically the Agora and its museum, for which funds were found over the succeeding years rather than the General Endowment which to this day (1980) remains the desperate need if the School is to survive to offer training in Greek studies to American students and prospective teachers.

A temporary solution to the financing of the Summer Session was approved by the Managing Committee at the May 1949 meeting whereby the Bureau of University Travel would conduct the Summer Session beginning in 1950. It would pay the salary of the Director, all promotional fees and the expenses of the session, and receive all tuitional fees, while the School would appoint the Director; this arrangement could be terminated at any time. Since the Chairman of the Managing Committee, who had been the Director of the Summer Session for some years, had recently become an official of the B.U.T., the arrangement was considered likely to prove efficient and to insure the continuing of the Summer Session (see below, Chapter VI).

In the field of personnel, the Managing Committee had to find a Professor of Archaeology to be resident at the School and responsible for a major portion of the instruction offered. With the increasing administrative duties eating into the Director’s time it was recognized as essential that there be a resident Professor of Archaeology, as Oscar Broneer had been for many years before the war, to divide the academic duties with the Director. When Broneer requested a further leave of absence of three years to continue his appointment at the University of Chicago, which would, however, give him the second semester free every other year to continue his work at Corinth, the Managing Committee explored the field for a new Professor of Archaeology. The choice fell upon a member of the Agora staff, Eugene Vanderpool, who was appointed at the May 1949 meeting to be Professor of Archaeology as well as continuing to be a Research Fellow of the Agora staff. The appointment was for one year, as was also that of John L. Caskey as Director.

Even as in the previous year there had been a notable change and increase in the operation of the Publications Committee, this year brought the Fellowship Committee the necessity of a different mode of awarding fellowships and a far greater responsibility. This was the result of the Fulbright Act, the Research Fellows of which had just been appointed for 1948-49; the pre-doctoral grants were to begin for 1949-50 but had to be acted upon in the spring of 1949. The Fulbright Act had been adopted by the 79th United States Congress. It provided that payment for military material left in foreign allied countries after World War II might be made to the United States by using their own currency in their own country to help Americans studying or teaching in such countries or to help their own students go to the United States to study. A separate agreement with each country was signed by the United States and the country concerned. Funds always had to stay in local currency. The agreement in each case was administered by a division of the Department of State and various committees in the United States and by an administrative body in the foreign country.

In the case of Greece there were about 20 million dollars to be available over a period of 20 years. In the United States the Institute of International Education organized a screening and selection committee to assist the Board of Foreign Scholarships in drawing up its lists of fellows. This list had also to be approved by the committee in Athens, the United States Educational Foundation for Greece, comprising the United States Ambassador, other Americans and several Greeks. Since the American School of Classical Studies at Athens was the principal educational institution at which students would wish to study in Greece, it was obvious that a goodly number of students would be awarded Fulbright grants to study there each year. How was the School to retain its own standards of admission? The School welcomed the greater number of students thus enabled to benefit from study in Greece, all with no financial cost to the School, but the Managing Committee felt some means must be taken to assure the School the right to refuse admission to any inadequately prepared student. A committee was appointed to define the policy of the School in regard to persons who were to be recommended for work at the School, to explore the desired qualifications of such people, and in general to study the subject of admission to the School; this committee, chaired by Gertrude Smith, consisted of the members of the Committee on Fellowships (Alexander D. Fraser and Clark Hopkins), Alfred R. Bellinger, Carl W. Blegen, Rhys Carpenter and Charles H. Morgan. Since Professors Bellinger and Blegen were members of the Board of Foreign Scholarships and the United States Educational Foundation for Greece, this assured some understanding on those decision-making boards of the policies and standards of the School. When the names had been selected by the Fulbright boards they were submitted to the School’s Fellowship Committee for acceptance. Nowhere along the line were applicants required to take any examinations.

The effect of all this on the School’s own Fellowships was bound to be serious. The best qualified and most promising students such as previously had competed for the School’s Fellowships would now apply for a Fulbright and get it without examinations. Obviously the School would have to remove its requirements for examinations as long as the best candidates were attracted to Fulbright grants. The Managing Committee voted in May 1949 to permit the Fellowship Committee to omit examinations the following year, if in the judgment of the Committee this seemed wise, and to select Fellows on the basis of papers, letters of recommendation, and personal interviews. Not only the method of selection but the monetary value of the Fulbright junior fellowships put the School’s Fellowships at a disadvantage. In any case the increased cost of living in Greece had made the $1300 stipend inadequate; it was therefore voted to raise the stipend to $2000. It was also agreed to award only two School Fellowships for 1949-50, both because the Fulbright awards would take care of so many and in order to let the Fellowship funds accumulate so that the higher stipend could continue to be paid. There would be no letup in work for the Fellowship Committee, however, in the oncoming years, for the negotiations with the Fulbright boards as well as administering the School’s own Fellowships demanded a staggering amount of correspondence between the Committee and the boards and the Director in Athens with whom the Chairman kept in constant contact on matters of both general policy and individual personnel. For that first year, 1949-50, there were ten Fulbright Scholars appointed in spring 1949 as well as eight senior Research Fulbright Fellows. The last Regular Member holding a Fulbright grant was enrolled in 1975-76.

It had been only three years before in 1945-46 that the Managing Committee had considered its Regulations and made various changes and additions (see above, pp. 21-22), but still others were now necessary to incorporate its recent legislative action and to restate the definition of the Committee. As approved on May 14, 1949, “The Managing Committee . . . shall consist of a representative or representatives from each of the Universities and Colleges [in 1950 there was added here ‘and other educational institutions’] which unite in the support of the School, of the Director of the School, of the Treasurer of the Corporation, and of professors annually appointed to the staff from the faculties of the supporting Universities and Colleges, these professors to be members of the Committee during the years of service and the year following. The Managing Committee is empowered further to add to its membership such individuals as it may deem wise to elect who are officers of the Archaeological Institute of America, of the American School of Oriental Research, of the Classical School maintained by the American Academy in Rome, and two representatives of the Alumni Association of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. It may also elect, subject to the confirmation of the Trustees, other persons who have shown special interest in the School.” Further amendments passed in 1949 provided that elected members of the Executive Committee be increased from six to eight; salaries and terms of office of officers were to be fixed by the Managing Committee; the Committees on Publications, Admissions and Fellowships, and Placement were to have three members with additional members when advisable, to serve one-year terms but to be eligible for re-election; the Personnel Committee of three, one member elected each year, were to serve three-year terms and be limited to three terms.

1949–1950 Greece

After a decade of abnormal conditions at the School through the years of war and its aftermath and gradual recovery, the last year of Professor Lord’s chairmanship saw the School solidly established once more in its teaching and excavating and embarked upon a distinguished 30 years to complete its century of achievement. Lord had struggled with so many problems both external and internal in that decade that his friends rejoiced that he could have one final year of satisfaction in the School’s re-established stability. Although looking over the long range one tends to think of Morgan’s Chairmanship and Caskey’s Directorship as synchronous, it should be emphasized here that John L. Caskey (PI. 12, d) began his Directorship under the strong support of Lord as Chairman as well as that of Charles H. Morgan who had been Vice Chairman since 1948.

Termination of the revolutionary activity which had plagued Greece ever since the end of the World War made possible travel throughout the country, which was further facilitated by better and better communications. The fall program, planned especially for first-year students but participated in also by some of the senior fellows, could now include Delos as well as the long traditional Boiotia, Delphi and the North; Arkadia, Lakonia and Messenia; Corinth and the Argolid. In March a second shorter trip to Boiotia and the Olympia trip were made, and finally in May an informal trip to Samos and the Greek cities of Asia Minor, Troy and Istanbul was organized for the thirteen interested students (plus three guests). The addition of Delos to the regular schedule, introduced the preceding year when many parts of the mainland were inaccessible, proved particularly valuable and enjoyable. During the winter the long established course on Topography and Monuments of Athens, meeting twice a week, made use not only of the Director and Professor of Archaeology in residence, Caskey and Vanderpool, but also of Mr. Hill and Mr. Stevens on the Acropolis, so the students had the advantage of working with the distinguished experts who were members emeriti of the School’s staff. In addition to the trips to sites in Attica there were also offered a course in Thucydides by Gertrude Smith, the Annual Professor for the year, and a series of introductory lectures on pre-Classical pottery (Caskey and Hazel Hansen, Fulbright Senior Fellow), coins (Weber), inscriptions (Vanderpool), and the Byzantine period (Alison Frantz). The latter lectures were of particular value to many of the students whose previous training had not included study in these fields, which could be touched upon only lightly in the other School courses and the trips. By spring the numerous first-year students were all at work on projects of their own, and many of them were traveling both more widely in Greece and to other countries in the eastern Mediterranean. They had learned modern Greek well and were enterprising about making the most of their weeks in Greece. It was also true that the more ample funds of the Fulbright grants permitted more traveling than had other fellowships in recent years in spite of the still rising costs of everything in Greece. Of the ten junior Fulbrights, five were first-year students, five second-year, and there were eight other first-year students; so although Fulbrights had been a boon to second-year as well as new students, it was a good sign for the future of the School that students were coming again on fellowships from their own institutions.

The lectures to the Embassy and E.C.A. personnel begun two years earlier were continued with similar success and appreciation. Some 125-150 persons attended the series given by Caskey, Vanderpool, Homer Thompson, Gertrude Smith, Weber and Alison Frantz.

Excavation was again limited because of financial restrictions, but thanks to E.C.A. funds it continued actively in the Agora in preparation for the rebuilding of the Stoa of Attalos as the museum (see below, p. 182), and good work on study for publication was accomplished by the Senior Research Fellows in both Athens and Corinth. In Corinth at long last work could begin in January on construction of the new wing of the Museum, preparation for the foundations of which had begun during the last years before the war (see above, p. 3); by September it was complete (see below, pp. 62, 153). A third museum in Greece under American sponsorship was also taking shape; construction was proceeding on the central unit of the museum on Samothrace by the New York University excavation which was sponsored by the American School (see below, pp. 62, 208-209).

When it became clear in the summer of 1949 how many students would be needing housing, the agreement to continue to rent Loring Hall to the Embassy was canceled, leaving only the Loring Hall West House and the Gennadeion West House rented to members of the E.C.A. Mission. Occupancy of the School buildings was thus also returning to normal. In September the United States Government Commissary privileges previously extended to members of American non-profit voluntary agencies were suspended. This fact along with the opening of Loring Hall made essential the appointment of a full-time administrator of the building and meals. It will be recalled that since 1946 one of the older students had been in charge of the students’ mess. Mrs. Sarantidou, who had been in charge of running Loring Hall for the Embassy, was retained and continued for some years. The new oil-burning furnaces and water heaters which arrived on December 6 yielded welcome hot water three days a week (the water level was alarmingly low in the Marathon reservoir). With the large enrollment and those entitled to the houses occupying rooms instead, there was little if any free space, but whenever there was, the Director provided accommodation both in Loring Hall and in Oakley House at Corinth for special guests with connections past or present with the School. This hospitality to alumni and members of supporting institutions whenever possible continued for many years even after the difficulty of 1949–1950 of finding accommodation elsewhere had ceased to exist. The presence of many of these visitors added appreciably to the variety of interest and breadth of experience and scholarship offered to the resident members.

The Open Meeting at which activities of the past year were reported to the archaeological community of Athens and friends of the School was held in March and attended by Their Majesties the King and Queen and Princess Helen. The genuine interest of the Royal Court in the work of the School was made evident throughout the reign of King Paul not only by their own regular attendance at the Open Meetings and special functions of the School but also by such gracious consideration as the sending of tickets for members of the School for a special service in the Cathedral in March 1952 (see also below, p. 61).

An act passed by the Greek parliament and signed by the King in October was of life-saving assistance financially to many members of the American Voluntary Agencies in Greece. It provided to some dozen agencies certain rights of importation, official exemption from various forms of taxation and freedom from a number of complex government regulations. It stood “as a valuable and practical token of Greek appreciation of American private contribution to Greek life” at a time when the major United States Government activity tended to obscure the long-term achievements of the voluntary private institutions struggling for survival.

In his annual report Director Caskey called particular “attention to the harmony and will to cooperate that prevail, without loss of individual initiative, among all members” of the School which “had resumed its full and active life and had opened its facilities and benefits to a large number of people.” He welcomed this extension of opportunities to advance the cause of classical education in America, but he warned that maximum enrollment should be undertaken with care to maintain the opportunities for advanced research and the high standards which have distinguished the School’s work in the past.

1949–1950 U.S.A.

The year saw several changes in the Board of Trustees, a very significant one in its President. Professor Semple’s precarious health caused him to resign the Presidency, while fortunately remaining a member of the Board, where he was still to give significant service. In his stead as President there came to the post on November 21, 1949 a man who throughout his years as President and then as Chairman must have been the most active leader the Board has had, Ward M. Canaday (Pl. 9, b). He had been a member since 1937 and understood well the heavy financial responsibilities he was shouldering. From the beginning he tackled them with his characteristic driving energy and his keen interest in the School which grew to be a deep devotion. A. Winsor Weld who had served as member since 1920 and Treasurer since 1933 resigned as Secretary-Treasurer and became Vice President till 1954. It was Edward Capps, under whom Weld worked in the Red Cross during World War I, who sparked his interest in the School to which he gave such devoted service. Louis Eleazer Lord who would retire as Chairman of the Managing Committee on June 30, 1950 was elected to the Board and as Secretary-Treasurer on November 21, 1949; he would fill the office until 1954. On May 10, 1950 died Edwin S. Webster, member since 1926, Vice President 1930–1941 and President 1941–1947 (see above, p. 24).

The Managing Committee also dealt with more than the usual matters of personnel. Professor Caskey’s appointment as Director of the School was made definitely for five years beginning July 1, 1949; this would be renewed for another 5 years. The problem of Professor Weber’s appointment as Librarian of the Gennadeion had become a thorny one because of a commitment made in 1937 “for life.” At that time School appointments were usually made with indefinite term, but since meanwhile the Managing Committee had voted to make all appointments by fixed term, some adjustment was necessary. The Managing Committee had also fixed 65 as normal retirement age. After no little consideration of the matter it was voted on May 13, 1950 that Professor Weber was to retire and would be retired on July 1, 1953 at the age of 70. At the same time a new appointment was made in the United States. When the School took on the full responsibilities of its publications it became necessary that the officer in charge of the Publications Office hold a full-time staff position. Lucy T. Shoe was appointed to take office on July 1, 1950 both as Chairman of the Publications Committee and as Editor of Publications, an office which was to rank as staff member of the School. Miss Shoe would continue in that double appointment till October 1, 1972. Most significant of the new appointments was that of Charles H. Morgan as Chairman of the Managing Committee for five years; this appointment would in due time be extended to a further five years to make a decade of one of the most distinguished and effective chairmanships in the School’s history.

Mr. Lord, who throughout his chairmanship had been actively working to add to numerous existing named endowment funds, succeeded in starting up several others, all welcome but totaling a relatively small amount in relation to the School’s needs. He was assigned by the Trustees for the following year the very difficult yet essential task of soliciting potential large donors and foundations. A grant for the current 1950-51 expenses of the School from the Bollingen Foundation to assist while the campaign for endowment was under way was the first of numerous contributions to be made by the Bollingen in subsequent years for specific needs.

In his annual report the first year after the war on May 11, 1946 Mr. Lord had listed five responsibilities he believed the School must discharge: (1) publish the Gennadeion catalogue, (2) complete the publication of Corinth, (3) complete the preliminary excavation of the Agora along lines laid out by Mr. Shear, (4) build the Agora Museum, (5) make adequate provision for the Library. Of these, without any doubt dearest to his heart was no. 2. Throughout his chairmanship both during and after the war his thoughts, his talk, his letters all bore upon the Corinth publications which he longed to see complete in his chairmanship. By assigning much of the unfinished material to young scholars who he believed would see the work through and do it well, sending them out on fellowships to do the study required on the site, constant reminding, cajoling and begging, the major part of that responsibility was discharged under his leadership; although the volumes were actually published in the following few years the scholarly work was done chiefly under his impetus. Fortunately he lived to see Corinth volumes XIV Asklepieion by Carl Roebuck (1951), I, iii Monuments in the Lower Agora and North of the Archaic Temple by Robert L. Scranton (1951), II The Theatre by Richard Stillwell (1952), XII Minor Objects by Gladys R. Davidson (1952), XV, ii The Potters’ Quarter, The Terracottas by Agnes Newhall Stillwell (1953), and I, iv The South Stoa and its Roman Successors by Oscar Broneer (1954), if not I, v The Southeast Building, the Twin Basilicas, The Mosaic House by Saul S. Weinberg (1960) and the volume he most of all wished to see published, I, vi The Springs by B. H. Hill on which Mr. Hill continued to work and which could only be published after Mr. Hill’s death.

Verily Mr. Lord did accomplish his no. 2; no. 1 would take many years yet to bring to fruition; no. 5 was recognized as last on the list and capable of being put off; but on nos. 3 and 4 in the Athenian Agora excavations he set the plough in the ground. Others would carry the chief burden, but he had seen to it that the commitments were made. His own deprecating assessment of his chairmanship as “an undistinguished administration” was far too modest and unfair to himself. He had failed to measure and weigh the unparalleled problems and cares of the war and immediately post-war years during which a man less vigorous, quick thinking and acting, practically efficient, financially provident and personally tireless in his devotion could have meant disaster for the School. His faith and his vision for the future of the School were bulwarks. In several of his annual reports he expresses appreciation to the Chairman of the Publications Committee for carrying on the publications department of the School when all else was in abeyance and for emphasizing the importance of publication in the School’s over-all activity. It was characteristic of him to give credit to others for convincing him of its importance (we know his own commitment to Corinth publications); without his moral and budgetary support the notable record of publication during the war years which kept the existence of the School in people’s minds would not have been possible. In 1955 while still unduly deprecating his achievements Lord wrote to his successor Charles Morgan that he considered he had done three things of value for the School:

“1) forced on me by Ben Meritt, recognition of publication as one of the major responsibilities of the School; the establishment of our office in Princeton, the appointment of Lucy Shoe as editor and the large appropriation for publication—-this a distinctive achievement.
2) securing you [Charles Morgan] as my successor.
3) persuading Ward Canaday to take the Chairmanship of the Trustees.”