Lewisohn Stadium, and the Changing Reception of the Classics at City Colle

Classical Receptions Journal Vol 00. Iss. 0 (2021) pp. 1–28 Respice, Adspice, Prospice: The ‘Marathon Stone’, Lewisohn

Stadium, and the changing reception Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/crj/advance-article/doi/10.1093/crj/claa031/6076703 by guest on 29 September 2021 of the classics at City College in the twentieth century

Elizabeth Macaulay-Lewis* and Matthew C. Reilly†

Throughout its history, New York has received several archaeological objects as gifts, including a mid-fourth-century BCE Greek funerary stele. Dr John Huston Finley, the third president of City College, saw a stele when he was in Greece and asked the Greek Government to gift the stele to the college. The stele, dubbed the ‘Marathon Stone’ by Finley, was dedicated and proudly displayed at City College, now of the City University of New York. This article explores the gift’s context by drawing on contemporary newspaper reports, Finley’s tenuous association of the stele with the battle of Marathon, and the gifting of an archaeological object as a means for promoting ties between City College and Greece. The article then examines the context for the stele’s display, the Neo- Antique Lewisohn Stadium, and argues that the display of the stele and erection of Lewisohn Stadium both embodied Finley’s aspirations for City College to rival Columbia and New York Universities. The demise of the stadium in 1973 and the removal of the stele to a basement signaled a major shift in the signiﬁcance of the classics, classical art, and Neo-Antique architecture at City College, as well as the changing priorities of the institution.

Introduction In 1923, a mid-fourth-century BCE funerary stele, dubbed the ‘Marathon Stone’, was bestowed upon the City College of New York by the Greek government. The stele, dramatically draped in an American flag, was unveiled by Madame Constantine Xanthopoulos, the wife of the Greek Consul General at New York on November 23, accompanied by Adolph Lewisohn, who underwrote the cost of the stadium named in his honor and where the stele was displayed until 1973 (Fig. 1).

* Elizabeth Macaulay-Lewis, MA Program in Liberal Studies, The Graduate Center, The City University of New York, 365 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10016, USA. emacaulay_ [email protected] † Matthew C. Reilly, Department of Anthropology, Gender Studies, and International Studies, City College of New York, 160 Convent Ave., 7/113A North Academic Center, New York, NY 10031, USA. [email protected]

ß The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: [email protected] doi:10.1093/crj/claa031 ELIZABETH MACAULAY-LEWIS AND MATTHEW C. REILLY Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/crj/advance-article/doi/10.1093/crj/claa031/6076703 by guest on 29 September 2021

Fig. 1. Dedication of the ‘Marathon Stone’ on 23 November 1923 with Adolph Lewisohn (left) and Madame Constantine X. Xanthopoulos (right) at Lewisohn Stadium, City College of New York. Archives, The City College of New York, CUNY.

Now on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (on a long-term loan), the stele is a rare example of a pre-World War II archaeological gift from Greece.1 This article argues that the archaeological gift of the ‘Marathon Stone’, as well as its dedication and display in Lewisohn Stadium, itself a Neo-Antique construction, reflect City College President John Huston Finley’s appropriation of classical civilization, art, and architecture to position City College as the equal of Columbia and New York Universities, its better funded and more prestigious private rivals. First, the stele is briefly discussed as an archaeological object; Finley’s chance encoun- ter with the stele and the conditions of its export are also examined. Secondly, drawing on classical reception studies and postcolonial archaeological theory, the article argues Finley and City College appropriated the stele, an archaeological object, and Lewisohn Stadium — to connect City College to the classical world and to affirm its place as an important institute of higher education in New York City. In closing, we consider the decisions to remove the stele and to demolish

1 See the important, unpublished research of Nassos Papalexandrou on the gifts of archaeological objects made to US Presidents by successive Greek governments after World War II (Wong 2016).

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Fig. 2. The ‘Marathon Stone’, Marble, H. 1.36 m, W. 0.725–0.75 m. The City College of New York, CUNY. On display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, L.1994.82 (E. Macaulay-Lewis).

Lewisohn Stadium in the wake of the 1969 protests surrounding racial inequities on campus and in the curriculum.

History of the stele, Finley’s ‘discovery’, and its export The so-called ‘Marathon Stone’ has been well documented and studied.2 Details of the stele were first published in 1879;itisincludedintheInscriptiones Graecae as I.G. II2 7292, and it was found near the church of Saints Constantine and Helen at the north end of Nea Makri, a village then called Xyloklerisa, at the south end of the plain of Marathon, south of the Brexisa Marsh in Greece.3 The stone (H. 1.36 m, W. 0.725–0.75 m) is, in fact, the upper part of a large, partially preserved Attic funerary stele, hewn from Pentelic marble (Fig. 2). The stele’s back side is roughly carved. It also had a simple molding, which is now mostly missing along the front, and a dowel

2 Camp (1996: 5–10). 3 Camp (1996: 5).

3 ELIZABETH MACAULAY-LEWIS AND MATTHEW C. REILLY hole on its top, which would have likely supported a floral acroterion.4 Although the lower portion of the stone’s body and floral acroterion that would have topped the stele are no longer extant, reducing the overall stature of the marker, it is still an impressive example of a Hellenistic grave stele, several meters tall. Its most salient decorative features are rosettes located on the top of the stele (two on the front and Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/crj/advance-article/doi/10.1093/crj/claa031/6076703 by guest on 29 September 2021 one on each side) and an inscription in Greek, which gave the names of two men: Elpines, son of Elpinikos, of Probalinthos and his brother, Eunikos.5 Probalinthos was a deme of ancient Athens and part of the Attic Tetrapolis (along with Marathon, Oenoe, and Tricorythus) in the plain of Marathon. The same Elpines may be men- tioned in a list of names in another inscription, and he was probably a magistrate from Eleusis.6 On the basis of the stone’s appearance and the letter forms, Camp dated the stele to the mid-fourth century BCE,7 approximately 140 years after the famous Battle of Marathon in 490 to which President Finley had linked the stele. While Camp noted the placement of the stele in the landscape and its possible ties to Marathon, he rightly concludes that a connection to the actual battle of Marathon ‘proves somewhat tenuous’.8 Then how was this very large, but otherwise unexceptional, stele recast as the ‘Marathon Stone’? The story lies in the peripatetic inclinations of John Finley, the third President of the City College of New York from 1903 to 1913 and a trained classicist. In July 1923,9 Finley was visiting Greece in his capacity as the Vice Chairman of Near East Relief, an organization which helped support Armenian, Assyrian, Greek, and other refugees and orphans who had been displaced due to World War I, and was preparing to deliver the keynote address at the Fourth of July Dinner in Athens. Finley, an avid walker and the President of the International Pedestrians’ League, who by this time served as the editor-in-chief of the New York Times, saw the stone while walking in Greece between Marathon and Athens, retracing the famous, approximately twenty-six-mile run from Marathon to Athens undertaken by a messenger to announce the Greeks’ victory over the Persians at Marathon in 490 BCE. Having recounted his tale, the intrepid messenger promptly died.10 Herodotus gives a different account, stating that a man named Pheidippides ran from Athens to Sparta, about 150 miles, to share this news.11 These two stories have become con- flated, and now Pheidippides is often associated with the Marathon run.12 Regardless of which account of the run is accurate, Finley associated the stele that he had chanced upon with the battle of Marathon due to its proximity to the plain of

4 cf. Camp (1996: 7, figs. 3, 7, 9). 5 Camp (1996: 8). 6 I.G. II2 1702; Camp (1996: 8). 7 Camp (1996: 8). 8 Camp (1996: 10). 9 ‘Would Preserve Marathon Mound’ (1923). 10 Plut., Mor., 347c. 11 Hdt. 4.105–106. 12 Camp (1996: 5); ‘A Stele for Pheidippides’ (1989: 12–13).

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Fig. 3. Finley looking at the ‘Marathon Stone’ Archives, The City College of New York, CUNY. the battlefield and the runner’s supposed route. Finley was clearly inspired by the stone, as a photograph shows him gazing in deep concentration, while appearing to take notes (Fig. 3). He was even moved to poetry by Marathon’s blue flowers, com- posing a few lines of verse to remember the fallen dead, whose bodies had not given rise to the normal red flowers (here associated with Caesar, but also with poppies of

5 ELIZABETH MACAULAY-LEWIS AND MATTHEW C. REILLY the dead from World War I) but striking blue flowers.13 Hehopedthathemightbe able to obtain the stone for City College, because he, according to the New York Times, saw it as ‘an interesting memorial of the famous incident in history known to all high school boys and girls in America.’14 Finley effectively invented the stone’s association with Marathon, thereby also creating a ‘discovery’ of the stone — at least Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/crj/advance-article/doi/10.1093/crj/claa031/6076703 by guest on 29 September 2021 for the New Yorkers back home who read about the discovery in the New York Times. Therefore, Finley investigated the ownership of the stone, which was located on the property of a monastery. He visited the monastery’s Superior, an Orthodox Greek priest,15 to see if he could purchase the stone. As described in the New York Times, the Superior ‘did not know the stone, but graciously said that his order would be glad to give it to me [Finley] (declining to sell it), if the Ministry of Education which had control of antiquities consented.’16 Finley and the priest consulted with Georgios Chatzikyriakou, the Minister of Education, who with his antiquities spe- cialist, ‘expressed a willingness to permit the stone to go to America for the purpose named if it was not archaeologically necessary to keep it at home.’17 At the end of his visit to Greece, Finley lunched with King George II and Queen Elizabeth of Greece, as well as another unnamed priest who served as Finley’s interpreter with the Superior. Therefore, Finley was able to make his request directly to the King and Queen before departing to continue his aid work in the Near East for six weeks. Such types of archaeological gifts were not unknown. An earlier parallel may be seen in Egypt’s decision to give an obelisk to the USA in the early 1880s. Known as Cleopatra’s Needle, and located in Central Park (New York City) today, the removal of the obelisk was violently protested by the local community in Alexandria.18 There is no such objection to the removal of the stele that is documented in the sources.19 Greece had also sent a block from the Parthenon as a gift for inclusion in the Washington Monument in the late nineteenth century.20 Such archaeological gifts may have helped to cement a political relationship between the young nation of

13 The verse penned by Finley reads: ‘The flowers blow red where some great Caesar bled / But on the mound of Marathon’s brave dead / Sown by the azure sky they blossom blue / The dust of earth takes on the heaven’s hue’ (Finley 1923). There are no details in the City College Archive that record exactly when this picture was taken, presumably during Finley’s 1923 walk, or by whom. 14 ‘Marathon Stone for City College’ (1923). 15 To our knowledge, his name is not recorded in any of the archival material or contemporary reports. 16 ‘Marathon Stone for City College’ (1923). There is no byline for this article; Finley is quoted. 17 ‘Marathon Stone for City College’ (1923). 18 D’Alton (1993). 19 This is in contrast to earlier protestations of the exportation of ancient Greek antiquities under the Ottoman Empire, see Hamilakis (2011: 49–69) and Anderson (2015: 450–60) 20 Ziolkowski (1993: 374–80)

6 RESPICE, ADSPICE, PROSPICE Greece and the USA, a rising power, which viewed itself as having cultural and political ties to the democracies of Ancient Greece (discussed below). Given what it may have represented in terms of democratic ideals surrounding education, the stele, which was not archaeologically unique (many such stele exist), may have meant more to Finley than the Greek priest and officials, who approved its release. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/crj/advance-article/doi/10.1093/crj/claa031/6076703 by guest on 29 September 2021 While he was away, Dr Bert Hodge Hill, who was the director of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, researched the stone upon Finley’s request. Finley had transcribed the inscription, which could be analyzed. Hill informed Finley that it dated to 350–300 BCE and ‘had value as recalling an ancient league of which Marathon was a member.’21 Hill’s early assessment of the stone demonstrated that it did not have a direct connection to the Battle of Marathon. This detail did not diminish Finley’s enthusiasm for the stele, which he wanted to put in Lewisohn Stadium, whose design in part was inspired by the architecture of the theater at Epidaurus, and is discussed below.22 Just as Finley was to sail home from France, word came that the Greek government, having consulted with the antiquities service, had approved the export. Unlike so many objects removed from Greece at various points in its history, this stele was clearly legally given to the USA.23 No doubt, Finley’s good connections helped ease the remarkably quick shipping process. According to the New York Times:

This ancient monument from the sacred place of the heroes of Marathon will be erected in that great American stadium as a bond between the athletic youth of the greatest contemporary people and the glorious achievements of Ancient Greek civilization.24

The arrival of the stele helped to forge an imagined cultural bond between ancient Greek youths and City College,25 where its students, as is discussed below, were seen as the cultural inheritors of ancient Greek values and civilization. This bond was further underscored by the reception and unveiling ceremony organized by City College just a few short months after Finley happened upon the stone in Greece. The stele was unveiled and dedicated with much fanfare in Lewisohn Stadium on November 23, 1923.Again,theNew York Times, for which Finley began his tenure as editor-in-chief in 1921, reported that the stone dated to ca. 350 BCE and that it had ‘originally stood near the triumphal mound reared over the bodies of the 192 Athenians who perished in the decisive battle which saved the

21 ‘Marathon Stone for City College’ (1923). The correspondence between Hill and Finley held in the American School of Classical Studies in Athens does not discuss the stone. 22 ‘Marathon Stone for City College’ (1923). 23 While the stone may not have been exported under suspicious circumstances, gifting of antiquities was certainly part of uneven geopolitical relationships that saw antiquities being unofficially exchanged for foreign aid and support (see Meskell 2015, 2018). 24 ‘Marathon Stone for City College’ (1923). 25 Ibid.

7 ELIZABETH MACAULAY-LEWIS AND MATTHEW C. REILLY ancient world from Oriental domination.’26 Although not inaccurate, the tenuous connection to the Battle of Marathon was once again emphasized, as was the per- ceived difference between ‘Western’ and Oriental, or ‘Eastern’, civilizations.27 The dedication was a spectacle, worthy of any ancient triumph, games, or reli- gious procession. The 3,000 in attendance were comprised of students, faculty, and Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/crj/advance-article/doi/10.1093/crj/claa031/6076703 by guest on 29 September 2021 members of the Board of Trustees. City College President Dr Sidney Mezes, John Finley, and Greek dignitaries, including Michael Tsamados, the minister ambassa- dor of Greece in Washington, and Alexander, the first Greek Orthodox Archbishop of North and South America,28 all addressed the audience in the Great Hall. New York City grandees were also in attendance. After the delivery of speeches in the Great Hall, the speakers and attendees progressed to College Field, where the festiv- ities continued. The ceremony featured the unveiling of the stone, as noted above, followed by the swearing of a version of the Ephebic Oath, led by Charles L. Guy, Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of New York.29 The Ephebic Oath was affirmed by young Athenian men when they turned eighteen before they undertook military training. The oath ‘of devotion’ sworn by the City College students was ‘after the manner of the Athenian youths of old’, to the City of New York.30 Not only would the students ‘never bring disgrace to our City by any act of dishonesty or cow- ardice; ...we will fight for the ideals and sacred things of the City, both alone and with many; we will revere and obey the City’s laws.’31 Such an oath not only affirmed the parallels between the young men of fifth-century BCE Athens and the current students of City College, no doubt the next generation of luminaries, but it also spoke to the civic responsibility that such men were duty-bound to undertake. As the oath also noted, these young men would ‘strive unceasingly to quicken the public’s sense of civic duty; and thus, in all these ways, we will strive to transmit this City not only not less but greater, better, and more beautiful than it was transmitted to us.’32 Although the oath was explicitly aimed at the male, overwhelming white, working class, students of City College,33 the dedication of the stone and what it symbolized was seen as progressive, and, by the standards of the day, it was. William T. Collins, Acting President of the Board of Aldermen, delivered the speech that accepted the

26 ‘Marathon Stone is unveiled here’ (1923). 27 The rhetoric of saving the west from the tyrannical, autocratic east was a monumentaliz- ing trope that had already been exploited in another New York monument: the Altar of Liberty and Monument to Maryland Four Hundred in Brooklyn; see Simard (2015: 181–208). On Neo-Antique memorials in New York City, see Macaulay-Lewis (2015: 209–38); Macaulay-Lewis (2016: 447–78); Macaulay-Lewis (2018). 28 ‘Marathon Stone is unveiled here’ (1923); Reception and Unveiling of the Marathon Stone (1923). 29 Reception and Unveiling of the Marathon Stone (1923). 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid. 33 Women were not admitted to City College as undergraduates until 1930.

8 RESPICE, ADSPICE, PROSPICE gift of the stele on behalf of New York City. According to the New York Times,he used the opportunity to attack the Ku Klux Klan by ‘contrast[ing] the loyalty of the ancient Greeks to the “grotesque and clownish bigotry of the “Invisible Empire,” whose members are a menace to our civilization.”’34 Thus, the dedication of the stele and its symbolism, as well as the Oath sworn by the students, was seen as a way to Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/crj/advance-article/doi/10.1093/crj/claa031/6076703 by guest on 29 September 2021 underscore democracy and equality in New York City and the USA, as well as City College’s commitment to public education and educating people, regardless of their socio-economic status. Clearly, display of the stone at Lewisohn Stadium, whose architecture is discussed below, brought prestige to City College. While the stone was prominently displayed at Lewisohn Stadium until 1973,it does not seem to have been a major focus of subsequent celebrations for City College.35 Periodically, however, the ‘Marathon Stone’ was a focal point for celebra- tion and commemoration for Greek-Americans. In early 1940,theNew York Times reported that alumni, graduates, and teachers of Athens College, a very prominent and prestigious private high school in Greece, as well as leading members of the Greek community, met at the stadium to engage in celebrations and to recite the Ephebic Oath, which was incorrectly noted to be ‘inscribed on the stone’.36 While New York City’s population of Greek-Americans grew significantly during the twentieth century,37 the stone never became a focal point for their celebrations or expressions of identity. Geography and lack of knowledge about the stone may have played a part. The majority of Greek-Americans in New York City lived in lower Manhattan and Brooklyn and, starting in the mid-1960s, Astoria, Queens, far from upper Manhattan.38

Possessing classical antiquities Finley’s desire to possess the stone accords with many of his other actions that sought to improve the standing of the college. Martin Gettleman, writing an account of Finley’s presidency, noted that ‘during Finley’s years the chief problem was the low repute of the College, the consequent sense of inferiority this bred among the students and faculty.’39 Unsurprisingly, Finley oversaw major changes to the college that aimed to elevate the quality of the education its students received and to support faculty through reduced teaching loads and increased pay, as well as to enhance the prestige and reputation of the college within the city and nationally. Many of these improvements took physical form. During his presidency, the college, as detailed in

34 ‘Marathon Stone is unveiled here’ (1923). 35 It is not discussed in major US-based Greek language newspapers, such as the Atlantis and National Herald (or Ethnikos Kyrix), during the twentieth century. 36 ‘Meet at Marathon Stone’ 1940. 37 Scourby (1984: 43, 50). 38 Scourby (1984: 43, 46, 50). 39 Gettleman (1970: 427).

9 ELIZABETH MACAULAY-LEWIS AND MATTHEW C. REILLY Paul Pearson’s 150-year architectural history40 of the former Free Academy, completed its move from its 1847 home at 23rd Street and Lexington Avenue to Convent Avenue in upper Manhattan. At the heart of the new campus were the glorious Gothic Revival buildings (1908), built by George B. Post, who had designed the New York Stock Exchange’s new building (1906). Finley also raised the funds for Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/crj/advance-article/doi/10.1093/crj/claa031/6076703 by guest on 29 September 2021 Lewisohn Stadium, which was to serve as City College’s venue for athletics and commencement, as well as a public theater where New Yorkers could enjoy outdoor entertainment; the stadium was completed and dedicated in 1915 after Finley’s tenure. In 1923, the ‘Marathon Stone’ was then dedicated and displayed in Lewisohn Stadium. The desire to possess an ancient Greek stele and to display it in a stadium, whose design was inspired by ancient forms, might seem surprising, but the classical world was routinely appropriated by individuals in the United States and by Europeans before them. Of course, Europeans have always had an interest in the ‘classical world’ — ancient Greece and Rome — which was seen at various points in European history as a model and clear ancestor of European culture. The ‘classical world’ played an important role in the foundation myths and conceptions of many different European nations and their colonizing agenda during the age of discovery, starting in the late fifteenth century.41 In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the British, for example, saw their own subjection and colonization by Rome as part of their means for becoming civilized. This process, in turn, provided justification for ‘civilizing’ the vast sways of culturally diverse people under the British empire.42 The possession of antiquities from the Greco-Roman world, Egypt, the ancient Near East, and beyond also was fundamentally part of this process.43 As France, Germany, and Britain expanded their territorial holdings or spheres of influence across the Mediterranean, their armies, scholars, and gentlemen sought out antiquities to bring back as the treasures for the newly created universal museums in Paris, Berlin, and London.44 Just as art was used in these new museums, classical history, politics, and philosophy played an important role in the development of European culture for centuries. This interest in the classical world was transferred to the USA. As Caroline Winterer has shown, classics has played an important role in the education and cultural life of the United States since the nation’s inception.45 The study of Latin and Greek formed a core part of higher education in the eighteenth and early nineteenth

40 Pearson (1997). 41 Dietler (2010: 27–54). 42 Bradley (2010); Hingley (2013). 43 On the competitive hunt for antiquities by Western powers in the Ottoman Empire, see Bahrani, Eldem, and C¸elik (2011). 44 The founding of the British Museum in 1753 is a quintessential example of the inextric- able links between colonialism, collecting, and the forging of Western identities rooted in classical antecedents (see Delbourgo 2019). 45 Winterer (2002); see also Richard (2008).

10 RESPICE, ADSPICE, PROSPICE centuries, as ministers needed these two languages in order to read the Bible. Classical politics and ideals were similarly foundational; first, the Roman Republic in the Revolutionary era and then Greece, especially fifth-century Periclean Athens, in the first half of the nineteenth century pervaded both the popular and high culture of USA.46 While classical texts, as well as philosophical and political ideas, influenced Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/crj/advance-article/doi/10.1093/crj/claa031/6076703 by guest on 29 September 2021 the collective conscience of the young nation, there was a marked shift after the Civil War.47 As industrialization gained pace, there was an emphasis on more practical courses of study that focused on agriculture, science, engineering, and other disci- plines that would drive the American economy.48 Rather than being the be-all and end-all of higher education, as Winterer notes, ‘Classical study bestowed something higher than vocational or exclusively scientific preparation: it offered culture’ (her italics).49 Classics now provided an effective contrast to ‘materialism, industrialism, and civic degeneracy.’50 Additionally, a classical education, through its conveyance of culture upon those being educated, could serve as a moral alternative to the ethical problems of science and social problems caused by industrialization.51 In addition to this important role, as Winterer notes, at the end of the nineteenth century: classicism had pooled in the custodial hothouses of high culture that we know as some of the monuments of the Gilded Age—museums, libraries, and college and university campuses. There classical antiquity flourished, but it also stood quite apart from the body of images and associations commonly available to Americans. Classical knowledge became esoteric, its possessor marked as a person of rarefied culture...Classical Greece and Rome moved out of the realm of the immediately relevant into the world of elite culture, where they remain today.52

If a classical education was the pinnacle of elite culture, then a university with elite- status ambitions could appropriate the language, art, and architecture of classical culture to achieve these ends. Long before the late nineteenth century, when elite museums and educational and cultural institutions appropriated classical architectural forms, the reinterpretation of ancient architecture was central to the development of the USA’s and New York City’s architectural traditions.53 The architecture of antiquity — be it Egyptian, classical, or ancient Near Eastern — provided flexible, mutable, and ‘fluid’54 forms and ideas that could be used to express everything from technological advancement and heroic valor to the principles of democracy and the

46 Winterer (2002: 62–66) 47 Ibid. (99–117). 48 Ibid (99). 49 Ibid. (110). 50 Ibid. (110). 51 Ibid. (132). 52 Ibid. (142). 53 Macaulay-Lewis (in press). 54 Holmes (2018: 141–50).

11 ELIZABETH MACAULAY-LEWIS AND MATTHEW C. REILLY embrace of wealth and luxury.55 This type of architecture has been termed Neo-Antique rather than neoclassical by von Stackelberg and Macaulay-Lewis. The term is an attempt to demonstrate that there are interconnections in the appropriation of classical, Egyptian, and ancient Near Eastern architecture, and to work towards more sophisticated understandings of the reinterpretation of classical archi- Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/crj/advance-article/doi/10.1093/crj/claa031/6076703 by guest on 29 September 2021 tecture in the USA and Europe.56 More inclusive than neoclassicism,57 it aims to embrace the diversity of ancient architectural forms and the highly original ways in which architects and patrons employed them to create novel architecture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Archaeology, as well as archaeological knowledge and objects, were central to the reception of ancient art and architecture and the creation of Neo-Antique architecture in the USA.58 Initially, most Americans only knew about major archaeological sites, like the Parthenon, through publications like James Stuart and Nicholas Revett’s four-volume The Antiquities of Athens (1726–1816). Both Thomas Jefferson and Ithiel Town, the famed early nineteenth-century engineer and architect, owned copies of this important work; Jefferson’s copy (and other books about classical and Palladian architecture) would be sold to the Library of Congress in 1815,while Town’s library of over eleven-thousand volumes was accessible to other architects.59 As excavations and travel expanded during the course of the nineteenth century, Americans had more first-hand experience and knowledge of ancient sites. Archaeological accuracy, which was valued in major early constructions, like the Parthenon-inspired Custom House on Wall Street,60 was of increasing importance to the creation of such buildings. The display of the ‘Marathon Stone’, in Lewisohn stadium, provides a rich opportunity to explore how the reception of classical culture — specifically classical art, architecture, civilization — functioned in John Finley’s aspirations for City College as an elite yet accessible institute of learning in New York City.

‘Knowledge for the People’: classics and the making of the free academy Even before the erection of Lewisohn Stadium and the display of the ‘Marathon Stone’, City College had used classical ideals to articulate its educational ambitions. The establishment of the Free Academy in 1847, which would become the College of the City of New York in 1866, and then the City College of New York in 1929,was born out of a need for free education for New York’s working-class population in the 1840s. According to S. Willis Rudy’s comprehensive history of the college, propo- nents of the idea, including politicians, educators, and labor activists, drew on

55 Macaulay-Lewis (in press). 56 von Stackelberg and Macaulay-Lewis (2017: 1–23). 57 Ibid. 58 Macaulay-Lewis (in press); Morrone (2018: 19–20). 59 Morrone (2018: 23–24). 60 Known today as Federal Hall.

12 RESPICE, ADSPICE, PROSPICE universal claims of rights to a free liberal education to bolster their case to establish the first ever municipally funded institute of higher education. Support for such an institution reached a fever pitch in the 1840s. New York merchant and politician Townsend Harris would eventually lead the charge, supporting a vote that saw New York residents overwhelmingly approve the action.61 Before the physicality of the Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/crj/advance-article/doi/10.1093/crj/claa031/6076703 by guest on 29 September 2021 City College stadium would pay homage to the classics, calls for universal liberal education hinted at ideological parallels to classical democracy. In keeping with that tradition, certain inalienable rights, much like the right to vote on the matter, were only extended to property-owning white men. Here again the tension between the championed democratic principles of accessible public education confronts the real- ities of exclusion along lines of race and gender when it came to student admissions. Discontent surrounding admissions policies and curriculum would persist well into the twentieth century, sparking movements and activism on campus like the events we discuss in more detail below. Following the vote, the Commissioners of Common Schools officially adopted the resolution to establish the Free Academy in June of 1847. The official opening of the Academy, then located on the corner of Lexington Avenue and 23rd Street, followed two years later with much fanfare, including a choral performance of an ode penned specifically for the occasion entitled ‘Knowledge for the People’.62 It was soon there- after, several decades before receiving and displaying the ‘Marathon Stone’, that the Free Academy would first demonstrate, in material form, an affinity for the classics to go along with the classically informed ethos for democratic education for citizens. The most notable of these dialogues with antiquity was the adoption of a Latin motto and seal.63 In 1866, the Free Academy was renamed The College of the City of New York. In part, this name change was meant to signal that the institution was one of higher education, not merely a secondary school.64 With this change, a new motto and seal were devised. Professor Charles Anthon of Columbia University,65 anumis- matist, was tasked with developing a motto and seal.66 He suggested the seal be composed of Latin words, Respice, Adspice, Prospice (look behind, look here, look ahead), that framed three heads facing in three different directions (Fig. 4). The seal was set within a frame that stated the college’s name in Latin (Collegium Urbis Novi Eboraci) in an abbreviated format. The complete inscription read, ‘COLLEGII

61 Rudy (1949: 21). 62 Ibid. (1949: 1). 63 In 1852, the Academy received a collection of excellent casts of the Parthenon marbles, including metopes and parts of the frieze, from businessman Charles Lupp. Considered essential for studying classical art and in studio art, these casts were a highly valuable education asset. It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss the casts in detail; however, for more on these casts, see Ring (2017) and Senie (2017), and about casts in American collections, see Wallach (1998: 38–56). 64 Rudy (1949: 89). 65 For a biography of Anthon, see Sypher (2015: 201). 66 Rudy (1949: 105).

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Fig. 4. The Seal and Motto of City College, The City of New York.

URBIS NOV EBORAC SIGILLUM MDCCCXLVII’ (the seal of the College of the City of New York) and included the college’s 1847 founding date in Roman numerals. The three figures are not explicitly identified in any archival material. Therefore, these three figures could be interpreted as personifications of the past, present, and future; perhaps they embody the linked goals of City’s College motto (and by exten- sion its educational principles) — to study the past, to understand the present, and to prepare for the future. The two side heads also have a Janus-like appearance, looking upon the past and future; the third head may therefore mark an improvement — that City College is also committed to the present. If these figures can be thought of as personifications, then Anthon was engaging with a trend that was emerging and would become extremely popular during the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: the use of classicizing personifications to embody the ideals of a college, city, institution, or nation. There were obvious uses of personifications, like the Statue of Liberty, which embodied the democratic values of the USA. Columbia, another invented American personification, who was once depicted as an ‘Indian Princess’, in the words of E. McClung Fleming, had been transformed into a ‘Greek Goddess’, appearing at the Chicago’s World Fair in 1893.67 In New York City, there were lesser known examples; an invented American personification of the Genius of

67 Fleming (1965: 65–81); Fleming (1967: 37–66).

14 RESPICE, ADSPICE, PROSPICE Patriotism appears in two sculptural groups on the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Arch in Brooklyn (finished 1892), while more traditional personifications, like Valor, Fame, and Justice, appear on Washington Arch (also 1892).68 An emblem or seal is a highly recognizable image. By having a seal and a motto in Latin with classical personifications, City College further signaled that it was no lon- Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/crj/advance-article/doi/10.1093/crj/claa031/6076703 by guest on 29 September 2021 ger an academy or secondary school, but a full-fledged, accredited college.69 Previous to this, as far as can be discerned, the Free Academy did not have a seal or motto. Furthermore, the use of a Latin motto helped City College to assert its position as an elite institution.

John Finley’s vision for the college prior to the arrival of the ‘Marathon Stone’ As the image of the college and its mission expanded, so, too, did the need for physical space. The building, designed by James Renwick Jr to house 400 undergraduates, was hosting over 800 students by the 1870s and was rundown and out-of-date.70 By the end of the nineteenth century, with the support of wealthy and influential alumni, the elevated Northern Manhattan site near Hamilton Heights was secured for the home of what would soon be the City College of New York. It was not until 1903, however, that a groundbreaking ceremony would take place for the construction of the new campus. The year also marked the arrival of President John Finley and a more ambitious vision for the institution’s future. According to S. Willis Rudy, Finley, though not directly involved in the initial design of the new campus, visual- ized its positioning ‘as the Acropolis of the city, its sacred enclosure, its place of wor- ship and of defense, like the crowned hill of ancient Athens.’71 Though the main campus buildings themselves reflected a Gothic influence then common across British-inspired American universities,72 the crowning architectural achievement was the Gothic Revival Great Hall, later rebranded Shepard Hall, containing a stun- ning 1908 mural, The Graduate, by Edwin H. Blashfield that captured the college’s educational spirit and classical roots.73

68 Macaulay-Lewis (2016: 447–78); Macaulay-Lewis (2015: 231–33). Victories appear on both arches. 69 West Point, or the United States Military Academy, and the Naval Academy are notable exceptions in the use of academy’ to denote an institution of tertiary or higher education. Many of the USA’s elite private schools are called academies (e.g. Philips Andover Academy and Philips Exeter Academy). 70 Pearson (1997: 5). 71 Rudy (1949: 266). 72 In 1897, the College Board’s Subcommittee on Site and Building held a design contest for the new campus. Interestingly, architect George Post’s entry was a classically influenced Beaux-Arts scheme that took home runner-up honors (Pearson 1997: 8). 73 A 1908 mural, The Graduate (45 Â 22 ft), is located in the Great Hall and engaged with Renaissance masterpieces like The School of Athens and included classicizing female and male personifications. For more details on this work, see Weiner (2009); Rudy (1949: 260).

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Fig. 5. Lewisohn Stadium with the ‘Marathon Stone’. Archives, The City College of New York, CUNY.

As noted above, the ‘Marathon Stone’ was displayed in the monumental Neo- Antique Lewisohn Stadium, whose funding and construction Finley himself had overseen.74 The twentieth century also saw rising popularity of college athletics. John Finley decided that the college needed new athletic facilities. The city agreed to give him a small park, where a stadium could be situated between 136th and 138th Streets and between Amsterdam and Convent Avenues, and some funds towards grading the land.75 Adolph Lewisohn, a German immigrant who had made his for- tune in mining and finance, underwrote the cost of stadium, named in his honor. The architect Arnold W. Brunner (1857–1925) started constructing the stadium in 1913 and completed it in 1915. The stadium was composed of a single level of seating that overlooked a playing field. A simple Doric portico lined the top of the seats with unadorned roundels in the entablature that aligned with each column. Two Doric pavilions, which later served as offices, were located at the end of the seats (Fig. 5). Finley had proposed the stadium’s classical design, inspired by a visit to Rome.76 During the June 1915 dedication of the stadium, he noted that:

74 This section draws upon Macaulay-Lewis (in press). 75 Rudy (1949: 327). 76 Pearson (1997: 24).

16 RESPICE, ADSPICE, PROSPICE This structure has the outlook of the theatre near St. Onofrio [on the Janiculum Hill], but it has the sweep of the ellipse of the Coliseum, and it has, as I recall, the diameter dimension of the great theatre at Epidauros. Many years ago I heard a lecture on this theatre and was greatly encouraged in the planning for the City College or theatre or stadium.77 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/crj/advance-article/doi/10.1093/crj/claa031/6076703 by guest on 29 September 2021 Finley thought that Lewisohn Stadium was the ‘most attractive...of New World sta- diums’, rivaling the theater in Epidaurus. Finley acknowledged that the stadium was not a proper theater or amphitheater; he calls it a ‘hemi-stade’ and acknowledged that ‘it is half a ‘amphi.’’ 78 Rather than copying an ancient model, it was inspired by the entertainment venues of antiquity. Appropriately, the stadium’s inaugural event was a production of Euripides’ Trojan Woman, and Shakespearean productions followed. The college immediately put the stadium to use, hosting football matches and athletics competitions regularly, as well as City College’s graduation ceremony. The stadium was always intended to serve the public; Lewisohn noted in the New York Times:

I would like to see the Stadium, busy from morning to evening, Sundays and holidays included. Of course, the City College students have to use it for instruction; I would like to have it for the benefit of everybody—for all of the people of the city—if possible...The whole thing is this, that while it is the City College Stadium, it is also going to be the Stadium of the City of New York.79

Until it was razed in 1973, Lewisohn Stadium was, according to the New York Times, the working man’s ‘outdoor Carnegie Hall...with the patrons in shirtsleeves and work pants.’ In 1927, George Gershwin played his new ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ here; Marian Anderson and Eugene Ormandy gave their first concerts here. 80 The fact that Lewisohn Stadium was considered a public amenity speaks not only to its function, but also reflects the potency of Neo-Antique forms in New York City’s urban fabric. Since the city’s inception, architects and patrons had appropriated and reinterpreted Greco-Roman and Egyptian forms in New York’s buildings.81 In certain cases, specific Roman, Greek, or Egyptian forms were used to

77 The City College Stadium Dedication Pamphlet (1915). 78 Ibid. 79 ‘Stadium for the Whole City’ (1915). 80 ‘Lewisohn Stadium, Center for Culture, to Be Razed’ (1973). 81 Located at St Paul’s on Broadway, the Montgomery Monument, dedicated to General Montgomery, who was killed in action at the Battle of Quebec (31 December 1775), is the first memorial erected by the USA. It was composed of a pyramid, a funerary urn on a half column, the pileus (cap of freedom), Hercules’s club, palm and cypress branches, as well as a Latin inscription, Libertas Restituta (Liberty Restored). The use of Roman rather than Christian symbolism lies in the Founding Fathers’ embrace of the ideals of the Enlightenment. This monument marked the beginning of an inventive

17 ELIZABETH MACAULAY-LEWIS AND MATTHEW C. REILLY convey specific meanings, and this can be seen in the appropriation of classical architecture in buildings associated with cultural pursuits, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and the New York Zoological Society (better known as the Bronx Zoo), as well as other universities and cultural institutions in New York City.82 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/crj/advance-article/doi/10.1093/crj/claa031/6076703 by guest on 29 September 2021

The classical in New York city’s university architecture Finley was rather late to the game of using architecture to elevate the status of his institution. New York and Columbia Universities had already co-opted classical architecture to articulate their ambition each to be the greatest university in New York City.83 Stanford White’s Gould Memorial Library (which he started to design in the winter of 1894–1895) would serve as the centerpiece of Henry Mitchell MacCracken’s new uptown University Heights Campus in the Bronx,84 where MacCracken was relocating most of the undergraduate programs of re- cently rebranded New York University (Fig. 6). Dedicated in honor of the robber baron Jay Gould, due to a significant gift by his daughter Helen Gould Shepard, the building is a purposeful reinterpretation of the Pantheon, perhaps the most famous building from the ancient Roman world.85 The exterior had a double pediment, while the interior was decorated with green Connemara marble columns and Tiffany glass. A Dutch metal painted dome sprung from a walkway where statues of the muses and Mnemosyne, the personification of memory, were positioned.86 Inscriptions from Milton and the Bible in English, as well as the names of great thinkers, philosophers, scholars, scientists, and poets, line the interior to inspire the undergraduates to the great academic achievements, in a way that the Blashfield mural was intended to do in the Great Hall at City College. Flanking the library on the west is the Hall of Fame of Great Americans, a long portico. In the Hall of Fame, students, scholars, and the general public could walk and gaze upon busts of great men and women whose contributions to the USA had been deemed so important that they had been elected to be included here.87 Constructed of Roman brick and aggrandized with pediments, the Halls of Languages and Philosophy complement the library and Hall of Fame and together

tradition of engagement with antiquity, as well as other historical periods, that would continue throughout New York City’s history. See Webster (2015); McGowan (2018: 215–17, figs 9.3–9.4). 82 Macaulay-Lewis (in press). 83 Macaulay-Lewis (2018: 85–113); Macaulay-Lewis (in press). 84 White had started on the design of the campus in 1891. On the campus’s chronology, see Macaulay-Lewis (2018: 87). 85 Kostof (1995: 217); Thomas (1997, 163); Claridge (2010: 226–34). 86 Macaulay-Lewis (2018: 98–101, fig. 4.8). 87 MacCracken (1901).

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Fig. 6. Gould Memorial Library, University Heights Campus, New York University, now Bronx Community College, CUNY (E. Macaulay-Lewis). form a campus where classical architecture bestowed cultural and academic status upon the buildings. Like Lewisohn Stadium, the Hall of Fame was designed as a public amenity for the city. It also positioned New York University as a cultural and historical

19 ELIZABETH MACAULAY-LEWIS AND MATTHEW C. REILLY arbitrator.88 In 1970, New York University sold its Uptown campus to the New York City Dormitory Authority, and the campus was then sold to the City University of New York, which housed Bronx Community College (BCC) here. Today, these statues, which are overwhelming of white men, are noted to be difficult for the diverse students of BCC to connect with.89 The busts of Robert E. Lee and Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/crj/advance-article/doi/10.1093/crj/claa031/6076703 by guest on 29 September 2021 Thomas Jonathan ‘Stonewall’ Jackson, the Confederate Generals, were removed in 2017.90 These changes echo earlier changes at City College’s campus discussed below and reflect ongoing conversations and actions surrounding monuments in the USA and beyond. Almost simultaneously, Charles McKim, White’s partner and rival, designed the Low Library at Columbia University in 1894 (construction started in 1895).91 Columbia’s ambitious president Seth Low underwrote the construction costs and dedicated the library in honor of his father. Low and Columbia were in direct compe- tition with MacCracken and NYU for academic prestige, students, and donors. The Low Library articulated Columbia’s claim to be a leading educational institution.92 Just as the Gould Memorial Library was situated at the center of NYU’s campus with commanding views over Upper Manhattan and the Bronx, the Low Library was centrally positioned in Columbia’s campus, atop an elevated platform, gazing over Manhattan (Fig. 7). The libraries are both conceived as memorials for deceased men and serve as the focal point of academic campuses, both situated atop the hill, far above the bustling metropolis.93 In the Low Library, the Pantheon’s dome was combined with the architecture of Roman porticos and public bath buildings. The fac¸ade is composed of a deca- style portico, which supports an entablature where an inscription details Columbia’s long history. A statue of a seated, robed woman, Alma Mater,is positioned in front of the library, another appropriation of classical ideals and sculpture. Built on a Greek-cross plan, the library was composed of a central ro- tunda that served as the great reading room. Four side large, Roman bath-style windows provide natural light. The ceiling was painted blue, like the night sky, and a globe hung to emulate the moon. Only four of the sixteen planned statues were erected.94

88 Macaulay-Lewis (2018: 104–5). 89 Figures represented include John Adams, Alexander Graham Bell, Daniel Boone, Andrew Carnegie, Grover Cleveland, Thomas Edison, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Abraham Lincoln, James Madison, Samuel Morse, Thomas Paine, William Penn, Theodore Roosevelt, William Tecumseh Sherman, George Washington, and Eli Whitney, among many others, see Dolnick (2009) and Macaulay-Lewis (2018: 108). 90 Nir and Otterman (2017). 91 Broderick (2010: 394–99). 92 Broderick (2010: 395). 93 Macaulay-Lewis 2018 (106–107). 94 Macaulay-Lewis 2018 (106).

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Fig. 7. Low Library, Columbia University. Detroit Publishing Company, c. 1905. The Library of Congress.

The Low Library worked poorly for its purpose, and Columbia’s symbolic academic center was soon denuded of books and transformed into an event space; legendary architectural critic, Lewis Mumford, once quipped that it has ‘ample space for everything except books.’95 In the early 1930s, Butler library was erected across the quad to serve as Columbia’s primary library. The north fac¸adeofButlerlibrary was composed of a monumental Ionic colonnade with large recessed windows. The appearance immediately recalls the Greek stoas where philosophers strolled, an apt image for a university library. The inscriptions on the entablature name famed Roman and Greek historians, philosophers, and statesmen, including Homer, Herodotus, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Cicero, and Vergil among others, who served as models for Columbia’s students. The rest of the McKim- designed campus was composed largely of brick structures with classical pediments and entablatures, bringing visual coherence to the campus and affirming the classical nature of the campus.96 The use of ancient architecture enabled Finley, Low, and MacCracken to give permanent form to their ambitions for their institutions. For City College, the

95 Mumford (1955: 64). 96 On Columbia’s campus, see Bergdoll, Haswell, and Parks (1997).

21 ELIZABETH MACAULAY-LEWIS AND MATTHEW C. REILLY Harvard of the Proletariat, the public display of the ‘Marathon Stone’ in the Neo- Antique stadium at its new uptown campus were physical ways that Finley could demonstrate that City College was the equal of its more socially prestigious rivals, and that public education was as vital to a city as any private educational institution. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/crj/advance-article/doi/10.1093/crj/claa031/6076703 by guest on 29 September 2021 Classics and conflict at City College: the transformation of an institution As the college’s new campus was under construction and Finley was beginning his tenure as president, the surrounding neighborhood of Harlem was in the midst of radical transformation. Having previously been a rural grazing and agricultural landscape inhabited by Jewish and Italian migrants, the opening of the 135th Street subway station sparked an influx of Black settlers from downtown New York City, the American South, and the Caribbean. The year that the ‘Marathon Stone’ was gifted by the Greeks to Finley and the college, 1923, was part of the decade that witnessed Harlem’s cultural explosion and renaissance that would lead to the neighborhood being crowned the Black Mecca.97 These processes and happenings are seldom placed in dialogue, despite unfolding within blocks of one another. In closing, we discuss how the college’s classics-influenced identity and landscape would come into conflict with a student body and community that demanded change. Despite the democratic principles boasted by the Free Academy’s founders that would carry forward into the twentieth century, City College, like many colleges and universities across the country, was open to almost exclusively young white men and then women. While it certainly served as the vanguard for accessible and free education for the city’s poor, immigrants, and an increasing number of Jewish students when other universities refused to adopt a sectarian identity, race and gender remained barriers, albeit unofficial ones, for many New York City residents well into the twentieth century.98 From 1920 to 1930, Harlem’s Black population had skyrocketed from roughly 73,000 to about 200,000.99 Residents of this Black metropolis, many desiring accessible higher education, were largely excluded from the Harvard of the Proletariat in view on top of the hill. The college, while admitting Black students throughout the nineteenth century, remained a largely white (male) space in the midst of a thriving and often racially contentious Black neighbourhood.100 Tensions mounted over the next several decades, eventually leading to a sit-in. On 22 April 1969 a group of Black and Puerto Rican students, joined in solidar- ity by white students, occupied campus’s Klapper Hall for two weeks, demanding changes to curriculum and enrollment policies. The student activists, like those who were similarly confronting inequities across campuses around the country,

97 Anderson (1981); Lewis (1994). 98 Traub (1994). 99 Robertson (2013: 186). 100 Robertson, White, and Garton (2013); Traub (1994).

22 RESPICE, ADSPICE, PROSPICE noted that while Harlem was 98% Black, the Black and Puerto Rican student body of City College made up only 9% of its overall population.101 The movement, which could certainly be viewed as unfolding within broader racial justice movements across the country, would ultimately lead to the passing of an open enrollment policy for CUNY the following year, securing more inclusiveness and local Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/crj/advance-article/doi/10.1093/crj/claa031/6076703 by guest on 29 September 2021 students on campus. This policy was one of the most important demands made by the student activists, but their grievances also included calls to change a curriculum that they felt reflected one of the inherent problems of a classics-influenced educational model. The demands, widely circulated and published in The Campus undergraduate newspaper,102 included multiple references to a line of study long denied to City College students. Among other things, the students demanded a school of Black and Puerto Rican studies, and that all education majors be required to take Black and Puerto Rican history, noting that ‘for the first time we will be able to study our true past history in relation to our present condition. We will know our heroes and our culture which has been denied us by the present racist society.’103 The demands surrounding curricular changes have been noted to be an essential transformative step towards integrating minority voices and communities into dis- courses surrounding educational excellence.104 While most of the action associated with the sit-in occupation occurred in Klapper Hall, other parts of the campus were affected, including fire damage to Finley Hall.105 It is unlikely that students targeted the building named after the college’s former president, but Finley’s literal mark on the campus, and the afterlife of his classics model, is noteworthy. Lewisohn Stadium was neither the focus of protests nor violence, unlike other Neo-Antique buildings on other city campuses, such as the Gould Memorial Library. The auditorium in the basement of the Gould Memorial Library was heavily damaged by a fire caused by a Molotov cocktail thrown into the building in 1968 in response to the firing of John F. Hatchett, the director of Afro-American Student Center.106 Perhaps, the fact that Martin Luther King Jr gave City College’s 1963 commencement address at Lewisohn Stadium, and that it had always been open to all of New York’s population for affordable concerts, may have meant that it was seen as a symbol of inclusion rather than elitism and exclusion. That said, the larger, changing student body population of the 1960s also had different needs from the students of the early twentieth century. This is evident in a

101 ‘Five Demands’ (1969). 102 Sasmor (1969). 103 These demands and their explanations were printed and distributed on a flyer. The full flyer, with expanded descriptions of the ‘Five Demands’, can be found at https:// cdha.cuny.edu/items/show/6952 [accessed 16 November 2020]. It should also be noted that one of the direct outcomes of the strike was the creation of City College’s Black Studies Department, now a Program on campus. 104 Ferguson (2012: 93–97); Jordan (1989). 105 Van Nort (2007: 57). 106 Macaulay-Lewis (2018: 101).

23 ELIZABETH MACAULAY-LEWIS AND MATTHEW C. REILLY very different form of campus destruction that unfolded a few short years after the student movement: the razing of Lewisohn Stadium. The stadium had fallen into disrepair by the late 1960s, no longer a shining public beacon on the hill, it was now a decrepit, rundown structure with significant deferred maintenance. Attendance at the concerts had also started to drop off steeply after 1966.107 The decision was Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/crj/advance-article/doi/10.1093/crj/claa031/6076703 by guest on 29 September 2021 made to demolish Lewisohn Stadium in 1973 and replace it with the $125 million North Academic Center,108 which currently houses the Cohen library, the School of Education, the Colin Powell School, and other important student services. With the move to open enrollment, City College needed more academic facilities than a stadium for athletics. The most obvious symbol of Finley’s ambitions is now gone. The ‘Marathon Stone’, our point of departure that was featured prominently for decades at Lewisohn Stadium, was unceremoniously stored in a basement during the demolition process.109 After collecting dust for roughly two decades, the stone was placed on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1993, where it was put on display the following year in the gallery of Greek and Roman art.110

Conclusions The entangled social and political histories of multiple New York City institutions take material form in objects like the ‘Marathon Stone’. Its story connects archaeology, classics, and education to reveal the colonial — particularly racial and socioe- conomic — tensions inherent in institutional landscapes and memory. If the City College of New York was built on a model that idealized and idolized a particular rending of classical education and democracy, embittered students and community members recognized the problematic undertones of white privilege in higher education well before substantial calls for decolonization within the fields of archaeology111 and classics.112 One of our goals, therefore, has been to put classical antiquities within the context of their display, social histories, and broader ideological significance. This provides both more depth to life histories of classical antiquities and contributes to decolonization efforts in how the material past is interpreted through the lens of the recent past and present. Decolonization, as we approach it, goes beyond the

107 Rimer (1985: 1). 108 Ibid. 109 Avallone (1973). The Parthenon casts were also tucked away and were almost destroyed, until they were restored and erected in the Olympic Tower on Fifth Avenue (Senie 2017). Since 2017, they have been housed in the Lobby and Mina Rees Library of the Graduate Center, CUNY. 110 Mertens (1994). 111 Calls for decolonization have been particularly potent from Indigenous archaeologies; see Atalay (2006); Smith and Wobst (2005); Oland, Hart, and Frink (2012); Bruchac, Hart, and Wobst (2010); see also Lydon and Rizvi (2010); Schmidt and Pikirayi (2016). 112 Debates over decolonization in classics were largely prompted by the publication of Black Athena by Martin Bernal (1987, 1991, 2006) and the responses to it, such as Lefkowitz and Maclean-Rogers (1996) and Lefkowitz (1997).

24 RESPICE, ADSPICE, PROSPICE important role of Black classicism — here referring to the contribution of non-white academics and other scholarly considerations and the influence of classics on African Americans113 — and demonstrates how challenges to Eurocentric conceptualizations of classicism can be observed in social histories of the material past. Shifting visions of the ethos, policies, and curriculum of accessible public educa- Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/crj/advance-article/doi/10.1093/crj/claa031/6076703 by guest on 29 September 2021 tion coincided with material transformations on the campus of City College. As students demanded a more racially equitable higher education institution, so, too, was a new material landscape necessary. The City College student movement of 1969 demonstrates that antiquities like the ‘Marathon Stone’, and their modern offspring like Lewisohn Stadium, are more than an exalted example of Greek craftsmanship and civilization. A short distance away from where the stone is now viewed by millions of tourists at the Met, the campus of City College harbors few material references to its classical inspiration. The democratic principles of publicly supported education, however, remain alive and well in those dedicated to public institutions of higher education. The landscape histories and object trajectories discussed here can therefore be powerful tools of institutional memory that usher in more inclusive approaches to the classics that promote democratic values of access and opportunity while eschewing discriminatory colonial legacies.

Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank Matthew McGowan, Kelly Nguyen-Sutherland, Lotti Silber, and Jared Simard for their insightful comments on earlier drafts of this article. Several discussions with Nassos Papalexandrou were also beneﬁcial for our thinking. The assistance of the librarians and archivists at City College, especially Sydney Van Nort and Dalton Whiteside, and at the Department of Greek and Roman Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, respectively, were invaluable. We would also like to thank the journal editors. All errors remain our own.

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