Marion Edwards Park papers

The Marion Edwards Park papers consist of the materials that were kept in her secretary’s office in Bryn Mawr College’s Taylor Hall while Park served as president. The collection, which spans Park’s tenure as President of the College (1922 to 1942), provides insight into the administrative workings of Bryn Mawr during the Depression and World War II.

The collection is divided into two series: “Series I: Miscellaneous Biographical Material, Personal Letters, Reprinted Information,” and “Series II: Office Files, 1922-1942.”

The first series consists of one document box containing miscellaneous biographical material, personal letters, and reprinted information. It contains materials pertaining to Park’s 1922 inauguration. It also contains a large amount of correspondence, with correspondents such as Frederica de Laguna, Laurence Stapleton, Margaret and Katharine Lord, and Josephine Goldmarsh. This series further contains miscellaneous recollections, reprints, and speeches (all of which are undated).

The second series is much larger than the first. It consists of thirty-five document boxes which store subject files and correspondence files arranged in alphabetical order. These materials were taken from Park’s secretary’s office in Taylor Hall following her retirement, and cover a wide range of topics related to the college. Much of the material is related to academics and student life, including information concerning admissions; the College Entrance Examination Board 1927-1938; exams, faculty such as Florence Bascom; SGA; the alumnae association; traditions; and exams. There are also materials concerning buildings on campus, such as Bettws-Y-Coed, the Psychology building; Goodhart, the theater; Old Library (previously Thomas Library and Thomas Great Hall); and the Phebe Anna Thorne School. There is also material related to college outreach: to foreign students, in the shape of the Chinese Scholarship Fund; to working-class women, in the form of the Summer School for Women Workers in Industry; and to other colleges, as materials from the Five Colleges Conference and early Tri-College partnership reveal. This series contains around 2.5 boxes of Marion Park’s speeches given over the years. It also contains a fair number of materials on Park’s predecessor, M. Carey Thomas.

This collection provides invaluable access to the workings of the Park administration and would be useful for anyone studying Bryn Mawr history during the 1920s-1940s.