Roundtable

In Memory of Arthur Yorke Allen

Allen was a director of the American Agora Foundation, the publisher of Lapham’s Quarterly.

By Lapham’s Quarterly

Friday, August 07, 2020

Photograph of Arthur Yorke Allen and Mary Stewart Hammond at the 1870s Decade Ball, 2014.

Arthur Yorke Allen and Mary Stewart Hammond at the 1870s Decade Ball, 2014.

It is with deep sadness and regret that we announce to our readers the death of Arthur Yorke Allen, a director of the American Agora Foundation, the not-for-profit that publishes Lapham’s Quarterly. He had served as secretary of the foundation since 2006.

Allen, who lived in New York City and Edgartown, MA, died August 3, at age eighty-three.

In addition to his service to this magazine, Allen was a life trustee of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, a former director of the American Council on Germany, a founding trustee of the Vineyard Open Land Foundation, and a trustee of the Walbridge Fund, Ltd., a longtime supporter of Lapham’s Quarterly.

He was a managing director of Douglass Winthrop from 2004 to 2008 and thereafter became a senior adviser to the firm. From 1994 to 2004 he was an officer of Hovey, Youngman Associates. From 1983 to 1994 he was vice president at Citicorp Global Asset Management. For eleven years before he was head of the National Railway Publication Company, a publicly held firm with interests in transportation directories and databases, commercial real estate, and securities. Previously, he was an officer and director of Neville, Rodie & Shaw, Inc. He graduated from Princeton University in 1958.

Allen was among the first directors of the American Agora Foundation and, along with his wife, poet Mary Stewart Hammond, a member of its Janus Society. He read widely and loved history. He attended the magazine’s annual Decades Ball in elaborate costume (memorably coming as the Grim Reaper to the ball exploring the 1590s) and delighted in knowing every detail about how the magazine was produced. He served as a director with diligence and humor and will be missed greatly.

Read the announcement of Arthur Yorke Allen’s death in the Martha’s Vineyard Times.

Read the obituary for Arthur Yorke Allen in the New York Times.