Banker
Centurion, 1910–1949
Born 4 May 1870 in Warwick, New York
Died 24 November 1949 in New York (Manhattan), New York
Buried John Jay Cemetery
, Rye, New York
Proposed by Charles C. Burlingham and Charles A. Platt
Elected 4 June 1910 at age forty
Seconder of:
Century Memorial
Pierre Jay. [Born] 1870. Banker.
In my happy years as a member of the Century, nobody—repeat, nobody—has worked harder for the Century than did Pierre Jay, He served on the Board of Management and its House Committee, the Committee on Admissions and Stim. He organized Young-Centurion-Evenings and Fathers-and-Sons-Evenings. He made “a plan to promote association among the members.” He wrote a detailed classic document ten pages long on what men should be proposed for membership and how the proposal should be made and managed to success. He made a study of the membership and gave the Board a detailed report of their comings to the Club, their daily attendance in the dining room and library, members preferences on many Club issues, all subdivided and tabulated by their occupations and by their ages.
And lest anybody smile or think I am being deprecatory, I will tell you that Pierre was not trying to prove anything: he was finding facts, facts which as higher costs increased our distance from financial solvency, made all the difference between having a Century Association in its best traditions and not. He had the most detailed knowledge of all the operations of the Club and his interest here was always eager.
And all that he did for the Century was done amid a busy and important career in finance:
He was Bank Commissioner of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for three years, vice president of the Manhattan Company for five, chairman of the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for 12 crucial war and post war years from 1914| to 1926. Then he served for three years, in Berlin, as Deputy Agent General for Reparations Payments under the Dawes Plan Organization. His final active post was that of board chairman of the Fiduciary Trust Company of New York from 1930 to 1945.
He was a trustee of banks and insurance companies, national treasurer of Russian War Relief, a trustee of Barnard College, of the Groton School and of the American Academy in Rome.
In all these activities he more than pulled his weight in the several boats; but he loved us most and we loved him in equal measure.
Source: Henry Allen Moe Papers, Mss.B.M722. Reproduced by permission of American Philosophical Society Library & Museum, Philadelphia
Henry Allen Moe
Henry Allen Moe Papers, 1949 Memorials
