Business/Public Work
Centurion, 1919–1935
Born 5 October 1858 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Died 29 May 1935 in New York (Manhattan), New York
Buried Woodlawn Cemetery
, Bronx, New York
Proposed by Lucius Hart Beers and Algernon S. Frissell
Elected 6 December 1919 at age sixty-one
Seconder of:
Century Memorial
In these days, when successful men of large affairs are frequently lumped together by reconstructors of society at Washington, as enemies of human progress and oppressors of the people, it is particularly pleasant to recall the career of such a citizen as Alfred Erskine Marling. So far as business activities were concerned, Marling’s achievement was in the field of real estate, where he came to occupy a quite unique position. By business associates, by business competitors, and by that part of the general public who knew anything about the city, he was regarded as the embodiment of straightforward, unswerving integrity of mind and character. He was a man of clear vision. What he knew, he knew well; what he did not know, he did not pretend to know. Along with the most charming personal qualities, he was a devoted friend, unselfish in his labors for others. Beyond that, he was a man of sincere religious convictions; religion was a joyous influence in his life, making him always cheerful, optimistic and charitable to what may have seemed to him the foibles of others.
His activities of one kind or another were extraordinarily numerous. He brought to all of them an unhurried devotion which could have been accomplished only by a well-ordered mind, a steadying will, and a selflessness which enabled him to give to causes promoted for the benefit of humanity his best thought and his unfailing service. The place which he occupied in the charitable institutions of the city, in its religious work, in its social avocations, far superseded his successful conducting of the interests of the Chamber of Commerce, the Merchants’ Association and the Advisory Council of Real Estate interests—not to mention a long list of fiduciary institutions which sought his sound advice by choosing him to their directorship.
The Century’s recollection of Marling will be intimate. No monthly meeting of the Club can hereafter be quite the same without that smiling face, that attentive and thoroughly interested presence, which invariably brightened the proceedings of the evening.
Alexander Dana Noyes
1936 Century Association Yearbook