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The Deanery was the residence of M. Carey Thomas, first Dean and second President of Bryn Mawr College, who lived there from 1885 to 1933. From 1933 until 1968, the Deanery served as the Alumnae Center and Inn for the  College. The building was demolished in the spring of 1968 to make space for the construction of Canaday Library, which stands on the site today.

M.Carey Thomas
Martha Carey Thomas, daughter of a prominent Quaker family, was appointed professor of English and dean of Bryn Mawr College in December of 1883, nearly two years before the College officially opened its doors in September of 1885. By that time, she had earned her undergraduate degree from Sage College, the women's school at Cornell University, and a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Zurich. Thomas played an active role in the planning of the college's organization and academic curriculum. In 1894, she was elected its second president, a position which she held until her retirement in 1922. Thomas continued to live in the Deanery after retirement, but as time went on, she stayed there less and less, traveling extensively in Europe and Asia. Finally, in 1933, she arranged for the Deanery and its furnishings to be turned over to the college for use as an alumnae center. She died two years later at the age of seventy-eight.

Mamie Gwinn
Mary (Mamie) Gwinn was the daughter of a prominent Baltimore family, her father Charles J. M. Gwinn having served as Maryland's attorney general and her grandfather as a United States senator and ambassador. Gwinn was first introduced to M. Carey Thomas by a mutual friend and after Thomas' graduation from Cornell in 1877, the three women along with two others, including Mary Garrett, organized themselves into the Friday Evening club, meeting every second Friday to write a joint novel. When, in 1879, Thomas went to Europe to attend graduate school, Gwinn accompanied her. Although Gwinn attended lectures and read widely while in Europe, she did not seek to earn a degree. In 1885, however, she became Bryn Mawr College's first graduate fellow in English, earning her Ph.D. in 1888, and eventually teaching English literature at the College. During the course of their European studies, Gwinn and Thomas had established an intimate friendship and shortly after Thomas took up residence in the Deanery in September of 1885, Gwinn moved in with her. The Deanery was to be their shared home for nearly twenty years. Eventually, however, the relationship between Gwinn and Thomas deteriorated as Thomas began an intimate friendship with Mary Garrett and Gwinn fell in love with Alfred Hodder, a fellow Professor of English at Bryn Mawr College. In the summer of 1904, Gwinn and Hodder married and Gwinn left the Deanery and Bryn Mawr to live with her new husband in New York.

Mary Garrett
Mary Garrett moved into the Deanery, where she resided until her death in 1915. Garrett was the daughter of John W. Garrett, the wealthy president of the B&O Railroad. She was accustomed to the way of life of Baltimore high society, and her financial backing permitted her to continue such a lifestyle after she moved into the Deanery.

Early Years
When Joseph W. Taylor purchased 40 acres of land for the campus of Bryn Mawr College in 1878, three Victorian cottages were located on the property. These later became known as the Deanery, the Betweenery, and the Greenery. In 1885, M. Carey Thomas moved into the Deanery, a modest building of five rooms situated downhill and approximately 100 meters (330 feet) to the west of what was then the central campus building, Taylor Hall. The residence underwent a minor expansion in 1888 - the first of three renovations - when two small rooms were added to the rear of the house for the storage of books and records.

1894-1896 Renovation
In 1894, the college architect Walter Cope drew up plans for a second expansion of the Deanery at the request of M. Carey Thomas, shortly after she was appointed to the college Presidency. The Philadelphia firm of Cope and Stewardson had been commissioned to design and construct several campus buildings in the 1880s and 90s, including the Radnor and Denbigh dormitories in 1885 and 1891 respectively. The Deanery expansion fit into Thomas's larger vision for the expansion of the campus, which was already underway by the time she became President.

During this renovation, completed in 1896, the house was re-oriented away from its existing veranda, and a new entrance facing campus replaced the original entrance. On the second floor, a library and guest bedrooms were created, and a third floor was added to house more guest rooms and the servants' quarters. A large northwest wing, situated off the existing dining room and containing a kitchen, pantry, and storage areas, was also added to the house.

As early as 1894, during the second renovation of the house, Mary Garrett had been assisting M. Carey Thomas in transforming the Deanery into a home befitting Thomas's new presidential status, supplementing her annual salary by as much as $5,000.

1908-1909 Renovation
In 1907, Mary Garrett decided to fund a major renovation project to expand the Deanery a third time. The expansion, in which Mamie Gwinn's bedroom on the second floor became Garrett's very large bedroom with an elaborate bath, began in 1908 and took nearly two years and $100,000 to complete. The renovation also included the extension of the northwest wing to accommodate additional kitchen and storage facilities, as well as the addition of more storage space on the third floor. The plans were drawn up by the architectural firm of Archer and Allen, with Lockwood de Forest as consultant (see below).

When completed, the Deanery had been transformed from its origins as a simple Victorian cottage into a sprawling, 46-room mansion. It was an elegant residence where M. Carey Thomas could entertain the college's important guests, students, and alumnae, as well as her own immediate family and friends.

Alumnae House
Thomas convinced the Board of Trustees to give control the Deanery and its property, which technically belonged to the college, to the Alumnae Association, pursuant to the same conditions on which she herself had held it. The contents of the house, with the exception of her personal belongings, some furniture and books, and a few valued treasures, Thomas gave to the trustees, who held them in trust for use in the alumnae center. Operation of the center was overseen by alumnae organized into a newly formed Deanery Committee.

Demolition
At the time of its demolition, many of the Deanery's furnishings were re-located to Wyndham Hall, an 18th century manor (with a modern addition) which became the college's new Alumnae Center and Inn.

Lockwood de Forest
The design and decoration of many of the Deanery's interior spaces was entrusted, in large part, to the American artist Lockwood de Forest. A student of the landscape painter Frederic Church, de Forest enjoyed moderate success as a artist, exhibiting his work at a variety of venues including the National Academy of Design in New York. De Forest, however, made his living as a designer and an importer of exotic goods. In 1880, he and Louis Comfort Tiffany established the firm of Tiffany & de Forest, which focused largely on the importation of East Indian decorative arts. By 1883, de Forest had set up his own import business, based in New York City, which distributed carved teakwood furniture, tracery panels, jewelry, and textiles, some of which were produced in his workshop in Ahmedabad, India.

During the renovation of 1894-1896, M. Carey Thomas consulted de Forest for the design and decoration of the Deanery's interior.

According to Roberta Mayer, the author of a biography of Lockwood de Forest, his role in the 1894-1896 renovation of the Deanery was limited, although it remains detectable. The molding along the outer edge of the fireplace in Mamie Gwinn’s study as well as some picture frames in the corridor between hers and M. Carey Thomas's study (the Blue Room) were made of carved teakwood, like that produced by the Ahmedabad Woodcarving Company. Thomas could easily have acquired some of her Middle Eastern and Asian furnishings from sources other than de Forest, but the most obvious trace of de Forest's design in this phase of the Deanery is his stenciling. Geometric designs were stenciled as friezes and borders on the walls or on the ceilings throughout the house, as, for example, on the ceiling of the Blue Room, the borders in the dining room and corridor between the studies, and the ceiling and border in Mamie Gwinn’s study. Even the floors of the dining room were stenciled, as M. Carey Thomas noted in a letter to de Forest: "You remember it was so with my dining room. In four years the stenciling under the wax which we put on the floors was entirely worn off."

The Blue Room
1894 (paragraph on the original Blue Room (Tiffany stencils and lamps, Japanese theme), stenciling throughout the house, furniture purchased through de Forest's and other import companies)

Furnishings from Baltimore
1904 (paragraph on Garrett furniture/furnishings brought from Baltimore)

The Dorothy Vernon Room
1908 (paragraph on the Dorothy Vernon Room and furnishings/design after the 1908 renovation)

Garden
Main page: User:Starry98529/Bryn Mawr College Deanery Garden

In 1907, John C. Olmsted laid out...

Notable Guests

 * Henry James, American writer
 * Eleonora Duse, Italian actress
 * Bertrand Russell, British philosopher
 * Anna Howard Shaw, British-born women's suffrage activist
 * William Butler Yeats, Irish poet
 * Susan B. Anthony, American women's suffrage activist
 * Marie Curie, Polish chemist and physicist