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
Ansel Adams
Nathan Farb
Kavavaow Mannomee
Kananginak Pootoogook
Elinor Carucci
Kenojuak Ashevak
Amanda Means
Sandra Hildreth
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.
