Fountain Evokes Memories of Delacorte’s NY Impact

Every day, hundreds of students streaming into Hamilton Hall walk past a white stone fountain with a single enigmatic inscription: “Delacorte”. Located to the left of the Alexander Hamilton statue, the fountain, complete with a delicately carved lion’s head spout, is one of many monuments throughout New York City named for George Thomas Delacorte Jr, CC ’13.

Delacorte, a well-known New York City philanthropist, was one of the University’s most generous alumni. His numerous and varied donations have resulted in the enrichment of Columbia’s academics as well as physical enhancements to the campus.

Upon graduation, Delacorte began working for a small publishing company and in 1921 founded his own, Dell Publishing. While Dell initially found success in pulp magazines, the company eventually amassed its fortune from a wide range of science fiction books, romance novels, comic books, and puzzle magazines. A later imprint of Dell called Delacorte Press published the works of such authors as Kurt Vonnegut and Danielle Steel.
Delacorte’s donations to Columbia began in 1975 with his contribution of $750,000 for the establishment of the Delacorte Professorship in the Humanities. After gifts for campus development, such as the stately entrance gates at 116th Street and funds to plant trees and shrubs, Columbia awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1982.

During the mid-1980s Delacorte’s contributions to his alma mater reached their peak.

In 1984 he gave $2.25 million to Columbia’s Journalism school in order to found the George T. Delacorte Center for Magazine Journalism and to create the Delacorte Professorship in Magazine Journalism. Today a portrait of Delacorte hangs in the Journalism building in honor of his generosity to the school.

The Office of Art Properties has records of gifts of decorative arts, such as tapestries and various pieces of furniture, which Delacorte and his wife gave to the University. His pledges, contributions, and gifts to Columbia University over the years totaled over $6 million.

His philanthropy was not confined to his alma mater. One of his donations to New York City is the famed Delacorte Clock located in Central Park. Perched on an archway near the Children’s Zoo, the clock, equipped with a moving platform of bronze animals, plays a nursery rhyme every half hour. The Delacorte Theater, also located in Central Park, is the home of the popular summer-series Shakespeare in the Park. His best-loved contribution to the Park may be the Alice in Wonderland statue which dates back to 1959. Fountains bearing his name can be found at Columbus Circle, City Hall, and Bowling Green. The Delacorte Fund remains active in building and maintaining monuments throughout the city.

Interestingly enough, Delacorte’s favorite contribution, according to the New York Times, is also his most dubious. He built the tallest geyser in the world on the tip of Roosevelt Island in 1969, but after receiving complaints about the polluted East River water being spewed 400 feet into the air, Delacorte paid for the chlorination of his fountain which resulted in the death of nearby trees. His philanthropy was not without controversy; when asked several years later whether he wished he had spent the money in a more useful way, for example providing aid for the city’s poor, the New York Times quoted him as saying “People are poor because they’re dumb or because they’re lazy. If you feed them you just keep them in the same strata.”

His dedication to beautifying New York City led Mayor Edward Koch to say in 1979 that, “George T. Delacorte is to the City of New York what Lorenzo de Medici was to the city of Florence.” He died of natural causes in his Manhattan home on May 4, 1991 at the age of 97.