Henry C. Lawrence

The losses from the Century’s roll have taught us again, in 1919, how true it is that our men of affairs are often the best of our amateurs, as they are often the best types of devotion to the public welfare and their fellow-men. The sociable groups of the Century’s monthly “club nights” will not be quite the same without the cheerful presence of Henry C. Lawrence. His modest view of his own very real attainments, his interest in the ideas of other people, his never-failing light-heartedness, made him as good a listener as a talker, and the chairs would invariably be drawn up to the circle in which he sat and from which his ringing laugh could be heard. With Harry Lawrence, as with his fellow-members, there were two distinct interests to life. In his place as head of an old and well-known Stock Exchange house, associates and clients recognized him as a very high type of business man; conservative in views, often reminding Wall Street of what it described respectfully as a banker of “the old-fashioned sort,” yet sound in his judgment on the new and perplexing investment problems of the present day; a man to whom people, in and out of Wall Street, went for advice which he gladly gave. To the important committees on which he served for nineteen years in the Stock Exchange organization (including the governing committee during practically all that period) he brought a keen intelligence. He was one of the clear-seeing men who struck off from the Stock Exchange, ten years ago, the barnacles of obsolete rule and tradition which had impaired its usefulness and drawn upon it the not wholly unjustified criticism of a Congressional Committee.

But Lawrence was also one of the country’s most accomplished amateurs and experts in Gothic art. No private residence in this city, and few if any of our public museums, contained so remarkable a collection of tapestries, wood carvings, and mediæval stained glass, as was contained in his unpretentious West Side house. It was always an interesting experience to step from the New York street into the living rooms where the daylight fell through those storied windows, and listen to the collector’s quiet talk of the place and period to which they belonged and which he knew so well. They were the trophies of his personal travel and search in the older cities of Northern and Western Europe, and of his thorough acquaintance with the art of the Middle Ages. What he accomplished for himself, Lawrence was always eager to give others the chance to accomplish, and many young students of art and architecture received unobtrusively from him the encouragement and tangible help which made possible their success.

Alexander Dana Noyes
1920 Century Association Yearbook