George L. Rives

George Lockhart Rives was president of the Trustees of the New York Public Library and chairman of the Trustees of Columbia University, two of the most dignified and influential quasi-public offices in our metropolitan community. He had been president of the Charter Revision Commission of this city, Corporation Counsel, President of the Board of Governors of the New York Hospital; a director of the Bank of New York, of the United States Trust Company, and of the Metropolitan Opera House, a member of the executive committee of the Bar Association; also assistant Secretary of State of the United States. The names of these offices indicate the place which Mr. Rives had attained through merit. For he fulfilled efficiently the duties of every office he undertook, and was himself by birth, training, and nature a fit incumbent of the highest positions of trust. A descendant of an old Virginia family, a graduate of Columbia; then trained and graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge, England, and next a member of the New York Bar, Mr. Rives embodied a noble form of manners as well as manhood, and of standards social and professional; he was the effective and well bred gentleman, strong in his innate dignity and the position which he rightly held. Here in The Century, we are in his debt for his conduct of the office of Treasurer at that critical period of our removal from Fifteenth to Forty-third Street. We have still to mention that he merited his membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters through his two volumes entitled The United States and Mexico from 1821 to 1848, a work to which for many years he gave whatever time might be sequestered from the insistence of affairs.

Henry Osborn Taylor
1918 Century Association Yearbook