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In July, the Office of the President inquired about
hanging paintings on the upper walls in Healy Hall's historic
Philodemic Conference Room, used for more than a century for meetings
of the venerable, 174-year-old Philodemic Debate Society. A few
weeks later, the likenesses of eleven prominent people from Georgetown's
past graced its interior.
View of the Philodemic Room in
the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. Courtesy of the
Georgetown University Archives.
Curatorial staff were able to confirm that paintings
had been hung there in the past. Undated photographs in the University
Archives, probably from the late nineteenth or early twentieth
century, reveal which paintings were hung on the south and west
walls; the north wall is faced with windows, and no photographs
are found of the east wall. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the
paintings remained in the room until at least the 1960s.
Compare the Philodemic Room in 2004 with the
archival photo abovel, when paintings were rehung in July following
an absence of several decades.
All eight paintings from the archival photographs
were located some had since been re-hung in the President's office,
and were removed during summer renovations; others were in the
Vault. Fortunately, all but one were in suitable condition to
be installed. For practical and aesthetic reasons, the orders
of some were switched from how they appeared in the archival photographs,
and others were added to the selection. It was decided to place
three portraits of members of the Harrison family on the unphotographed
east wall: Major Thomas Harrison, combat hero in the War of 1812;
midshipman George W. Harrison, who attended Georgetown and who
died at age 19 aboard a U.S. Navy ship near Macau; and Ann Mattingly
Harrison, wife and mother, respectively, of the other two, and
a direct descendant of Mattinglys who arrived with the Jesuit
mission to Maryland on the Ark and the Dove in 1634.
Hanging the paintings entailed some logistical challenges.
Most were in heavy, ornate frames, and were to be placed at least
seven feet from the floor, on plaster walls that turned out to
be weak at several points. University Facilities generously provided
movable scaffolding and assigned two of their experienced technicians,
George Hammer and James Wilmot, who have assisted the Art Collection
on previous occasions.
In addition to the three Harrisons, the portraits
are (as seen from left to right in the accompanying photograph):
prominent physician James Ethelbert Morgan, a professor in the
School of Medicine from 1852 to 1876; Philadelphia writer, editor,
and publisher, and U.S. consul to Paris, Robert Walsh, who attended
Georgetown College in 1797-1798; Charles B. Kenny, Class of 1858,
L.L.D. 1910, a prominent attorney and generous benefactor to the
University; Thomas Antisell, a professor of chemistry in the School
of Medicine's first faculty, beginning in 1858; Thomas M. Herran,
Class of 1863, A.M. 1868, who was to become a diplomat from Colombia
to the United States, and who negotiated the treaty for U.S. rights
to the Panama Canal; James B. Ord, Class of 1806, the first of
several generations of Ords to attend Georgetown; William Gaston,
the first student enrolled at Georgetown College (in 1791) and
later a senator from North Carolina; and Commodore Stephen Decatur,
naval hero in the War with Tripoli and the War of 1812.
Reaction to the installation of these significant portraits has
been wholly positive -consistent with each occasion the Art Collection
has retrieved artwork "from the Vault."
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