June 9-15, 2005

city beat

Hiding Treasures

striking pose: Among the artifacts in Girard College's little-known collection is a bust of Marquis de Lafayette. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

Public access to Stephen Girard's artifacts could soon be scaled back.

by Jenna Portnoy

At first glance, nothing about Karen Sullivan fits the stuffy reputation of Girard College, a private boarding school for underprivileged children in Fairmount. A lean 25-year-old in a bright pink shirt, she bounds from room to room, her heels clacking against the marble floors of Founder's Hall.

Every morning for two years, she zipped through the 43-acre campus between 25th Street and Ridge Avenue on Girard, parked her red Volkswagen New Beetle outside the National Historic Landmark and released the locks and alarms that protect the legacy of Stephen Girard — and Girard himself, whose remains are entombed in the foyer.

"But he was a good man, so I don't mind," Sullivan says of working near the grave of a figure who some alumni feared might roll over when historic court rulings shattered his mandate that the school accept only white, fatherless boys.

Girard, probably the richest man in America when he died in 1831, left behind a collection of rare furniture and artifacts his ship captains brought back from around the world. Because he kept meticulous records of purchases and correspondence, Girard's collection chronicles the city's importance as a style center in the mid-1700s to early 1800s.

In recent years, private tours and exhibits loosened the gates of the school, a so-called "Stone Cocoon." But today, Sullivan's departure and budget constraints threaten to again bury Girard's hidden treasures.

It was Sullivan's job to construct a computerized inventory from paper records. As one of two professionals at the museum — the other works two-thirds time — she gave tours to walk-ins on all weekdays rather than insisting they make reservations or come on Thursdays, the designated tour day. She also started to computerize the Girardiana materials, thousands of items related to the school and its students. Her unrealized goal was to put both collections on the Web.

An anonymous donor paid Sullivan's salary for one year and the school convinced the donor to fund another year. But, Sullivan, unsure whether her job would be around for a third year, left last month to work at an engineering and construction management firm. The school, which hopes a grant will pay for her replacement, doesn't think the problem is insurmountable.

"It's more than a hiccup, but it's not a total disaster," Girard College President Dominic Cermele says, adding that $50,000 is needed to fund another year. "I wanted this online by now. So this will put us back six, eight, 10 months depending on how quickly we're able to replace her."

Elizabeth Laurent, the museum's associate director for historic resources, downplayed the significance of Sullivan's departure. "Public access remains what it was before [Sullivan's] arrival."

No one has seriously suggested the doors of the museum will close, but losing Sullivan clearly means less public access to a collection that Cermele, a 1959 graduate, concedes is a "hidden treasure." Alexandra Alevizatos Kirtley, assistant curator of American decorative arts at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, says the collection shows Philadelphia as the trendsetting city it was 200 years ago.

"Philadelphia is regaled for having the most talented London-trained carvers in the pre-Revolutionary period," she says. "That furniture stands out among other Colonial furniture as being the most lavish and ornate and most fully developed rococo in this country that looked most like its English and London counterparts."

Aside from silver featuring Girard's initials, a giant music box, a carriage and other personal effects, the collection features a suite of ebony furniture, the only one known to exist anywhere, Kirtley says.

Girard attracted to the city people such as Thomas U. Walter, who won a competition to design Founder's Hall, and B. Henry Latrobe, who built the Bank of Pennsylvania and Centre Square Waterworks.

Girard lived on a plot of land in South Philadelphia, formerly called Passyunk Township and now Girard Estates. In a building next to his home, Girard employed a team of people to keep track of letters he received and copy letters he sent. On display in the museum is a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to Girard inquiring about wine and books. Although Girard was a mariner, merchant, humanitarian and banker, he came from a family of French seafaring traders. Perhaps because he was not born into wealth, Kirtley notes, Girard had the common man at heart.

What most city residents know about Girard College comes from news reports on protracted legal battles that ended in 1968 with the court-ordered admission of African-American students. The first girls were admitted in 1984.

But Girard's story mirrors that of Philadelphia itself. He arrived in the city at the verge of its independence, forged connections with at least 10 signers of the Declaration of Independence and was one of the people who funded the War of 1812. Today, art and history scholars use his museum as a primary resource.

Sullivan studied art and art history at Lafayette College and used PastPerfect museum software to computerize the collection in part to assist researchers. Each entry includes a photograph, a description, a list of the books in which it appears and, sometimes, details from the original receipt. In all, there are 3,000 artifacts.

The Girardiana Collection, what 1953 graduate and volunteer Gil Bunker calls the "Legacy Collection," has about 10,000 pieces, with 2,000 on display.

Since 1848, Girard College has graduated about 22,000 students. Looking through the Girardiana rooms, it seems as though many alumni assumed traits for which Girard was famous: great networking skills and obsessive-compulsive tendencies. They've kept every schoolyard souvenir from class pictures and uniforms to yearbooks and reports cards. There is a decades-old Girard ginger (aka "hum mud"), the cookie students used as currency inside the school. (Bunker says the older the ginger the longer one should dunk it in milk.)

Pulling out a folder of thank-you notes, Sullivan laments her last days at Girard. She relished working in Founder's Hall and liked interacting with the students.

Last summer, 2,000 people, about the number of people who see the museum all year, viewed a temporary exhibit on integration. Sullivan gave the bulk of these tours. It's clear to Tom DiFilippo, a 1944 graduate and author of the book, Stephen Girard, The Man, His College and Estate, that Sullivan was good for the place.

"If she doesn't do this job and they were going to shut this museum down, no one would get too upset about it," he says. "And that's a crime."