Doreen Canaday Spitzer Papers
COLLECTION OVERVIEW
Collection Number: GR ASCSA DCS 007
Name(s) of Creator(s): Doreen Canaday Spitzer (1914-2010)
Title: Doreen Canaday Spitzer Papers
Date [bulk]: 1936-1938
Date [inclusive]: 1933-1989
Language(s): English
Summary: The collection contains more than 1,000 images from Doreen Canaday's time in Greece from 1936-1938, some personal correspondence, and professional correspondence related to the Ï㽶ÊÓƵ (for her professional correspondence during her service as President of the Board of Trustees, see ASCSA Administrative Records, Series 300).
Quantity: 2 linear meters
Immediate Source of Acquisition: Gift of Doreen Canaday Spitzer
Information about Access: The collection is available for research (with some restrictions)
Cite as: Ï㽶ÊÓƵ, Archives, Doreen Canaday Spitzer Papers (Αμερικανική Σχολή Κλασικών Σπουδών στην Αθήνα, Αρχείο Doreen Canaday Spitzer)
Notes: The collection was processed by Lizabeth Ward Papageorgiou.
For more information, please contact the Archives at:
The Ï㽶ÊÓƵ
54 Souidias Street, Athens 106 76, Greece
phone: +30 213 000 2400 (ext. 425)
Contact via E-mail
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Note: The following biographical note is an abridged version of a longer essay written by Catherine de Grazia Vanderpool for the Newsletter of the Ï㽶ÊÓƵ, AKOUE, Fall 2010, no. 63, pp. 2, 27.
"With the death of Doreen Canaday Spitzer on September 6, age 95, the American School, and Greece, lost one of their dearest friends. The outlines of Doreen's relationship to the School are familiar to the School family: Student in 1936-1939; Trustee 1978-1996, President of the Board of Trustees 1983-1988, Trustee Emerita from 1996, and President of the Friends from 1988 until her death; most generous of donors; kindest and most loving of friends and mentors. She was also passionate about Greece itself, as close to the country as she was to the School.
Doreen graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1936, a student of Rhys Carpenter and Mary Hamilton Swindler, with a B.A. cum laude in archaeology. An only child, she had first traveled to Greece with her parents, Miriam Coffin, herself a graduate of Bryn Mawr and devoted to the classics and Greece; and leading automotive industrialist Ward M. Canaday. In late September 1936, Doreen returned to Greece on her own, age 21, as a student at the American School.
Doreen went on to excavate in Ancient Corinth in the spring of 1937, an "incentive for learning Greek quickly"' in order to learn "all the different sides of conducting an excavation." With fellow students from the School, she also travelled to Egypt and Turkey, and ever-energetic and competitive, swam the Hellespont. Back in Greece and Corinth until 1939, she corresponds with a young instructor at Yale and old family friend, Lyman Spitzer, whom she marries in 1940. In 1948, they move their growing family at Princeton, where they live the rest of their lives, he as Professor of Astronomy at Princeton University, she raising their four children and devoting herself to a wide variety of volunteer activities.
Eary in World War II, Doreen as well as her mother helped raise funds for the Greek War Relief Association, which sent money and supplies to the beleaguered country. After the war, she watched her father's deep involvement as president of the School Board in the renaissance of the Agora Excavations and construction of the Stoa of Attalos.
A brilliant prose stylist and sometime poet whose prose often read like poetry, Doreen, as a writer and editor, woud worry a sentence until it expressed her precise thought. She wrote By One and One, about her parents, and in the last years of her life, after the devastating loss of her life's companion, Lyman, in 1997, As Long as You Both Shall Live, about their 57-year marriage.
Well into her 80s, her physical energy continued to be boundless and her appetitie for "one more acropolis" never flagged, whether during the "On-Site" trips that marked her presidency of the Board and chairmanship of the Friends of the School, or her other visits to Greece. In her many years of involvement with the American School as a Trustee beginning in 1978, Doreen believed that the School needed to develop its public face, not only to raise money but to convey to a broad audience beyond the world of classicists the riches of Greek civilization. She promoted the development of the School Newsletter and the Friends, with lectures and conferences in the U.S. and trips to Greece; was the guiding light behind the School's multifaceted "Democracy 2000" celebration in 1994; and enthusiastically encouraged other exhibitions of School material in the U.S. in the 1990s. Ever appreciating the importance of detail in making sense of life and history, and prompted by her own growing accumulation of papers, she furthered in every way the development of the School's Archives from its beginnings in the late 1980s, encouraging its professionalization, helping to raise money, and, as her last major gift to the School, giving a challenge grant for its endowment.
More important, Doreen was aware of generations to come. Her largest single gift to the School, made in the mid-1990s, endowed multiple fellowships, two of which were named after women she admired and loved: Lucy Shoe Meritt and Virginia Grace. Doreen's own name is memorialized in a School Fellowship, and in the named position of head of the Archives.
See also: Natalia Vogeikoff-Brogan, "," From the Archivist’s Notebook, 3 October 2018.
SCOPE AND CONTENT
The collection contains more than 1,000 photos of Greece and Turkey primarily, taken by Doreen Canaday (later Spitzer) when she was a student of the ASCSA in 1936-1938, . The photographic collection was digitized under ESPA Call 31 and is available through In addition to the photos, there is personal correspondence with friends and ASCSA members, professional correspondence related to the Ï㽶ÊÓƵ (for her professional correspondence during her service as President of the Board of Trustees of the ASCSA, see also ASCSA Administrative Records, Series 300); and a small collection of personal books and articles, most of them dating around the WW II years.
CONTENT LIST
BOX 1: ASCSA
Folder 1: Agora (1964–1989)
Folder 2: Alumni Association (1968–1976)
Folder 3: "Beneath the Surface” (1947)
Folder 4: Corinth (1978–1989)
Folder 5: Financial: Auxiliary Fund Association (1961–1975)
Folder 6: Financial: Louis E. Lord Fellowship Fund (1955–1957)
Folder 7: “Future of ASCSA” (1981–1985)
Folder 8: Isthmia (1975–1978)
BOX 2: ASCSA
Folder 1: Publications (1964–1988)
Folder 2: Publications: Reconstructing the Stoa of Attalos (1989)
Folder 3: Reports on Conditions at the ASCSA (1979–1985)
Folder 4: Strategic Issues (1977–1987)
Folder 5: Trustee Correspondence (1951–1956)
BOX 3: CORRESPONDENCE
Folder 1: Correspondence (1943–1962)
Folder 2: Francis H. Bacon (1938–1940)
Folder 3: L. A. Benachi (1940)
Folder 4: Dietrich and Joyce von Bothmer (1985–1987)
Folder 5: Oscar Broneer (1939–1987)
Folder 6: Charles Morgan to Ward Canaday about the reconstruction of the Stoa of Attalus (1956–1966). Also a copy of a letter by Jack L. Caskey to Ward Canaday (1960); and a letter by Ward to his daughter Doreen, 1966.
Folder 7: William D. E. Coulson (1987–1989)
Folder 8: Hetty Goldman (1933)
(Photocopies of letters to her niece describing her career choices and her life in the field.)
Folder 9: Gertrude Leighton (1936–1988)
Folder 10: Stephen G. Miller (1983–1985)
Folder 11: Richard Norton to Alden Sampson (1900–1904)
Folder 12: Tom Palaima (1988–1989)
Folder 13: King Paul Christmas Card (nd)
Folder 14: Evelyn Smithson (1960)
Folder 15: Zeph Stewart (1988)
Folder 16: Helen Thomas (1940)
Folder 17: Correspondence [re: identification of 1930s snapshots (1930s–1998)]
BOX 4: MISCELLANEOUS
Folder 1: Anastassios Adossides and Aristeides Kyriakides, Agora (1947–1984)
Folder 2: Academy of Athens (1987)
Folder 3: Aerial Photography of Greek Sites (1982–1988)
Folder 4: J. Lawrence Angel (1938–1986)
Folder 5: Carl Blegen (1985–1998)
Folder 6: Paul Clement (1983–1986)
Folder 7: Clippings (1961–1993)
Folder 8: Council of American Overseas Research (1985–1989)
Folder 9: Dinner Menus from "The Pierre" (1982–1984)
Folder 10: “Field Archaeology at Princeton” lecture by Homer A. Thompson (1984)
Folder 11: Sarah Elizabeth Freeman (1986)
Folder 12: Greek War Relief Association (1944)
Folder 13: Lois Larsen (1984)
Folder 14: New York University Film Library (nd)
Folder 15: Charles G. Raphael (1981–1982)
Folder 16: Slide Lists (nd)
Folder 17: “Swans and Amber” by Dorothy Burr Thompson (1988–1989)
Folder 18: University of Minnesota’s Messenia Expedition Brochure (1968)
Folder 19: Frederick O. Waage (1985)
Folder 20: Saul and Gladys Weinberg (1983–1986)
Folder 21: Richard Ernest Wycherley (1986)
Folder 22: “Χρυσούν Σταυρόν” awarded to Ward Canaday by King Paul (1956)
Folder 23: Lois Aston Larson attending Summer Session in 1939
Folder 24: George Karchros (1939)
Folder 24: Miscellaneous (1967–1992)
BOX 5: PHOTO ALBUM
Greece: School Trips (1936–1937) - Photos #0001-0613
Shots of archaeological sites, landscapes, towns, local color, and friends. Photos are digitized and available for research at
BOX 6: PHOTO ALBUM
Black and white snapshots of Corfu, Rhodes, Troy, Pergamon, Heracleia, Magnesia on the Meander, Nysa, Laodicea, Hierapolis, Miletus, Didyma, Priene, Ephesos, Konya, Tarsus, Delphi, Leucas, and Thera (1933–1938) - Photos #0614-0861.
Photos are digitized and available for research at
BOX 7: PHOTO ALBUM
Greece (1936–1937) - Photos #862-1149
Shots of archaeological sites, landscape, towns, local color, and friends from trips to Attica, Andros, Corinth, Crete, Euboea, Tenos, and a few from Italy, Turkey, and Yugoslavia. Photos are digitized and available for research at
BOX 8: PHOTO ALBUM
Europe (1937–1938)
Freiburg, Berne, Bologna, Arezzo, Siena, Paestum, Perugia, Fiesole, Ragusa, Pola, Lisbon, Albania, Spalato, Korcula.
Few shots of people, fewer identified (W. A. McDonald)
Egypt (22 December 1936 - 7 January 1938)
Few shots of people, fewer identified (Emily Grace, Edward Gierish, Dorothy Schierer)
Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt (1938)
Few shots of people, fewer identified (G. M. Weeks)
BOX 9: PHOTOGRAPHS
Greece (1951-1989)
Small photo album “Picnic Given by Ward M. Canaday to the workmen on the Agora Museum in the Stoa of Attalos, Athens, Greece Aug. 20 1955”
Envelope 1: Isthmia Museum Opening with labeled photographs (1976–1978)
Envelope 4: Negatives: Ward Canaday(?) and workers(?) at the Agora (nd)
Envelope 5: Ward Canaday and Homer A. Thompson at the Agora (1956?)
Envelope 6: Greek Boy Scouts at the Agora (1955)
Envelope 7: Tree Planting at the Agora (1951)
Identified on backs: Miriam Canaday, John Caskey, Homer A. Thompson
Envelope 8: ASCSA Centennial Receptions (1981)
--At the U.S. Embassy: Identified on backs: Ambassador and Mrs. McCloskey, Lloyd Cotsen, Robert McCabe, Jim McCredie, Sally and Henry Immerwahr, Frank Walton, Paul McKendrick, David and Lynn Rupp, Caroline Houser, Phyllis Lehmann, Gerry Gesell.
--At the School: Nancy Winter, Bruni Ridgway, Mme. Pierre Amandry, John Slocum, Machteld Mellink, Joan Connelly, Steve Miller, Andy Neuberg, Jerry Sperling
Envelope 14: Kodachrome snapshots taken in Athens and environs from album made by Fred Crawford for Ward Canaday (January 1966). Identified: Ward Canaday, Richard Howland, Eugene Vanderpool, Carl Blegen, A. Kyriakidis, H. S. Robinson, Fred Crawford, Fred Walton, John Travlos, Virginia Grace, and Nicholas Platon.
Envelope 15: Portraits of Father Bodner (nd)
Envelope 17: Agora Museum Dedication (3 September 1956)
Envelope 18: Agora (1953)
--Identified on backs: John Caskey, Homer A. Thompson, Ward and Miriam Canaday, Eugene Vanderpool
Envelope 19: Contact Sheet for photos to be used for new school brochure (1989)
Envelope 20: Athens (16 May 1969)
--Identified on backs: Richard Howland, Fred Crawford, Kelly Simpson
Envelope 21: Dedication of Davis Wing (1959)
Envelope 22: Views of properties to be expropriated for Agora excavations (1986)
Envelope 23: Miscellaneous: Hephaisteion (1955), Mariam and Ward Canaday, Carl Blegen, Marian Rawson(?) (1956)
BOX 10: “ASCSA Slide Show #1-146”
BOX 11: BOOKS
American Friends of Greece. Greece 1821–1941 (1941)
American Friends of Greece. Rebuilding Greece. nd.
“Archaeological News.” Reprint. Archaeology, Vol. 12, No. 4, 1959.
Athens Annals of Archaeology. Vol. VI, Fasc. 2, 1973.
Broneer, Oscar. “Athens, City of Idol Worship.” Reprint. The Biblical Archaeologist, Vol. XXI, No. 1,
February 1958.
Charles Eliot Norton: Two Addresses by Edward Waldo Emerson and William Fenwick Harris. 1912.
(Written on first page, “Presented by the Archaeological Institute of America to Mrs. Layman Spitzer
Member of the Institutes Norton Lectureship Committee [signed] Sterling Dow, Pres Christmas 1946”)
Davis, Homer W., ed. Greece Fights: The People Behind the Front (1942)
Dobson, C. G. Historical Notes on the Langley Museum (1960)
Dow, Sterling. “Illustrations in Textbooks.” Reprint. The Journal of General Education. Vol. V, No. 2, 1951.
Downey, Glanville. “The Byzantine Church and the Presentness of the Past.” Reprint. Theology Today, Vol.
XV, No. 1, April 1958.
Downey, Glanville. Review of Byzantium and the Classical Tradition. Reprint. The Phoenix, Vol. 12, 1958.
Elderkin, George W. The First Three Temples at Delphi, Their Religious and Historical Significance (1962)
F. F. J. “An ‘East Greek’ Jug.” (loose pages 63–66 of unnamed journal).
Gibberd, Kathleen. Greece (1944)
Grace, Virginia R. “The Canaanite Jar.” Reprint. The Aegean and the Near East: Studies Presented to Hetty
Goldman.
Grace, Virginia. “Wine Jars (Illustrated).” Reprint. Classical Journal, Vol. XLII, No. 8, May 1947.
Hill, Dorothy Kent. Fashions of the Past: Ancient Greek Dress (1945)
Jastrow, Elizabeth. “Abformung und Typenwandel in der Antiken Tonplastik.” Opuscula Archaeologica, Vol.
II, Fasc. 1, 1938.
The Journal of the Walters Art Gallery, Vols. VII–VIII, 1944–45.
Ministry of Information, War Office, Great Britain. The Campaign in Greece and Crete (1942)
Pease, Arthur Stanley and Sterling Dow. Review of The Oxford Classical Dictionary. Reprint. The Classical
Weekly, Vol. 44, No. 15, 1951.
Printer’s Proof for the Directory of Fellows and Students of the American School of Classical Studies at
Athens. 1939(?).
Richter, Gisela M. A. The Metropolitan Museum, A Brief Guide to the Greek Collection (1945)
Segal, Charles P. “ΥΨΟΣ and the Problem of Cultural Decline in the de Sublimitate.” Reprint. Harvard
Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. LXIV, 1959.
Smothers, Frank; William Hardy McNeill; Elizabeth Darbishire McNeill. Report on the Greeks: Findings of a
Twentieth Century Fund Team which Surveyed Conditions in Greece in 1947 (1948)
Weinberg, Gladys Davidson. “Glass Manufacture in Ancient Crete.” Reprint. Journal of Glass Studies, Vol.
1, 1959.
Weinberg, Gladys Davidson. “An Inlaid Glass Plate in Athens, Part I.” Reprint. Journal of Glass Studies, Vol.
IV, 1962.
Weinberg, Gladys Davidson. “An Inlaid Glass Plate in Athens, Part II: Laboratory Examination.” Reprint.
Journal of Glass Studies, Vol. IV, 1962.