March 1, 1972

Urban historian Sam Bass Warner, Jr. from the University of Michigan gave the second C. Mildred Thompson Lecture of the academic year, on “The Loss of Purpose in Urban Landscape Architecture: Andrew Jackson Downing to Lawrence Halprin.” Warner’s historical study of the growth of Philadephia, The Private City (1968) won the Albert J. Beveridge Award of the American Historical Association, and his comprehensive study of cities, The Urban Wilderness: A History of the American City, was published in 1972.

The Thompson lectureship, given by an anonymous donor, honored American historian C. Mildred Thompson ’03, who taught in the history department from 1910 until 1923, when she became Vassar’s dean, a position she held until her retirement in 1948. Dean Thompson died in 1975.