MACALLASTER HOUSE

@ St. Lawrence University

HISTORY OF THE COLLECTION

St. Lawrence University’s permanent collection provides students, faculty, scholars, and a broad regional community the opportunity to study and enjoy original works of art. The collection includes over 7,000 art objects and artifacts, with particular strengths in twentieth-century American and European works on paper, including photographs, prints, portfolios, drawings, and artists’ books. Recent acquisitions include works by Akwesasne Mohawk artists Iakonikonriiosta,Katsitsionni Fox, and Natasha Smoke Santiago, and mokuhanga prints by Lucy May Schofield, Andy Farkas, Mariko Jesse, Katsutoshi Yuasa, Yoonmi Nam, Mia O, Katie Baldwin, and Patty Hudak.

Works of art from the collection are regularly utilized for exhibition, classroom, and research purposes. Students actively participate in all aspects of collection management, learning museum standards of art handling and registration, assisting with the installation of exhibitions and campus displays, as well as conducting research for curatorial purposes and educational programs. Tours of the collection storage facility and works of art are provided regularly to St. Lawrence University classes and regional school groups.

The collection is also made accessible to the public through a campus display program in which works of art are installed thematically in the Owen D. Young Library, the Launders Science Library in Fox Hall, the Sullivan Student Center, and the Dean-Eaton Hall Student Lounge.

WORK FEATURED AT THE MACALLASTER HOUSE:

Mark Klett

MacAllaster House Mark Klett ABOUT THE ARTIST Mark Klett (1952 – ) is an American photographer and St. Lawrence University alumnus who is “making new works that respond to historic images; creating projects that explore relationships between time, change and perception; and exploring the language of photographic media through technology”(“Bio“). The majority of his work…

Ansel Adams

MacAllaster House Ansel Adams ABOUT THE ARTIST Ansel Adams (1902-1984) was one of the most important landscape photographers of the twentieth century and also a fervent environmental conservationist. Throughout his career he timelessly captured rich, black-and-white film photographs of American landscapes, particularly focusing on the West, national parks, and “the country’s remaining fragments of untouched wilderness”…

Nathan Farb

MacAllaster House Nathan Farb ABOUT THE ARTIST American photographer and conservationist Nathan Farb (1941 – ) grew up in the village of Lake Placid, nestled in the Adirondack Mountains, where he would find inspiration for years to come. Throughout the years, Farb has used large format film cameras, and, more recently, newer technologies, to capture…

Kavavaow Mannomee

MacAllaster House Kavavaow Mannomee ABOUT THE ARTIST Kavavow Mannomee (1958 – ), also referred to as Qavavau Manumie, is an Inuit printmaker and drawer who works idiosyncratically, alternating between literal and expressive styles, to create images of Inuit legends and mythology, Arctic wildlife, and scenes of contemporary Inuit life. He is part of a new…

Kananginak Pootoogook

MacAllaster House Kananginak Pootoogook ABOUT THE ARTIST Kananginak Pootoogook (1935-2010) was an Inuit sculptor, printmaker, and drawer best known for depicting Inuit values, beliefs, and ways of life. Working within a naturally toned palette, he had a way of gradually lightening or blending together colors to bring to life the bodies of his wild subjects….

Elinor Carucci

MacAllaster House Elinor Carucci ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHS Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was the second woman ever to sit on the Supreme Court of the United States, wore distinctive collars not just to emphasize the overdue feminine energy she brought to the court, but also to encode meaning into her dress — a sartorial strategy practiced…

Kenojuak Ashevak

MacAllaster House Kenojuak Ashevak ABOUT THE ARTIST Kenojuak Ashevak (1927-2013) was a soapstone carver, drawer, and printmaker who came to be known in her lifetime as one of the most prominent and renowned Inuit artists in the world — mainly for her graphic arts. She used paper and pencils at the beginning of her drawing…
flower

Amanda Means

MacAllaster House Amanda Means ABOUT THE ARTIST Amanda Means (1945- ) is an American artist best known for her black and white “photogram” work, wherein she creates sublime images by using a unique darkroom process — placing objects on the glass in an enlarger, without utilizing a camera or traditional negatives. The objects that Means…
landscape

Sandra Hildreth

MacAllaster House Sandra Hildreth ABOUT THE ARTIST Sandra Hildreth (1946 – ) is a well recognized American painter of natural landscapes, particularly ones within the Adirondacks. She works in both oil and watercolor, deciding which medium to use as she works “en plein air,” or, in other words, working outdoors, utilizing all of her senses…

HISTORY OF THE MACALLASTER HOUSE

MacAllaster House, the home of St. Lawrence University presidents for over 95 years, is one of the finest and best-preserved Federal-style residences in northern New York. Built in 1818 and remodeled as the President’s Home in 1925, the house was redecorated and modernized periodically through the mid-20th century, and restored to its original layout and expanded in 1998-99.

Built by Richard Harison, a college classmate of John Jay, law partner of Alexander Hamilton and close friend of George Washington, the residence was Harison’s family home and headquarters of his enterprises. Harison owned vast tracts of land in St. Lawrence and Franklin counties. He chose Canton as his home because the village was a thriving community that served as the county seat.

Beginning late in the 19th century, the 210-acre farm passed through several owners, including A. Barton Hepburn, husband of Emily Eaton (their names grace Hepburn and Dean-Eaton Halls on the St. Lawrence campus), and others, including a state Supreme Court justice, a wealthy lumberman and banker, and the proprietor of the American Hotel, which stood on the spot now occupied by the Canton Post Office.

In 1925, Owen D. Young, Class of 1894, at the time chairman of the St. Lawrence Board of Trustees, and his wife, Josephine Edmonds Young, Class of 1895, acquired the house and farm as part of a 261-acre purchase that the St. Lawrence Plaindealer termed “the largest real estate transaction ever consummated in Canton.” The parcel covered most of what is now the University’s golf course, riding grounds, and wooded areas on the north bank of the Little River, which brought the campus to close to its present size of about 1,000 acres.

Mr. Young felt the acreage provided the space needed by a growing University. As for the house, he had it remodeled, and in 1927 St. Lawrence’s eighth president, Richard Eddy Sykes, and his family, moved in. In that year, Young formally deeded the property over to the University.

In the years since, the house has served every president since Sykes: Laurens Seelye, 1935-1940; Millard H. Jencks ’05, 1940-1944; Eugene G. Bewkes, 1945-1963; Foster S. Brown ’33, 1963-1969; Frank P. Piskor, GP’06, 1969-1981; W. Lawrence Gulick, 1981-1987; Patti McGill Peterson, 1987-1996; Daniel F. Sullivan ’65, P’04, 1996-2009; William L. Fox ’75, 2009-2021; and Kathryn A. Morris, the 19th University president, 2021-present.

For recent presidents and their families, the spatial limitations of the house for cultural, intellectual, and social interactions with members of the campus and North Country communities led the Board of Trustees to renovate and expand the existing home in 1997 to its original Federal style and to honor its historical value to Canton and St. Lawrence. Generous benefactors included Archie F. MacAllaster ’50, P’78; David L. Torrey ’53, P’82, GP’07; Barbara Torrey MacAllaster ’51, P’78; and William A. Torrey Sr. ’57. To recognize this extraordinary philanthropy, the house was named for the MacAllaster family in 1999.

house, exterior view