Sara Corning at the Zappeion. Athens, c. 1923.

Item Detail

After the 1922 Smyrna catastrophe, Near East Relief moved thousands of orphans and refugees through Athens, where the Greek government lent the Zappeion — the neoclassical exposition hall beside the National Garden — as a transit shelter. Acheson was based in Athens through these years, and his camera caught the building in use: children massed under the domed rotunda, families ranged along the colonnade, rugs and goods spread across the marble floor. The Athens frames sit alongside portraits of NER figures in the city, among them Henry Morgenthau, who led the Greek refugee settlement work, and Sara Corning, who directed the evacuation of orphans from Smyrna. (Source: James Barton, Story of Near East Relief, 1930, which reproduces the same hall — "Orphans at play in the Zappeion, Athens, famous exposition hall used as an orphanage."

Context

The Barclay Acheson Collection at the Rockefeller Archive Center holds the personal photographic record of Near East Relief's Director of Overseas Operations from 1925 through 1929. Barclay Acheson (1886–1957) joined NER as Associate General Secretary in 1922 and took charge of relief work across Greece, Syria, and the Caucasus the following year. He was based in Athens after the 1922 Smyrna catastrophe and traveled annually to NER's field operations across the Caucasus, Anatolia, Beirut, and Baghdad. The collection's 1,000-plus photographs include formal NER institutional records and personal snapshots from his inspection trips. The subjects span the Alexandropol orphan city, the Athens Zappeion evacuation, the Ghazir vocational school, and the 1927 Iraq survey trip. The photographs are the visual counterpart to Acheson's contemporaneous diaries; the RAC also holds the diaries, and they are available on the NERHS museum site under Voices of NER — Leadership.