Roderick Seidenberg/ Mabel Dwight Collection ( RS)
Nature & Type of Records: Correspondence, personal files, news clippings, publications, short stories and manuscripts.
Volume: 4 cubic feet.
Condition: Some of the materials have suffered smoke and water damage.
Inclusive Dates: 1917-1974.
Administrative History: This collection was purchased for the University of Baltimore by then Library Director, John Nicholson from the widow of Roderick Seidenberg in 1974.
Roderick Seidenberg was born on October 20, 1889 in Heidelberg, Germany. He studied architecture for four years between 1906 and 1910. Though a U.S. citizen he was a conscientious objector to World War I believing that democracy could not be won by war. He was therefore interred, first at Camp Upton, Long Island, and then at Ft. Riley and Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas from 1918-1920.
Prior to his interment, he was introduced by his friend Carl Zigrosser to Mabel Williamson Higgens. After her separation from estranged husband Eugene Higgens, Mabel moved into Seidenberg’s apartment. After his release from interment the couple lived together in Greenwich Village. Though she never married Seidenberg, she was divorced from Higgens and took the name Mabel Dwight at this time.
Dwight spent a year in Paris studying with lithographic printers from 1926-’27 and returned to became one of America’s leading lithographic artists. Her work was reproduced in magazines such as Vanity Fair and an exhibition of her originals toured the country. One series of this collection consists of her work, both literary and artistic, given to Seidenberg.
Seidenberg’s contribution to the literary world began with articles to various magazines including the original Freeman and the New Freeman that followed it. He also contributed to the Mercury under H.L. Mencken, The Nation and The New Republic and some professional magazines. This collection contains a number of short stories he wrote.
The publications Post-Historic Man and Anatomy of the Future developed out of an interest in the growing phenomenon of "organization." Both books were highly acclaimed by the literary world and Seidenberg gained respect for his understanding of the environment and man's destiny in it.
His architectural career included work in a number of New York offices. He was responsible for the exterior of the Hotel New Yorker and the Garment Center Tower in New York. In 1929, he traveled to Soviet Russia to work for an American company on a Moscow construction project.
Dwight had by this time fallen into ill health, one effect of which was deafness, and would also lose work as a result of the Great Depression. In 1933 Seidenberg was able to obtain for her a position with the New Deal era Public Works of Art Project. However, the relationship between Seidenberg and Dwight became increasingly less intimate though they remained friends until her death in 1955. A large portion of this collection consists of her correspondence with Seidenberg.
Seidenberg eventually married Catherine Howard, who he had first met on the ship back from Russia, and moved to Bucks County, Pennsylvania around 1939. In addition to local work there he undertook occasional commissions in New York City and Philadelphia.
Bibliographic Source: Mabel Dwight : a catalogue raisonné of the lithographs / by Susan Barnes Robinson and John Pirog. ( Washington : Smithsonian Institution Press, c1997). PULLEN | NE 2312 .D9 .A4