Respice, Adspice, Prospice: The ‘Marathon Stone’, Lewisohn Stadium, and the changing reception of the classics at City College in the twentieth century

Throughout its history, New York has received several archaeological objects as gifts, including a mid-fourth-century BCE Greek funerary stele. Dr John Huston Finley, the third president of City College, saw a stele when he was in Greece and asked the Greek Government to gift the stele to the college. The stele, dubbed the ‘Marathon Stone’ by Finley, was dedicated and proudly displayed at City College, now of the City University of New York. This article explores the gift’s context by drawing on contemporary newspaper reports, Finley’s tenuous association of the stele with the battle of Marathon, and the gifting of an archaeological object as a means for promoting ties between City College and Greece. The article then examines the context for the stele’s display, the Neo-Antique Lewisohn Stadium, and argues that the display of the stele and erection of Lewisohn Stadium both embodied Finley’s aspirations for City College to rival Columbia and New York Universities. The demise of the stadium in 1973 and the removal of the stele to a basement signaled a major shift in the significance of the classics, classical art, and Neo-Antique architecture at City College, as well as the changing priorities of the institution.