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3/24/02
More than a century later, another Metcalf plays a role
Helen Metcalf Burnham was 20, a student at Dartmouth College, when she decided to write her thesis six years ago about the founding of the Rhode Island School of Design.
She had only "a vague notion" of her family's role in building RISD: that her great-great-great-grandmother, Helen Rowe Metcalf, had run the school in its early years, followed by her daughter Eliza Radeke, and Eliza's niece Helen Danforth.
But her grandfather, Patrick Buchanan, had just transcribed the barely-legible letters of Helen and Jesse Metcalf, and Burnham saw an opportunity to learn about her heritage with him.
She found, to her surprise, that Jesse Metcalf had stayed out of RISD, considering it his wife's project, "your School of Design." It was Helen alone who oversaw the school, and struggled to keep it afloat through its cash-strapped early years.
"Mrs. Metcalf took all of [RISD's] affairs into her care as simply and earnestly as if it were a part of her own household," Burnham read in Elsie Bronson's 1928 history.
"She was very often at the school, watching over both teachers and methods of teaching, stopped beside the students and encouraged them in their work, was anxiously concerned about furniture and the best arrangement of it, would take a hand at cleaning on occasion, or call in her children and friends to help decorate for a party, for she was tireless in devising ways of entertaining and enlightening persons who contributed to the school or might do so."
In 1893, Jesse Metcalf did step in, donating RISD's first building, on Waterman Street. After Helen's death, in 1895, he made more gifts, and after he died, in 1899, his children's support provided the financial backbone for the RISD we know today.
For Burnham, uncovering her forebears' story was a "really wonderful" experience, and it led her onto a new path, as an art historian. The following year, she took an internship at the National Gallery of Art, and today she is a doctoral candidate at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts.
"It gives me a great sense of pride," she said, "to see that there's been this great tradition in my family of strong, progressive women, and also men who supported them."
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MARION DAVIS
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