Other Early Activities
The frantic pace set by Chancellor MacCracken in 1900 began to ease up after Dedication Day in 1901. The Hall of Fame was not intended to be a daily show played in the public eye, but a periodic pause for national reflection and celebration.
Most of the work went on in administrative offices in midtown and in conference rooms on University Heights or Washington Square or in men’s clubs. The correspondence was heavy, the work of relatively few people: a Director, always a nationally known figure, and an Assistant Director, later called Curator, who, with a very small permanent staff, aided by temporaries as needed, did virtually all the day-to-day administrative chores. All were watched over by the Chancellor of NYU, who was Chairman of the Hall of Fame Committee of the University Council, and by the University Senate.
By 1903 the extraordinary effort of building both a new campus and a Hall of Fame was beginning to tax the Chancellor’s strength, and in that year he had his first son, John Henry MacCracken, appointed Syndic (Syndic is a fine old academic word found in Webster, not entirely lost, asking for revival, available to those tired of stale titles.) of the University to assist him. Young MacCracken had been president of Westminister College, Missouri, later of “Iron Curtain” fame.
The Hall of Fame was an item on the NYU budget. Supplementary contributions were made through Helen Gould’s husband, Finley J. Shepard, railroad official, member of eleven clubs and, at one point, chairman of the Senate Committee on the Hall of Fame. The rest of the support, such as it was, came from the public at large and from private organizations with specific heroes and special goals. From first to last, well over 100 organizations and individuals financed the sculptures and the ceremonial costs.
Dr. MacCracken had warned from the outset that it wouldn’t be cheap. The University, being compelled to use all of its efforts on behalf of its educational work, can lend only slight energy to the securing of means for the decoration of the Hall of Fame. We offer abundant space provided by the generosity of the giver of the edifice.
The Colonnade and museum under it had cost a whacking sum of money. The Chancellor’s remarks were the preliminary outline of the shape of things to come, the shape of parsimony.