Wartime Adjustments (1938 - 1947)

Mounting Fear

Tensions at Reid Hall had been running high throughout much of the 1930s, given the threat of conflict all over the continent. On October 2, 1935, Dorothy Flagg Leet, Reid Hall's director until 1938, wrote to Dean Virginia Gildersleeve, in New York:

"The war situation continues to be serious. We are obliged by the City to make preparations against air attacks, and to post a large notice about such arrangements in our entrance hall before the end of the month. This will probably scare away the few students who have arrived!" (Barnard College Archives, BC5.1, Box 157).

The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War brought a group of refugee university women to Reid Hall in August 1936. In her letter to Gildersleeve about the Club's Thanksgiving dinner in November 1936, Leet mentions that Clara Campoamor, a Spanish feminist and political exile, was in attendance and was anxiously hoping to secure a teaching position in the United States (Barnard College Archives, BC 5.1, Box 136).

Gildersleeve found herself in Paris when war became an inevitability. She chronicled the tension at Reid Hall and the difficult decisions its leaders had to make in 1939:

"On a newspaper bulletin board I read accounts of alleged atrocities perpetrated by the Poles on German women. In Paris the following morning the news of the Russo-German Pact told us that war was certain. Dean Margaret Morriss of Pembroke College, President of the American Association of University Women, had traveled down from Sweden with me. We went to stay at Reid Hall, but in the afternoon we wandered out across the river and sat in the Tuileries Gardens watching the flowers and the fountains playing and the children at their games. We knew that it would be a long time before we saw again this familiar scene. That night, in the Director's Salon of Reid Hall, with the light dimmed very low, Mrs. Cooper, then director, her young secretary Barbara Howard, Dean Morriss and I, and later two French friends of ours, M. and Mme. Puech, discussed how best to evacuate the residents and to secure some protection for the buildings" (Many a Good Crusade 162-3).

Proposed Solutions for the Property

Mr. Garnham, the Reid Hall receptionist, agreed to stay on with his wife and care for the facility.

Victor Soulas, a lawyer with the firm Harper, Szlapka & Harper, was given power of attorney over the financial accounts and reported directly to Helen Rogers Reid at the Herald Tribune. His powers were revoked in 1945, when he was arrested by the "Free French on the charge of having collaborated with the Germans" (letter from Stanley Brown, Nov. 1, 1944, Reid Hall archives).

Miss Gildersleeve was in regular communication with the heads of the Association des françaises diplômées des universités (AFDU) whose leadership, Mme Monod and Mme Puech, proposed different solutions. Initially, they made repeated appeals to Gildersleeve to use the site as a dorm for exiled university women from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Spain. Gildersleeve and members of the Reid Hall Board felt this might be a worthwhile enterprise:

"It seemed to us that in this dark hour, when so many of our foreign colleagues were suffering and dying, we could not possibly refuse this request from the French Association for the use of Reid Hall to house university women refugees. We have just about enough money in our Paris accounts to cover our contributions for the experimental year. As for the distant future, no one knows what will happen to the world. Possibly Reid Hall will be blown to bits next week. We shall have to deal with the emergencies as best we can as they come along. Our refusal to aid the French in caring for their foreign refugees would, we felt, be a serious blow to their morale at the moment, and would make them feel that all our expressions of American sympathy are insincere” (March 13, 1940 letter from Gildersleeve to Dean Margaret S. Morriss, President of AAUW and of Pembroke College, Brown University, Providence RI).

But the project never materialized because the AFDU leadership felt it might be too dangerous. The AFDU moved its headquarters to the Maison des étudiantes on Boulevard Raspail, where they maintained contact throughout the war with several university women refugees sheltering in different parts of France (Femmes Diplômés, 1965, 7). Gildersleeve and the Unitarians contributed funds to support their efforts.

Elisabeth Mills Reid's daughter-in-law, Helen Rogers Reid, was approached by the Red Cross, who wanted to use 4 rue de Chevreuse as a residence for soldiers on leave. Mme Puech of the AFDU, Mr. Soulas, and others vehemently opposed the idea, saying it was impractical and would generate too many logistical issues. There were racist undertones in their objections, since they reference "foreign soldiers" whom they did not want to sully the property: "venus de loin, tels que nègres, Indochinois et marocains, et l'on tremble à l'idée de ce que pourrait devenir Reid Hall en proie à ces pauvres gens généralement sales et arrivant pleins de vermine ! [...] nous serions navrées que tout cela se solde par une occupation de nègres et de jaunes donnant à quelques vieilles femmes désoeuvrées l'occasion de s'affairer" (letter from Puech to Gildersleeve, Feb. 7, 1940).  *needs to be translated

The Fate of 4 rue de Chevreuse

The heads of the AFDU finally found a solution for the vacant property in 1941. Eugénie Cotton, Director of the Ecole normale supérieure des Jeunes Filles de Sèvres, had always been a loyal member of their association and knew Reid Hall quite well. She asked if the school could use Reid Hall as their base (dormitory and meeting rooms) during the war since their own school campus had been occupied and ransacked by the Germans. The Ecole agreed to pay the property taxes, the caretaker's salary, and would fund necessary repairs. Mme Monod and Mme Puech, the AFDU, and Mr. Soulas approved the proposal because it would ensure the continued maintenance of the buildings and would prevent the Germans from requisitioning the property for their own use.

The Aftermath of WWII

Gildersleeve and Leet both made considerable efforts to regain Reid Hall from the Sévriènnes, who were supposed to leave the premises right after the armistice but repeatedly requested to extend their stay. Even though the Reid Hall Board in New York wanted to resume control of the property in the fall of 1946, it became clear that the French members would not leave and that American universities and colleges could not return before 1947. But, even in 1947, Leet had to use her extensive political connections in France to ensure that the Sévriènnes would not remain beyond the month of August.

The Winter 1947 issue of the Barnard College Alumnae Magazine included a brief report by Dorothy Leet on the state of Paris:

"Electricity is cut off two days a week, because of shortages, and this of course affects lighting, cooking, heating, elevator service and many other services which depend upon electricity. In spite of all this, Paris seemed more beautiful and satisfying than ever. The city was full of art exhibits of extraordinary interest, - tapestries from the middle ages to today, a re-arrangement of the treasures of the Louvre, an exhibit of paintings from looted private collections now returned from Germany."

Leet also described the thriving theatrical scenes in the city, before concluding her report with a promise that Reid Hall would soon be ready to once more welcome visitors: "We shall look forward to welcoming you there in the years to come so that you, as American university women, may share in renewing the cherished ties between our country and the continent" (5).

Sources

Brown, Stanley. Letter, November 1, 1944. Reid Hall archives.
 
Cazamian, M.-L. “Ce que fut Reid-Hall pour l’A.F.D.U.” Femmes Diplômés, no. 53, January-March 1965, pp.6-8.

Gildersleeve, Virginia. Letter to Dean Margaret S. Morris, March 13, 1940. Reid Hall archives.

Gildersleeve, Virginia. Many a Good Crusade: Memoirs. New York: Macmillan, 1954.

Leet, Dorothy F. Letter to Dean Virginia Gildersleeve, October 2, 1935. Barnard College Archives, BC5.1, Box 157.

Leet, Dorothy F. Letter to Dean Virginia Gildersleeve, November 1936. Barnard College Archives, BC 5.1, Box 136

Leet, Dorothy F. "Paris Revisited." Barnard College Alumnae Magazine, vol. 36, no. 3, Winter 1947, p. 5.

Puech, Marie-Louise. Letter to Dean Virginia Gildersleeve (in French), February 7, 1940. Reid Hall archives.