Reid, Helen Rogers, 1882-1970

Helen Rogers Reid was the first woman chair of Barnard's Board of Trustees. She served from 1947-1956 when she was made a trustee emeritus. Reid Hall on the Barnard campus is named for her. Reid Hall, in Paris, was established by Elizabeth Mills Reid, mother-in-law of Helen Rogers Reid, as a club for American women artists and intellectuals in 1893. By 1922, through the efforts of Helen Rogers Reid and Virginia Gildersleeve, it had become a residence for American university women and a center for Franco-American cultural exchange. It remained part of Barnard until 1964 when it was bequeathed to Columbia University. Helen Rogers was born in Appleton, Wis. and graduated from Barnard in 1903. Engaged as social secretary to Elizabeth Mills Reid, she met and married her son Ogden Mills Reid in 1911. The Reids were publishers of the New York Tribune and in 1918 Helen Rogers Reid began her career in journalism. She began as advertising director of the paper and within 5 years turned it into a profitable enterprise. She was integral to the merger of the Tribune with the New York Herald and the establishment of the New York Herald Tribune as one of the United States' major dailies. She promoted women writers and hired the first female war correspondents. Upon the death of her husband in 1947, she succeeded him as president of the Herald Tribune corporation. An early suffragist, Reid founded the Women's City Club of New York with Alice Duer Miller in 1913 and was largely responsible for New York's becoming the first Eastern state to grant the vote to women. She was active in Republican politics on the local and national levels. She served in the Eisenhower Administration on the Government Contract Commission. Among her many civic and charitable activities was the founding of the Fresh Air Fund which provides outdoor activities for disadvantaged city children. She received numerous citations, medals and honorary degrees from many nations and edicational institutions.