The Cutler Lecture Centennial, In Review

The Ask the Archivist column in the Fall 2021 Rochester Review answered a question from Professor Gerald Gamm, who asked about the history of the Cutler Lecture Series which celebrated it centenary in 2021. You can read the article here. 

James Goold Cutler (1848-1927) served as Mayor of Rochester from 1904 to 1907, and was a member of the University's Board of Trustees from 1915 until his death. Cutler had trained as an architect, and briefly practiced in partnership with Andrew Jackson Warner.

His experience as an architect probably inspired the invention for which he is most widely known: the Cutler Mail Chute, which he patented in 1883. The chutes were installed in multi-story buildings to enable the collection of mail at the central location: residents simply dropped their letters in the chute and were spared the need to find a post office or mailbox on the street. The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections holds a small collection of papers, mainly photographs, related to the Cutler Mail Chute Company. Alum Karen Greene (PhD 1969) used the collection in research for her book Art Deco Mailboxes: A Design History. (The image above was designed by Claude Bragdon.)

The lecture series was suggested and funded by Cutler. Cutler took as his model the Stafford Little Lectures established at Princeton University in 1908, and wrote President Rush Rhees in 1920:

"It appears to me that the most useful contribution which I can make to promote the making of democracy safe for the world (to invert Mr. Wilson's aphorism) is to found in the University of Rochester, a course of lectures, designed to promote serious consideration, and consideration by as many people as possible, of certain points fundamental, and therefore, vital, to the permanence of constitutional government in the United States."

Not lost on him was that the initial speaker at Princeton was former President Grover Cleveland. "The problem, as I see it, is to secure a man of commanding position, as the first lecturer, who will strike our keynote at the outset."

It's clear from Cutler's correspondence with Rhees that his was a strong personality with strongly held opinions. Despite his reference to Woodrow Wilson, Cutler was not a great fan of the President, writing Rhees, "I think the choice should fall upon a man who stands actively before the public as a loyal American citizen, sound on Constitutional government and not tainted in any way with Mr. Wilson's nebulous idealism.

Curiously, in 1927, Cutler also established a lecture series at the College of William and Mary on the same principles as at Rochester. According to the William and Mary website, "Mr. Cutler declared as a basic proposition that our political system breaks down, when and where it fails, because of the lack of sound education of the people for whom and by whom it was intended to be carried on."

You can read the first six Cutler lectures here.

The 100th Congress and the 1988 Presidential Elections