With its proximity to the cultural hub of New York City and its quieter suburban and rural landscapes, Connecticut was fertile ground for artists and writers in the period of Modernist movements between 1913 and 1979. Many of these cultural figures are well known through biographical and critical studies. Creative Places seeks to show how place played a significant role in creative work, and how in turn the artists and writers influenced communities in Connecticut.
95 Pearl Street, Middletown
- Center for Advanced Studies
- Paul Horgan
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Paul Horgan was director of the Center for Advanced Studies from 1959-1969.
- William Manchester
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Manchester was a resident fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies for many years.
- Description of Significance/Historical Narrative
- Victor Butterfield, who had been president of Wesleyan since 1943, created the Center in 1959, modeling it after the Princeton Center for Advanced Studies. Profits from My Weekly Reader enabled him to generously fund the Center with an annual budget of $231,000—equivalent to $1.35 million in 2009 dollars. Built in a modernist style behind Russell House, the Center was intended to expose Wesleyan’s academic culture to the thinking of outside luminaries. Its founding was part of the same transformative impulse that drove Butterfield to establish the College of Letters and the College of Social Studies. These institutions advanced his desire to disrupt the entrenched academic departmental structure and curriculum. In a 1959 memo to faculty announcing the Center, Butterfield bemoaned 'the cultural gap between the ‘intellectual’ and the ‘man of affairs.’ We feel that each of these types has much to learn from the other. . .and that the liberal institution should support the study of and writing of our ablest journalists, justices, ministers, industrialists, and the like.' The Center succeeded magnificently in its goal of bringing distinguished men (mostly) and women to campus. With the aid of its first director, the late Professor of the Social Sciences Sigmund Neumann, followed by Pulitzer–Prize–winner writer Paul Horgan, the Center hosted 84 fellows in the decade of its existence. The roster included John Cage, C. P. Snow, Edmund Wilson, Carl Schorske, William Manchester, and Hannah Arendt, as well as 'men of affairs' such as Alvin Hansen (often called the American Keynes), Paul Gray Hoffman (former president of the Ford Foundation), Leslie Munro (retired president of the UN General Assembly), and Herbert Matthews (a prominent New York Times editor). The fellows were productive and generated a considerable amount of national press attention for Wesleyan through their accomplishments. For some, the opportunity to write and reflect without the constant pressures of normal life was welcome.
- Date of Construction
- 1960
- Historic Designation(s)