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Mary Eliza
Graydon’s generosity helped sustain a fledgling university
BY KENNY LUCAS
It’s one of the most recognizable buildings on campus. Students
head there to study, hold organizational meetings, and eat. The
front steps have served as a hang out spot for generations of students,
and almost any student, staffer, faculty member, or alum will know
where to go if you tell them to come to Mary Graydon. It’s
a building that has played a large role in AU history, and yet the
Mary Graydon Center’s namesake remains a bit of a mystery within
the university’s past.
 Mary
Eliza Graydon contributed between $500,000 and $750,000 in stocks,
bonds, cash, and property to AU between 1894 and 1926. A grandiose
sum in any age, but a spectacular windfall in the early twentieth
century, Graydon’s philanthropy served as a life preserver
for a fledgling university just finding its way. Other universities
might be tempted to name entire schools after such a benefactor,
but in her lifetime only the highest ranking university officials
knew Mary Graydon’s name. In fact, if the mysterious Ms. Graydon
had her way, the building located between McKinley and Battelle-Tompkins
wouldn’t bear her name at all.
In 1894, one year after the university had been incorporated, but
two years before the cornerstone of the first building had been
laid, Bishop John Hurst was still trying to raise money for the
university he planned in the nation’s capital. Through Dr.
W. H. DePuy, assistant editor of the Christian Advocate, Hurst learned
that Miss Mary Eliza Graydon, granddaughter of the immensely wealthy
Patrick Clendenen, was “disposed favorably” toward the
proposed American University in Washington, D.C. Hurst contacted
the Graydons.
In February of that year his efforts were rewarded with a letter
from Mary’s father, John Graydon, which read, “Miss Graydon
is inclined to make a donation amounting to about $100,000 in bonds
etc. to the American University as a fund or foundation for the
education of women.” Hurst took a train to New York and a wonderful
relationship had begun.
 Mary
Graydon inherited her fortune either directly from her grandfather,
Patrick Clendenen, or through her mother and spread her wealth liberally.
American University was but one of her many beneficiaries. Her family
was devoutly Methodist, and she retained her membership in the Madison
Avenue Methodist Church in New York City her entire life, even after
moving to Ridgewood, N.J., in her later years. “From those
hidden streams of thought and devotion, there flowed a constant
stream of financial benefactions,” Karl Quimby, minister of
the Ridgewood Methodist Episcopal Church wrote of Graydon in 1926
following her death.
According to Quimby’s letter, Graydon lived modestly and religiously.
She only visited American University once in her life, but it is
easy to see how her family would take an interest in the establishment
of a Methodist institution in Washington, D.C., especially in light
of the already established Roman Catholic school Georgetown University.
“My father was deeply interested in the creation of the American
University,” Graydon wrote to Bishop Hurst in September of
1896, “and together we gave, with so much pleasure, those $100,755
of Securities.”
Graydon requested that initial gift be used to set up the Patrick
Clendenen Endowment fund. All of her subsequent gifts would also
be earmarked for scholarship except for $2,000 in 1895, which went
to the construction of the College of History, Hurst Hall. In 1897
Graydon gave the university $55,000 in bonds and cash and in 1911
she donated a property on the corner of Second Avenue and East Houston
Street in New York City, which AU subsequently sold. Upon her death
in 1926 she provided handsomely for the university in her will.
Although she favored the support of scholarship, especially as it
applied to women—“I prefer to put money into brains rather
than stone and mortar,” she told Hurst—Graydon allowed
university trustees to allocate her funds as they saw fit.
 One
thing she remained steadfast and firm on, however, was her name.
Under no circumstances was it to be used in acknowledgment of the
funds she gave American University or any organization for that
matter. “As in the past, it is my desire and urgent request
that no publicity whatever be given to my name in connection with
these gifts,” she wrote to Bishop Hurst in 1897. In the extreme
case that a name be required in connection with her gifts, Graydon
asked that the name of her grandfather, Patrick Clendenen, be used.
Mary Graydon died in New Jersey in 1926 at the age of 83. One year
earlier AU had put the finishing touches on a new women’s residence
hall on the northeast corner of campus. Construction on the building
had been initiated in 1918 by the United States War Department,
which had contracted with AU to build a chemical laboratory on campus
as part of its World War I efforts. The government had expended
some $225,000 toward that end when the conclusion of the war brought
construction of the building to a halt. The frame stood half finished
until completed by AU seven years later.
Plans for the women’s residence hall, which was initially referred
to as Alumni Hall, included faculty dining halls, a kitchen and
cafeteria, four rooms for domestic science, a library, a gymnasium,
and of course student rooms. One year after the residence hall was
completed a new campus gym-theatre complex, named Assembly Hall
Gymnasium, officially opened with a basketball game between AU and
the University of Maryland.
During World War II, both the women’s residence hall and the
gym were used in the war efforts. Men attending the Navy’s
Bomb Disposal School made use of the gym, and the Red Cross Services
Training Unit took out space in the residence hall. When the war
ended, both buildings were returned to their academic purposes,
but they did so with new names. Between 1945 and 1946 Assembly Hall
Gymnasium became Patrick Clendenen Gymnasium. The Women’s Residence
Hall was renamed Mary Graydon Hall. No direct indication of why
the name change came about or who ordered it could be found in the
archives.
Mary Graydon’s building would continue to change during the
ensuing decades. Its name switched to the Mary Graydon Center in
1959 when the edifice became the university’s student center.
The Tavern and Faculty Dining Hall were added in 1968, and the entire
second floor was remodeled in 2001 with the creation of the University
Center. Today the Mary Graydon Center houses the School of Communication,
the University Center, and numerous eating establishments. One can
only imagine that Mary Eliza Graydon would have been pleased with
the role her building plays in the academic life of American University,
even if she disapproved of the name.
Upper right:
Clendenen Gymnasium
Above: The half-finished women’s residence hall, today’s
Mary Graydon Center
Right: The first floor of the Mary Graydon Center is home to many
eateries.
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