Faces Behind the Façades
Statesmen and Scholars. Entrepreneurs and Visionaries. Writers and Artists. More than 50 buildings on campus serve as lasting tributes to individuals who shaped not only Hamilton’s history, but in many cases the history of America.
Here’s a glimpse into the lives of just a few of our buildings’ namesakes.
BABBITT RESIDENCE HALL
“We start together today, all of us, in the design of a joint experience which we call education…” With these words, Samuel F. Babbitt, president of Kirkland College, welcomed the first class of 170 Kirkland women who were gathered in the Chapel. The date was Sept. 15, 1968.
Following several positions in higher education administration, Babbitt came to the Hill in 1965 to be Kirkland’s first (and ultimately only) president. At the time, Kirkland was an institution that existed only on paper, its grounds an apple orchard. Babbitt embraced the vision of a college that fostered independence, creativity, and self-reliance, and helped build and shape the college for women that operated under his leadership until its merger with Hamilton in 1978, the same year one of its residence halls, formerly known as “B” building, was named in his honor.
After leaving the Hill, Babbitt accepted a position as vice president for program, planning, and resources at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. In 1983, he became vice president for development at Brown University, retiring in 1993.
AZEL BACKUS HOUSE
One of the oldest buildings on campus, Backus House was built in 1802 as a boardinghouse for Hamilton-Oneida Academy students. The trustees had intended to continue its use as a lodging for undergraduates, but decided instead to promise the house to Hamilton’s first president, Azel Backus, in order to entice the New England pastor to abandon his pulpit and come to the wilds of Central New York in 1812. The tiny building was converted into a presidential “mansion.” There, Backus resided until carried off four years later by typhus contracted while nursing a sick tutor (who, by the way, recovered). He was 52.
Through the years, the building that once served as Backus’s home was used as a faculty dwelling and, later, the Alumni House. In 1984, it was refurbished with a faculty dining room and fittingly named in honor of the College’s first president. Today, the building serves as the center for Jewish life on campus.
BEINECKE STUDENT ACTIVITIES VILLAGE
An heir to the S&H Green Stamp fortune, Walter Beinecke, Jr. left school at age 15 to join the Merchant Marine. Although he never resumed his own formal education, his commitment to learning — and especially to Hamilton — ran deep. Appointed a charter trustee in 1960, Beinecke chaired the trustee committee that worked with President Robert McEwen to conceive and create Kirkland College, and later served as its first chairman of the board. The idea was to establish several cooperating undergraduate colleges clustered near Hamilton, each independent, each coordinate with the others, of which the first would be a liberal arts college for women.
Throughout his life, Beinecke showed equal devotion to his beloved island of Nantucket, which had fallen into decay after World War II. He purchased much of the town’s waterfront and renovated it building-by-building in order to boost the area’s prestige and stimulate its economy. He also left his mark on Hamilton’s architectural landscape when the bright yellow Beinecke Student Activities Village was completed in 1993, linking the north and south sides of campus. It was named in his honor, commemorating a commitment to learning that is also reflected in Hamilton’s Beinecke Lesser Antilles Collection, which contains some 2,500 rare books, articles, maps and other printed materials he presented to the College. Beinecke died in 2004.
BENEDICT HALL OF LANGUAGES
Henry Harper Benedict, Class of 1869, was once quoted as saying, “The machine is very crude, but there is an idea there that will revolutionize business … We must on no account let it get away.” One of the pioneers in the manufacturing and marketing of the typewriter, Benedict went to work at E. Remington and Sons in nearby Ilion, N.Y., after his Hamilton graduation. This company not only manufactured arms and agricultural implements but also did piecework for inventors who devised new machines. One such invention, in 1873, was for a typewriter designed by Christopher Latham Sholes. Although the Remington company did not make much progress with the manufacture of the new instrument, Benedict realized its potential.
Benedict and two partners bought the rights to the typewriter and organized a firm to sell the “practical writing machine.” The name Remington was retained, and in 1902 the Remington Typewriter Co. was formed with Benedict as president until his retirement in 1913. Benedict, who served as a Hamilton trustee from 1897 until his death in 1935, provided funds for the Hall of Languages, built in 1897, and for the purchase of the Chapel organ.
BLOOD FITNESS AND DANCE CENTER
From the windows of the spacious atrium that houses treadmills, elliptical machines, and a three-story climbing wall, fitness enthusiasts can enjoy a panoramic view of Hamilton’s football field, which holds special memories for the building’s namesake.
Located in the former Saunders Hall of Chemistry, the Charlean and Wayland Blood Fitness and Dance Center salutes a true Hamilton football family. Wayland F. “Bill” Blood ’53, for whom the building is named along with his wife, Charlean, came to Hamilton in the footsteps of his father, Wayland P. Blood, Class of 1914, a former member of the Continental gridiron force. Bill played varsity for four years, lettering in the sport. During his senior season, the team posted a 4-2-1 record — the best in more than a decade.
After earning his M.B.A. and spending five years with Gulf Oil Corp., Bill joined Ford Motor Co. During his 33-year career, he served as vice president and treasurer of its financial services group, Ford Credit Co. Remembered in The Hamiltonian for “wearing a well-patched Block ‘H’ sweater,” Bill sent his son David W. Blood ’81 to the Hill to carry on the Blood/Hamilton football legacy. Today Dave has returned the favor. A senior partner with the London-based Generation Investment Management, he and his wife, Alison, provided major funding for the renovation of the fitness center, named in his father’s honor.
BRISTOL CENTER
No family’s history more closely parallels Hamilton College’s than that of the Bristols. Joel Bristol was one of the first settlers to answer the call of Rev. Samuel Kirkland to establish the Hamilton-Oneida Academy. In addition to contributing one British Pound Sterling, 300 feet of timber, and 20 days of labor, Bristol served on Hamilton’s first Board of Trustees and sent his son George to be educated on the Hill. George Bristol was a member of Hamilton’s first graduating class in 1815 and the first of seven generations of Bristols to attend the College.
Among the Bristol alumni was William McLaren Bristol. Five years after graduating from Hamilton in 1882, Bristol and his friend John Ripley Myers, Class of 1887, invested $5,000 in the failing Clinton Pharmaceutical Co., located down the hill from the College. Essentially a physician’s supply house, the business steadily expanded under their leadership. The company’s first nationally recognized product was dubbed a “poor man’s spa”: a laxative mineral salt called Sal Hepatica that, when dissolved in water, reproduced the taste and effects of the natural mineral waters of Bohemia. Another success was Ipana, the first toothpaste to include a disinfectant to prevent bleeding gums. The demand for these products propelled Bristol-Myers from a regional into a national company and eventually the international giant known as Bristol Myers Squibb.
Constructed in 1965, the Bristol Center was dedicated in William McLaren Bristol’s honor, thanks to the generosity of his sons Lee H. Bristol, Class of 1914, and William M. Bristol, Jr., Class of 1917, and grandson William M. Bristol III ’43.
BUNDY RESIDENCE HALLS
When Harlow E. Bundy, Class of 1877, walked into his brother’s workshop in Auburn, N.Y., one summer day in 1889, little did he know he would leave with an idea that would evolve into one of the world’s most successful business ventures. Willard Bundy, a jeweler and inventor, showed his younger brother one of his latest projects, a time-recording clock. Later that same evening, Harlow proposed that they go into business together to manufacture and market a device that could record a worker’s arrival and departure time on a paper tape. The Bundy Time Recording Co. was born.
In 1900, the company merged with another budding time-recorder manufacturer and became the International Time Recording Co. of New York. Harlow continued as general head of operations, and Willard invented and designed new products. In 1911, a consolidation with two other companies resulted in the formation of the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Co. In 1924, the company was renamed International Business Machines (IBM).
Harlow Bundy had distinguished himself as the father of the time-recorder business and a pioneer who played a role in founding one of the largest and most profitable corporations in the world. However, he did not live to share in the great experience of IBM’s explosive growth. In 1915, he retired from the company a wealthy man, but in poor health. He died a year later. The Bundy Residence Halls (East and West), along with a dining facility, were built in 1970 and named in his honor.
MARGARET BUNDY SCOTT FIELD HOUSE
In 1959, while visiting the Huntington Hotel in Pasadena, Calif., Margaret “Mollie” Scott happened to notice a sketch of the Hamilton campus hanging in the lobby. She mentioned to the hotel’s proprietor, the late Stephen Royce ’14, that her father had attended Hamilton. Soon thereafter, she was introduced to President Robert McEwen, who was in California on his annual West Coast trip, and that marked the start of a long relationship.
Scott was the daughter of Harlow E. Bundy, Class of 1877 (see Bundy Residence Halls). One year prior to his death, Bundy moved in 1915 with his family to California. Scott was to reside on the West Coast for most of her life. Although she had often heard her father fondly recall his College days, she had no personal acquaintance with Hamilton until that chance encounter cemented a close relationship with her father’s alma mater that would last until her death in 1984. She created an endowed professorship, fellowships, and a scholarship fund, in addition to funding a renovation of Kirkland Residence Hall, where her father had resided during his freshman year. Shortly after her death, the Margaret Bundy Scott Field House was named in her honor and memory.
grandfather of Elihu Root, Class of 1864
BUTTRICK HALL
Perhaps the building on campus that has undergone the most name changes — and “face lifts” — is Buttrick Hall. Completed in 1813 as a dining hall and kitchen (derisively nicknamed the “Banqueting Hall”), the building appeared much as it does today, save for a red stucco coating. After proving not to be a successful auxiliary enterprise, the College closed the facility in 1820. Miscellaneous occupants, including a cobbler and carpenter, set up shop in the building before 1834, when Horatio Gates Buttrick became superintendent of buildings and moved into the house with his family. In 1837, Oren Root, a young graduate of the Class of 1833, married the oldest of seven Buttrick girls. In 1850, he returned to the Hill as professor of mathematics, astronomy, mineralogy, and geology, bringing with him his outstanding collection of minerals that were housed in the Commons refectory. The building became known as the Cabinet, complete with a recitation room, exhibit space, and a room for the study of botany.
For the next 20 years, the Cabinet was a scientific oasis in a staunchly classical college. Shortage of funds, however, kept the building in a state of disrepair until 1883 when James Knox, Class of 1830, gave funds for a major remodeling. The walls in front were raised to provide a second story, the whole capped by ornate wooden gables. Windows replaced the two front entrances and a larger central door opened on to the exhibit halls. Knox Hall, as it became known, retained its appearance for 40 years.
In 1925, the new Science Building opened, and the museum was transported. The trustees soon decided to restore the exterior of the old Commons building to its original lines. The wooden superstructure, dormer windows, gables, and central door were all cut away. By the end of 1926, renovations were complete, and the interior refitted to house the offices of the College administration. Small rooms on the second floor were fashioned into a single hall with an arched ceiling where the trustees met. The trustees named the building Buttrick Hall after the 19th-century superintendent and grandfather of Elihu Root, Class of 1864, who was born in one of its second-floor bedrooms.
DAYS-MASSOLO MULTICULTURAL CENTER
Opened in 2011, the Days-Massolo Multicultural Center serves as a central campus resource for exploring intersections among gender, race, culture, religion, sexuality, ability, socioeconomic class, and other facets of human difference. The building is named for two alumni who drew on their own life experiences to foster a commitment to inclusivity.
Drew S. Days III ’63, once subjected to segregated schools, eventually worked to eliminate the very laws that prevented his attendance. After Hamilton, he earned a law degree from Yale University and joined a union-side labor law firm in Chicago, only to practice about a year. After he met his future wife, Ann Langdon, they joined the Peace Corps and served for two years organizing cooperatives in Honduras.
Returning to the U.S., Days joined the legal staff of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, litigating civil rights cases, including one that desegregated his former school district in Tampa, Fla. He subsequently taught for two years at Temple University’s Law School. In 1977, he was appointed U.S. assistant attorney general for civil rights by President Jimmy Carter, serving through 1980. He then became a faculty member at the Yale Law School, taking a leave of absence from 1993 to 1996 to serve as U.S. solicitor general in the Clinton Administration Justice Department. Days first served as a member of the Hamilton Board of Trustees in 1986. He died in 2020.
Fellow trustee Arthur J. Massolo ’64, P’93 grew up in a world where people from certain ethnic backgrounds, such as Italians, were known to face discrimination and social exclusion. After Hamilton, he received a law degree from the University of Chicago. He, too, then joined the Peace Corps, serving in Malaysia from 1967 to 1969. After returning to the U.S., he joined the First National Bank of Chicago where he worked until retiring in 1996. He then started Straticon, a consulting company specializing in international strategic planning. In addition to Malaysia, Massolo has lived in Denmark, Germany, Italy, Singapore, Indonesia, Panama, and Brazil.
While in Chicago, Massolo served on the board and as president of LINK Unlimited, a mentoring program that provides at-risk inner-city students with private school educations. His affiliation with LINK and his love for Hamilton led him to sponsor a number of students in order for them to attend his alma mater, and to establish a scholarship at Hamilton, named for his grandfather, for underprivileged students from the Chicago area who demonstrate promise.
FILLIUS EVENTS BARN
As a businessman and community leader, Milton F. Fillius, Jr. ’44 played a key role in shifting San Diego’s dependence on a postwar military-based economy by promoting efforts to attract new businesses to the city. His forthrightness and powers of persuasion earned him high praise from business and civic leaders alike. But it was after his retirement in 1983 as president of the Vita-Pakt Citrus Products Co. that he devoted himself to his three true loves — philanthropy, jazz, and Hamilton.
A trustee of the College from 1982 until his death 20 years later, Fillius served for many years as chairman of the Drown Foundation where he helped distribute funds to numerous charitable institutions, including Hamilton. In addition to the Fillius-Drown Prize Scholarship and the Drown Loan Fund, which support some 100 students each year, the foundation was instrumental in 1995 in creating Hamilton’s Jazz Archive, a collection that today boasts some 325 video interviews with jazz musicians, arrangers, writers, and critics.
A lover of jazz — particularly mainstream jazz and swing — Fillius lent impetus to a series of annual concerts on campus, bringing to the Hill such jazz legends as Joe Williams, Milt Hinton, Marian McPartland, and George Shearing. These world-class musicians fittingly took to the stage in the Fillius Events Barn, named in his honor in 1993.
In 1952, Sports Illustrated profiled Henry Wilford Harding ’34 in its Silver Anniversary issue, highlighting accomplished business leaders who had been college athletes. As a student, he was captain of the Continentals baseball team, played football and hockey, and served as president of his class.
Raised by his grandfather, also named Henry W. Harding, Class of 1873, young Henry was taught from an early age that there was no finer institution than Hamilton College. He knew the campus well given its adjacent location to the family farm in Clinton. After graduation, Harding went to work in the accounting department at General Electric. He acquired experience serving as a financial consultant for airline, electronics, and plastic companies, but chose to specialize in rehabilitating failing firms. At age 29, he took over Manufacturers Chemical Corp., a failing company in New Jersey.
In addition to acquiring a fine education on College Hill, Harding earned something equally valuable — the love of his future life partner. In 1936, he married Agnes Burke, sister of his roommate, Coleman Burke ’34. Among the couple’s happiest times were those spent at Harding Farm working in the fields together, enjoying family dinners, and likely making the short trip up the hill to attend a Hamilton football or hockey game. Harding also served as a member of the Alumni Council and as co-chairman of the Alumni Fund.
With such devotion to his alma mater, it’s no surprise that the Hardings’ connection to Hamilton continued with their son, Coleman Harding ’75; grandsons John Nye ’87 and Dan Nye ’88; and great-granddaughter Margaret Nye ’24.
A proud believer that academics should always take priority, Harding would express later in life that he would gladly trade all of his varsity athletics letters for a Phi Beta Kappa key. Instead he will be remembered with his name on a popular campus building. In 2024, the athletics practice facility, located next to the Margaret Bundy Scott Field House, was dedicated in honor of Henry W. Harding ’34.
JOEL AND ELIZABETH JOHNSON CENTER FOR HEALTH AND WELLNESS
Its location at the heart of campus reinforces the mission of the Johnson Center for Health and Wellness — to prioritize student well-being by offering resources that help set the foundation for a healthy and productive life. The building, named for its primary benefactors, Joel W. ’65 and Elizabeth B. Johnson P’93, was dedicated in 2018.
After graduating from Hamilton, Joel Johnson earned an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School before serving from 1968 to 1970 as an Army captain in Vietnam where he earned a Bronze Star. He then pursued a long career in the food industry, first at General Foods and later at Hormel, where he served as president, CEO, and chairman of the board before retiring in 2006. Johnson also lent his time and expertise to Hamilton throughout the years. He became involved with the Board of Trustees in 1994 and chaired the Committee on Budget and Finance from 2002 to 2013.
In discussing their motivations for supporting the health and counseling center, Beth Johnson, a psychologist and ordained minister, said: “I am aware of the stresses and strains that young people have in college — it’s a time of transition and students are trying to gain skills to manage life on their own — everything comes at them at once, and they begin to become more aware of their own personality. Even healthy people need to talk. There should be nothing shaming about counseling services and a college should be able to provide the necessary resources. … Students are accepted based on their record and academic capabilities, but a college has to meet the needs of the whole person and teach students how to care for themselves in all areas of life.”
KEVIN AND KAREN KENNEDY CENTER FOR THEATRE AND THE STUDIO ARTS
A hockey goalie who majored in art on College Hill, Kevin Kennedy ’70 went on to a successful career in finance. Reflecting on his wide-ranging interests and how they shaped his life, he thinks back fondly to his Hamilton adviser, the late Professor Sidney Wertimer, who encouraged him to major in art and take classes in dance as well as accounting. “Sidney believed in the benefits of a liberal arts education and urged me to test myself in unfamiliar fields, and I thank him to this day,” Kennedy said.
After earning an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School, Kennedy launched a career as an investment banker, working for more than three decades with Goldman Sachs and retiring in 2011 as a member of the firm’s management committee. He maintained a lifelong passion of supporting the cultural community, serving as a trustee of the New York Public Library and as president and chief executive officer of the Metropolitan Opera. He joined Hamilton's Board of Trustees in 1986 and served as chair from 1994 to 2002.
Karen Andresen Kennedy graduated from Manhattanville College in 1971, the same year she and Kevin were married. For many years, she worked as a stay-at-home mother. At the age of 37, she entered Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons to realize her lifelong dream of becoming a doctor. She established her practice, Dr. Karen A. Kennedy Pediatrics, in Manhattan. By 2000, she was director of the Women’s Venture Fund, a nonprofit dedicated to helping women establish thriving businesses in urban areas.
The Kevin and Karen Kennedy Center for Theatre and the Studio Arts opened in 2014 and was named in recognition of the couple’s lead support for the project and commitment to the arts.
KIRKLAND COTTAGE
Hamilton College began with one man’s dream to create a school where children of the Oneida Indians and children of white settlers could learn together. That vision of Samuel Kirkland, a Presbyterian missionary to the Oneidas, led to a plan presented in 1793 to President George Washington, who “expressed approbation,” and to Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, who agreed to be a trustee of the new school, to which he also lent his name.
A 17x24-foot clapboard cottage, consisting of a large family room with an ample fireplace and three sleeping rooms above, was erected at the foot of College Hill in the spring of 1792 and served as the Kirkland family home. On July 1, 1794, Baron Friedrich von Steuben, inspector general of the Continental Army, accompanied Kirkland from the house up the hill to lay the cornerstone of the Hamilton-Oneida Academy. Among the delegation of Oneidas to attend the colorful ceremony was Kirkland’s friend Chief Skenandoa.
The school operated for two decades. Although never fully realizing Kirkland’s original purpose, it instead served primarily children of white settlers streaming into Central New York from New England. The academy was transformed into Hamilton College a few years after Kirkland’s death.
The cottage, which today bears his name, was relocated several times throughout the years and served various purposes, including that of a carpenter’s shop. In 1875, Edward “Old Greek” North, who taught classics at Hamilton for half a century, spearheaded an effort to acquire the house for the College and raised the $140 for its purchase. The building was moved to a spot near the College Cemetery where it fell into further disrepair until 1925 when Elihu Root, Class of 1864, saw to another relocation — this time to the heart of campus. It was entirely repaired, furnished and occasionally opened to the public. Four years later, the Pentagon student honor society began holding its initiations and other meetings in the building, and, since 1975, members of each entering class have been invited to the cottage to sign the College register as a symbol of matriculation at Hamilton.
LITTLE SQUASH CENTER
Squash became a part of Hamilton’s athletic tradition in the 1940s with the construction of the Alumni Gymnasium. In 1980, the sport earned intercollegiate varsity status. Both the men’s and women’s teams enjoyed noteworthy success throughout the years; however, a setback came in 1993 when the U.S. adopted the international standard for squash, widening the court from 18.5 to 21 feet. As a result, all matches had to be played “away,” and the College began losing promising squash players to other institutions.
George F. “Jeff” Little ’71 saw this as a problem — especially after his son Brad ’04 came to the Hill and joined the varsity squash team — and, as he has done throughout the years for his alma mater, stepped up to address the situation. Thanks to a gift from Little and his wife, Claudia, the College opened 10 regulation-sized squash courts, two of which provide exhibition gallery seating.
Little served as president and chief operating officer of George Little Management, LLC, one of the largest producers and marketers of trade shows for consumer goods in North America — a company started by his grandfather. A Hamilton trustee since 1993, Jeff Little has chaired four consecutive and successful capital campaigns. In addition to the squash center, the popular Little Pub and the College's prestigious annual Jeff Little ’71 Volunteer of the Year Award are named in his honor.
MCINTOSH RESIDENCE HALL
Millicent C. McIntosh, president of Barnard College from 1946-62 and head of the all-girls’ Brearley School from 1930-46, spent her life championing the importance of women combining a successful career with a rewarding personal life. “It is the great problem of the college graduate to find in her personal life the fullest expression of her powers,” she once told The New York Herald Tribune. “This may or may not lie in a career … what is important is for each individual to order her life so that she becomes a happy, creative person … This is equally true of men.”
Upon her retirement from Barnard, McIntosh chaired a committee on the Hill charged with examining how Kirkland College would best serve the intellectual and personal needs of women. Under her leadership, the new institution set out to prepare them to be “intellectually alert and to handle with superior capability the multiple and overlapping phases of their lives — as an individual active in society, as a wife, mother, career professional … a woman who can continue her role as learner into adult life beyond college — a woman able to discriminate between unchanging values and ever-changing circumstances.”
McIntosh died in 2001 at the age of 102. A residence hall on the Kirkland campus was named in her honor in 1969.
PETERS OBSERVATORY
Christian Henry Frederic Peters came to Hamilton in 1858 to head the observatory, bringing to the faculty its first Ph.D. and a colorful past. As reported in Walter Pilkington’s history of the College: “In 1848 he fought with Garibaldi in the revolt against the king of Naples. When the uprising failed, he fled to Malta. On his return to Sicily the following year, the fall of Palermo sent him fleeing to France and thence to Constantinople. The sultan was about to send him on a scientific expedition to Syria and Palestine when the Crimean War intervened. Peters then came to the United States where he worked for a time at the Dudley Observatory in Albany.”
Recognized worldwide for his discovery of asteroids, he was known on campus more for his exploits than for his teaching. “Although several of his students did indeed specialize in astronomy and attained high positions in the field,” Pilkington noted, “most of them remembered only the occasions on which young ladies from the female seminaries in the village came to the observatory to look at the stars through the telescope — with the boys climbing over the roof and hanging their hats on the great equatorial to blot out the stars until Peters, brandishing a pistol, chased them away.”
Just prior to his death in 1890, Peters became involved in a then-celebrated lawsuit. He had planned to create a catalog of stars and enlisted the help of Charles A. Borst, a former student. Borst spent several years completing the project and sought equal, if not more, credit for the work. Peters filed a lawsuit, and the case was tried in the State Supreme Court in Utica with none other than Elihu Root, Class of 1864, acting for Peters. The judge ruled in Peters’ favor; however, Borst appealed, and Peters died before a new trial could be scheduled.
After his death, the observatory fell into disrepair and was demolished in 1918. The Peters Observatory was built in 1975 and named in his honor.
ELIHU ROOT HOUSE
Secretary of War, Secretary of State, U.S. Senator, and Nobel Peace Prize Recipient Elihu Root, Class of 1864, is arguably one of Hamilton’s most distinguished alumni. After earning a reputation as one of the most respected corporate lawyers of his time, Root was named secretary of war in 1899 by President McKinley. Root described the appointment as “the greatest of all our clients, the government of our country.” During his five-year tenure, he reorganized the Army, expanded West Point, and established the Army War College.
His keen interest and concern for international affairs sparked his work as an advocate for the new territories acquired after the Spanish-American War. He worked on a plan to turn Cuba over to the Cubans, wrote a democratic charter for the Philippines, and eliminated tariffs on goods imported to the U.S. from Puerto Rico.
Root returned to private practice for only a year before President Theodore Roosevelt called on him again — this time to serve as secretary of state. Dedicated to the cause of international arbitration, Root maintained the “open-door policy” in the Far East. On an unprecedented diplomatic tour of Latin America in 1906, he persuaded those governments to participate in the Hague Peace Conference. He negotiated a “gentlemen’s agreement” with Japan to address issues of emigration and worked with Great Britain in resolving disputes over the Alaska/Canada border.
In 1909, Root began a single term as a U.S. senator. He declined candidacy for reelection and a nomination by the Republican Party for the U.S. presidency. He served as the first president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace from 1910 to 1925, when he helped create the Hague Academy of International Law in the Netherlands. In 1914, he was president of the New York State Constitutional Convention and during World War I headed a mission to Russia and later served as an advisor in establishing the Covenant of the League of Nations. He was recognized with the 1912 Nobel Peace Prize.
Root’s ties to Hamilton began long before he matriculated. He was born and raised on the Hill as the son of Nancy Buttrick and Oren Root, Class of 1833, a long-time professor of mathematics known fondly as “Cube.” His brother, Oren Root, Jr., Class of 1856, followed in their father’s footsteps as a professor of mathematics and was appropriately nicknamed “Square.” Elihu Root’s contributions on the national and international scene never lessened his commitment to his alma mater. He served as chairman of the Hamilton Board of Trustees for more than 25 years and spent most of his time on campus after retiring from public service. He died in 1937. The Roots’ family ties to Hamilton extend to dozens of alumni, including Elihu’s sons, grandsons, and great-grandchildren.
In 1893, Elihu Root purchased a house on campus as a family summer residence. Built in 1817 for Theodore Strong, Hamilton’s first professor of mathematics, the structure had served as the home of College presidents and faculty members. The building was occupied after 1937 by Root’s daughter Edith Root Grant and her husband Ulysses S. Grant III, grandson of the president. A National Historic Landmark, it was acquired by the College in 1979 and now houses offices of the Dean of Students, Registrar, and Residential Life.
SADOVE STUDENT CENTER
With its bookstore, café, and cozy sun porch, the Sadove Student Center has been called Hamilton’s “family room.” How appropriate, therefore, that the building is named for a couple who sent not one, not two, but all three of their children to Hamilton.
Built in 1928 as home to the Emerson Literary Society, the building was renovated and expanded in 2010 thanks to a lead gift from Stephen ’73 and Karin Sadove P’07,’10,’13, longtime supporters of the College. Located at the center of campus, the building also features student media offices, meeting rooms and collaborative work spaces, a basement multipurpose room and kitchen, and the Student Activities Office.
After majoring in government at Hamilton, Steve Sadove earned an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and forged a distinguished marketing and consumer products career starting at General Foods. In 1991, he joined Bristol-Myers Squibb, where he rose through the ranks to become head of its beauty care and nutritionals divisions. Sadove joined Saks Incorporated in 2002 and served as its chairman and chief executive officer. He retired in 2013, the same year he took over the helm of Hamilton’s Board of Trustees, a position he held until 2021.
SAUNDERS HOUSE
Known to generations of Hamiltonians for her warm hospitality, Silvia Saunders was born in 1901 and raised on the Hill with her parents Louise and Arthur Percy Saunders, longtime professor of chemistry and dean. The Saunders family created in their home on Griffin Road a social center on the edge of campus, where for many decades cultural conversation and musical interest flourished.
Following her graduation from Radcliffe, Sylvia Saunders embarked on a career in New York City as a commercial artist and later as a photographer. In 1951, after spending several years in New Mexico, she returned to College Hill to take care of her elderly parents and especially help her father with his hybrid peony business, which was known to horticulturalists throughout the world. She maintained the family legacy of opening their home — which she dubbed “the Williams Farmhouse” after Isaac Williams, its early 19th-century builder — for annual Christmas parties, May wine parties, and informal gatherings of students and faculty members. She also took an active role in the cultural life of the College, greeting guests at most every theater performance, music concert, and art exhibition. In 1977, her contributions were recognized with the Alumni Association’s Bell Ringer Award, and in 1995, one year after her death, the Saunders family home was dedicated in her honor as a student residence.
SCHAMBACH CENTER
The story of Hans H. Schambach ’43 — and the building that bears his name — is the ultimate tale of remembering one’s roots. Schambach was born in Germany and came to the States at the age of 14 to live with his uncle and aunt in Clinton. They were Walter and Anna (known as “Frau”) Schmitt, the custodian and cook at the Alpha Delta Phi house on College Hill. In 1939, Schambach began working his way through Hamilton only to be interrupted two years later when the country entered World War II. His status as a German citizen led to his classification as an enemy alien, and he was subsequently interned for two years at a camp run by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service in Bismarck, N.D.
In 1947, Schambach established a business dealing in and fabricating precious metals, primarily for the jewelry industry. On one of his visits to the Hill, he met Jack Boynton ’51, an Alpha Delt whose father was treasurer and a major stockholder in Handy and Harman, a supplier of precious metals in New York City. A line of credit obtained from that firm, thanks to his introduction to the elder Boynton, helped Schambach advance his own business. His company, Hamilton Cast Corp., was named after the College. In 1972, he merged it with Atlantic Oil Corp. and became chairman of its board, serving until his retirement in 1982.
Ever supportive of Hamilton, Schambach joined the Board of Trustees in 1980. Believing that a college education was available to him only because of a scholarship he received, he established in 1983 a fund that today offers one of the most prestigious scholarship awards to entering students. Five years later, the Schambach Center for Music and the Performing Arts opened, and was fittingly named for him. Throughout the years, Schambach had pursued a love of music by assembling one of the finest private collections of Italian and French stringed instruments, including two rare Stradivarius violins.
“It is fantastic to see this completed,” he told the Syracuse Post-Standard in an article featuring the building’s dedication. “It is the great American dream — getting here as an immigrant boy and reaching a point where I could help.”
SOPER HALL OF COMMONS
Opened in 1903, Commons served for many years as Hamilton’s sole dining hall (despite lingering false rumors, because of its Gothic style complete with pointed windows and buttresses, that it was intended as a place of worship). Funds for construction came from three brothers, among them Alexander Coburn Soper, Class of 1867. Following his graduation from Hamilton, Soper moved from his native Rome, N.Y., to Chicago where he soon went to work for the Park & Soper Lumber Co., in which his father was a partner. In 1870, just one year before the Great Chicago Fire, the younger Soper organized a new company, Pond & Soper, to operate a planing mill. In 1883, he re-joined family members to form the Soper Lumber Co. The business grew to large proportions, their trade reaching from Massachusetts to Colorado. At the turn of the century, the Sopers joined with another timber-oriented family from Pennsylvania, the Wheelers, to form the Soper-Wheeler Co., which was moved to California where it operates today.
The Soper family — 15 of whose members attended Hamilton — has been extremely generous to the College throughout the years. Alexander Soper served on the Board of Trustees for 33 years until his death in 1930. The building was rededicated in honor of the Soper family after extensive modification and renovation in 1999.
TAYLOR SCIENCE CENTER
In his first semester at Hamilton, Edward “Ted” Taylor ’46 flipped a coin (he believed it was a nickel) to determine whether he’d take chemistry or biology to fulfill a science requirement. Chemistry won. That random and seemingly insignificant outcome would lead to great professional success and satisfaction. “I fell for the subject on the first day,” he recalled. His professor, Dick Sutherland, was “extraordinary, the best teacher I have ever had. He took me under his wing, and I became fascinated from day one.”
Years later, that student who came to Hamilton with dreams of becoming a writer would be responsible for inventing one of the most successful drugs for fighting cancer.
As a doctoral student in chemistry at Cornell University, Taylor became intrigued by reports of a compound obtained from the human liver that possessed a nuclear structure previously observed only as a pigment in butterfly wings. Further research revealed that this liver compound, later named folic acid, was essential for all forms of life.
Taylor joined Princeton University’s faculty in 1954. He had not returned to his earlier studies in folic acid for two decades, when an idea emerged for a new approach to fighting cancer. In 1985, he collaborated with Eli Lilly and Co. to use folate-dependent enzymes in the cellular biosynthesis of DNA. This led to his discovery of a compound that he and Lilly developed into Alimta, the first effective drug for treating malignant pleural mesothelioma and both first-line and second-line lung cancer. After five years on the market, Alimta became the most successful new cancer drug, in terms of sales, in the history of the pharmaceutical industry.
Taylor retired in 1997, having written hundreds of articles and numerous books on heterocyclic and organic chemistry, earning 52 U.S. patents, teaching thousands of students, and bringing new promise to the lives of cancer patients worldwide.
To recognize and thank Hamilton for giving him his start, Ted and his wife, Ginny, provided a portion of the royalties received from the drug’s patent to fund a 2011 renovation and expansion of the College’s science facilities, rededicated as the Edward and Virginia Taylor Science Center in their honor.
RUTH AND ELMER WELLIN MUSEUM OF ART
Like many of his generation, Keith Wellin ’50, GP ’11,’14 grew up with firsthand knowledge of the hardships his parents faced during the Depression. After graduating from high school outside of Chicago, he attended The Citadel, the military academy in Charleston, S.C., for a year before entering the U.S. Army in 1945. Commissioned as an officer, he served during the final months of World War II and was stationed as a second lieutenant in Korea after the war’s end.
Discharged in 1947, Wellin enrolled at Hamilton where he majored in English literature before earning his M.B.A. at Harvard. He returned to Chicago to work for E.F. Hutton as a broker. Proving a knack for picking stocks, he advanced rapidly, becoming the company’s president at age 39. In 1971, he joined Reynolds Securities as senior vice president. Named president three years later, he was appointed executive vice president of the newly formed Dean Witter Reynolds Securities in 1978. Wellin took on increasing executive responsibilities with the firm, becoming its vice chairman in 1982.
Throughout his career as a leader in the securities industry, Wellin never forgot the two driving forces behind his success — his parents and Hamilton. Inspired by his father, an amateur painter, Wellin became a lifelong patron of the arts in his community and especially at Hamilton. Like his father, he collected art, some of which he generously lent and gifted to the College.
Wellin also provided his alma mater with his expertise. Having served as a trustee from 1969 to 1975 and again from 1986 until his death in 2014, he lent financial counsel as chair of the investment committee. Over many years, Wellin supported endowment funds for faculty, scholarships, and program support, often to honor fellow Hamiltonians who made a difference in his life. Thanks to a lead gift from Keith and his wife, Wendy, the Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art opened in 2012, named in honor of his parents.
ALEXANDER WOOLLCOTT HOUSE
Famously known as the “Town Crier” of the radio airwaves, Alexander Woollcott, Class of 1909, was blessed with a gift for words. Author, critic, and actor, he earned a national reputation as a raconteur and man-about-town. His career began at The New York Times, where in 1914 he became drama critic. His frank and outspoken criticism of some plays caused him to be barred from all the Shubert-controlled theaters. After a two-year stint in the Army reporting for The Stars and Stripes, Woollcott returned to the Times and subsequently worked for the New York Herald and then the New York World. For a while he was a regular contributor to The New Yorker, writing dramatic criticism and for a page called “Shouts and Murmurs.”
A stout man, he was the self-appointed leader of the Algonquin Round Table, a distinguished group of New Yorkers who, in the 1920s, met for lunch each day at the Algonquin Hotel. Woollcott’s acting debut came with the Hamilton Charlatans, of which he was a founder; however, his first and only starring role came in the 1940 production of The Man Who Came to Dinner, a play in which the principal character is generally known to be a caricature of himself.
A trustee of the College from 1935 to 1942, he was instrumental in getting the Hamilton Choir to undertake its first trip away from campus, and for many years he sponsored its concerts in theaters in New York City. After his death in 1943, columnist Walter Lippman commented, “Woollcott had a sharp taste. He had a piercing eye for sham. He had an acid tongue. But he had gusto, he really liked what he praised, and he cared much more for the men and women he liked than he worried about those he did not like.”
In 2000, Hamilton’s Theta Delta Chi fraternity house was rededicated as a student residence hall in honor of its former member.
This story was updated in July 2024. Much of the information originally appeared in “Faces Behind the Façades,” an article in the Fall 2006 edition of the Hamilton Alumni Review.
