Red Cross Headquarters, 1919 – 1922

Red Cross Headquarters, 1919 – 1922

The Red Cross Bulletin (Paris) reported that as of March 31, 1919, there were 6,080 A.R.C. workers in France: 3,949 Americans and 2,131 of other nationalities, mostly French (April 5, 1919, 5).

The American Red Cross, including its commission for Europe and France, officially moved their headquarters to 4 rue de Chevreuse in August 1919 from 2 place de Rivoli (Excelsior, Aug. 10, 1919, 4). At first, there were 235 Red Cross workers on-site but Robert E. Olds, Commissioner of the American Red Cross in Europe from 1919 – 1921, was planning to reduce the number to 100 (Reid draft letter to Gildersleeve, ca. 1921).

Symbol of the Red Cross, WWI
Symbol of the Red Cross, WWI. Pritzker Military Museum and Library
Red Cross poster. Delivered to 4 rue de Chevreuse for the 1921 Roll Call. Amaroc News, October 11. Image Retrieved from Pritzker Military Museum and Library
Red Cross poster. Delivered to 4 rue de Chevreuse for the 1921 Roll Call. Amaroc News, October 11. Pritzker Military Museum and Library
Red Cross Magazine, September 1918, the very magazine being read by the soldier lying under a Red Cross quilt (see Military Hospital)
Red Cross Magazine, September 1918, the very magazine being read by the soldier lying under a Red Cross quilt (see Military Hospital). Pritzker Military Museum and Library
Red Cross poster, designed by C.B. Chambers. Delivered to 4 rue de Chevreuse for the 1921 Roll Call. Amaroc News, October 11. Pritzker Military Museum and Library
Red Cross poster, designed by C.B. Chambers. Delivered to 4 rue de Chevreuse for the 1921 Roll Call. Amaroc News, October 11. Pritzker Military Museum and Library

Initially, the Red Cross residency at 4 rue de Chevreuse was supposed to be temporary but, as Olds wrote to Reid on November 3, 1920,

[...] none of us two years ago could foresee what was going to happen. We all felt that the responsibilities of the Red Cross in Europe would diminish rapidly, and that a period of two years from the spring or summer of 1919 would allow an ample margin for our purposes [...] Existing obligations of the Red Cross in France and elsewhere have continued longer than we anticipated, and new responsibilities of an exceedingly pressing and vital nature have come to us (Reid family papers box 12B, Library of Congress).

The "existing obligations" to which Olds referred were efforts by the Red Cross to rebuild devastated areas of France and to provide, in tandem with the Hoover relief work, food supplies for children and the many other needy civilians. He may also have been alluding to the significant number of American soldiers who remained in France after the armistice and whose circumstances were precarious. Lieutenant-Colonel Brent also mentioned these soldiers in a letter to Reid on December 14, 1920: 

I suppose you are aware of the sad fact that there are some two thousand American ex-soldiers loose in Paris living the most disreputable and criminal life. They have worried the French government and taxed the wisdom and patience of our own embassy. In French prisons there are some 300 ex-soldiers. The complaint is made that the Red Cross is doing very little work and that of a very inadequate kind among these men. It is also claimed that there are at least a of few of them who are suffering severe penalties for minor offenses.

In the face of such dire conditions and in order to continue supporting Red Cross initiatives, Reid graciously allowed them to remain at 4 rue de Chevreuse for two more years, though she had already promised the property to a group of university women led by Barnard College's Dean Virginia Gildersleeve. Reid apologized to Gildersleeve for unavoidably postponing the date when the property would transition to a center for university women. Gildersleeve sent a telegram agreeing that they would wait until June 1922 to develop their plans for a new women's club in Paris.

Commissioner Olds thanked Reid in his November 3, 1920 letter, testifying to her generosity and expressing the gratitude of the Red Cross for her sustained commitment:

Excerpt from the Letter of Robert E. Olds, Commissioner of the American Red Cross in Europe, to Elisabeth Mills Reid, November 3, 1920. Reid family papers, box 10b

What actually transpired inside 4 rue de Chevreuse during this period is not fully known. The Amaroc News reported that the Paris headquarters was involved with the 5th Roll Call for membership in the A.R.C. In addition to their daily administrative responsibilities, officials and their staff likely worked to organize the myriad initiatives in which the Red Cross was involved in France: field kitchens and canteens; the ambulance service; occupational therapy; social events and cultural outings for veterans; supply shipping (including farm animals) to schools, farms, & hospitals; establishing milk depots, etc. The French A.R.C. Commission included several departments: General Relief (Bureau of Liberated Zone; Bureau of Portrait Masks; Bureau of Stars & Stripes); Legal and Claims & Adjustments; Housing: City of Paris; Army & Navy. Over the years, these departments/bureaux were gradually phased out or transferred to the French government for oversight (Mixer).

In a letter to Reid, R.F. Allen of the Red Cross Commission for Europe promised that the property would be swiftly vacated and returned to the same state in which they had found it in 1922:

The Red Cross will, of course, put your buildings in order before June 1, 1922; all plumbing will be restored;  and painting and cleaning and repairing will be done where necessary. [...] and we shall spare no effort to putting the building in its original condition.

The Red Cross finally departed in March 1922, and Reid immediately went to work with Gildersleeve and a small committee of women university leaders to renovate and reopen the property for a very different objective - one that would rally women scholars and students from the U.S. and around the world. Renamed the American University Women's Club, 4 rue de Chevreuse would host legions of female researchers, artists, writers, and brilliant minds from 1922 – 1939, making it an important European intellectual center in the interwar years.

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