A hand-colored Chautauqua Archives photograph shows Smith-Wilkes Memorial Lecture Hall circa 1929-1936.
“Bounded by James, Fletcher, and Foster Avenues and facing toward the Lake, the location of this splendid new building is ideal. It is built of yellow brick with a cement floor. All about the walls are spacious openings allowing plenty of air and sunshine to enter. … Altogether, the Smith Wilkes Hall is extraordinary in its combination of beauty and utilitarian compactness.”
As construction Smith Wilkes Hall neared completion on July 1, 1924, that’s how a reporter for The Chautauquan Daily described the soon-to-be permanent home of what was then known as the Bird and Tree Club. Just one week later, on July 8, Smith Wilkes Hall would host a meeting of the Bird and Tree Club for the very first time.
Today marks the 100th anniversary of the dedication of the hall. On that day, Addie Mae Smith-Wilkes, whose $25,000 gift at Old First Night in 1923 made the construction possible, dedicated the building bearing her last name to the memory of her husband, uncle and two brothers — and to all Chautauquans.
Construction of Smith-Wilkes Hall in 1923.
At today’s Bird, Tree & Garden Club Life Member Luncheon, BTG members will come together at the Athenaeum Hotel to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Smith Wilkes Hall’s dedication, as well as more than a century of gathering and working for the betterment of Chautauqua Institution.
“One of the amazing things about Chautauqua is that it is built out of a lot of grassroots activism and, you know, normal people,” said Clara Lane Miller, a cultural landscape historian and curator at the Miller Cottage who will discuss the history of Smith Wilkes Hall at today’s luncheon. “That is the same for the Bird, Tree & Garden Club.”
BTG was founded in 1913 as the Bird and Tree Club by “a group of Chautauquans who were really involved in every aspect of Chautauqua,” Miller said, to introduce many of the ideas and principles of the conservation movement to the grounds of the Institution. Shortly after its founding, the members of the Club hoped to find a place they could permanently hold meetings and keep a growing stock of materials.
In 1923, their hopes for a permanent home would finally come to fruition with Addie Mae Smith-Wilkes’ Old First Night gift, which would be equivalent to nearly $460,000 today. Construction began in January 1924 and was completed in time to be used for most of the 1924 Chautauqua season.
Addie Mae Smith-Wilkes and the Miller family are photographed in 1929 in the garden behind Smith Wilkes Hall. Pictured in the photo, from left, are Mina Miller Edison, Smith-Wilkes, Mrs. Lewis A. Miller, Milton Miller, Lewis Miller and Mrs. Robert A. Miller (Louise Igo Miller) — who co-founded the Bird and Tree Club with Henrietta Ord Jones in 1913, and served as its president from 1913 to 1923 and again from 1929 to 1931.
“Everybody is cordially invited to come to the opening meeting this evening and to join in the endeavor to protect the birds and trees and to beautify the grounds of Chautauqua,” proclaimed The Chautauquan Daily in the newspaper’s July 8, 1924 edition — inviting Chautauquans to attend a meeting at Smith Wilkes for the very first time.
But the 100th anniversary of BTG’s home will be more than just a celebration of Smith Wilkes Hall.
BTG President Leslie Renjilian, said today’s anniversary celebration is just as much about BTG itself as it is about Smith Wilkes Hall, and that the longevity of Smith Wilkes Hall speaks to BTG’s lasting impact and importance to Chautauqua.
“Chautauquans do love their old buildings and their old things,” she said. “But it is significant also that … our lecture platform has been so strong for over a century that it needs its own auditorium.”
In celebrating the 100th anniversary of Smith Wilkes Hall, Miller said, it is important to consider not just the history of the building itself, but also the social and historical context in which it has existed for the past century.
That’s why, during her lecture, she’ll encourage Chautauquans to place themselves in the shoes of Chautauquans 100 years before them; what they might have worn, what would be on their minds, who would be around them. Her goal, she said, is to allow Chautauquans to fully understand the cultural context of both Smith Wilkes Hall and BTG — and just how important both have been in the history of Chautauqua Institution.
In a photograph from 1929, Thomas Edison strolls with a Mrs. Kopperel in the Smith Wilkes Hall garden.
“(Smith Wilkes Hall has) housed so many important cultural moments in Chautauqua,” she said. “As someone who’s grown up coming to Chautauqua, it features very broadly in the history of my life, seeing children’s concerts there and then going to lectures on architectural history. … I think it’s been that for lots and lots of people.”
The intimate size of the venue also made it perfect for building a strong community, Miller added, and that is, perhaps, the most important word to describe BTG. Renjilian agrees and, in her eyes, the community that has been built over the past century in Smith Wilkes Hall is more important than anything else.
“We’re not just a bunch of ladies getting together to talk about the best way to arrange flowers,” Renjilian said.
After 111 years of the Bird, Tree & Garden Club, including 100 in Smith Wilkes Hall, Renjilian hopes that future members will continue pushing to be a “guard rail” at Chautauqua, serving as a voice for the extensive plant and animal populations that call the grounds home. Oftentimes, gardens and natural areas are the first to go whenever budgets become constrained, she said, but BTG has stood tall as a defender of the gardens and natural spaces at Chautauqua, keeping them preserved and protected since its very first meeting in 1913.
As technology continues to evolve at rapid speeds, Renjilian added, she hopes BTG will continue to keep with those changes — as they did over the past years, developing the CHQ Explore app, which was programmed entirely by BTG members. Ultimately, though, she knows BTG will continue to create a space for Chautauquans to come together and keep Chautauqua beautiful.
“Who knows what technology is going to look like in 100 years? But I have to believe that the BTG will stay on top of how to connect people to nature through technology,” she said. “You come into this club because you like to wander in the woods, you like to dig in the dirt, … and then to realize that the way to bring that to people is often not how you thought it was going to be.”
