Hiram Halle

In 1933 Hiram Halle, a Pound Ridge businessman and inventor and part owner of the Gulf  Oil Company, along with Alvin Johnson and the Rockefeller Foundation founded the University in Exile at the New School for Social Research. Hundreds of Jewish scholars, artists and academics were rescued from Europe and the Holocaust by their affiliation with the University.

Here is an excerpt from the School's history, courtesy of the New School University (update 2009: this page is no longer online).

“1933 - The University in Exile is founded. Conceived by Alvin Johnson and supported by philanthropist Hiram Halle and the Rockefeller Foundation, it initiates an historic effort to rescue endangered scholars who had been dismissed from teaching and government positions by totalitarian regimes in Europe. Among the 167 scholars it rescues (along with their families) are Max Wertheimer, a founder of the Gestalt school of psychology, and economists Karl Brandt and Gerhard Colm, both to be named members of the President's Council of Economic Advisors. Among the University in Exile's first students is Franco Modigliani, who later will receive his doctorate at the New School and win the Nobel Prize in Economics.”

University in Exile Founders
Courtesy of New School University

Hiram Halle also ran his own personal WPA between 1936 and 1939: He brought European Jewish exiles to Pound Ridge to work on remodeling many vintage houses in the area.

He is honored in Pound Ridge through the Hiram Halle Memorial Library, 258 Hiram Halle Library, on Route #124 in Pound Ridge, New York.