Member Directory,
1847 - 1922
Alfred D. F. Hamlin
Professor of Architecture
Centurion, 1904–1926
William Rutherford Mead and Frederic Crowninshield
Istanbul (Constantinople), Turkey
New York (Manhattan), New York
Age forty-eight
Middle Village, New York
Century Memorial
Alfred Dwight Foster Hamlin’s idealism was born with him, in the atmosphere of his father’s crusade to carry Christian enlightenment into the Near East. With the younger Hamlin, this quality directed itself to art, and his teaching of architecture was as valuable to his students for its cultural interpretation as for its sound technical instruction. In his career of forty-three years at Columbia, Professor Hamlin was an indefatigable worker for the School of Architecture, the success of which was his one ambition; but he always laid down his pen when a student came to him for counsel; it was his particular pleasure to help the inquiring mind along the right road. It is the testimony of his co-workers that his books on the History of Architecture and his History of Ornament set a new standard of correct teaching in these subjects, and that his numerous essays and lectures profoundly illuminated our inherited record of the building art.
His interest in the Near East, especially Armenia and Greece, continued through his life. In 1919 he made an extended tour of investigation in those districts as Special Commissioner of the Greek Relief Committee, for which efficient service he was decorated by the Greek Government.
Alexander Dana Noyes
1927 Century Association Yearbook
