Thomas W. Lamont
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Thomas William Lamont (1870-1948) was an American banker. Born in Claverack, New York, he graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1888 and earned his degree from Harvard University in 1892. He became a generous benefactor of the school once he had amassed a fortune, notably funding the building of Lamont Library. After 1910, he became a partner of J.P. Morgan & Co., and served as a U.S. financial advisor abroad in the 1920s and 1930s. During the 1919 Paris negotiatons leading up to the Treaty of Versailles, Lamont was selected as one of two representatives of the United States Department of the Treasury on the American delegation.
On Black Thursday in 1929, he was acting head of J.P. Morgan & Co. and was one of the Wall Street bankers who tried to inject confidence back into the stock market through massive purchases of blue chip stocks. Following the reorganization of J.P. Morgan & Co., in 1943 Lamont was elected chairman of the board of directors.
At the end of World War II, he made a very substantial donation towards the cost of restoring Canterbury Cathedral in England. Lamont was a longtime summer resident of North Haven, Maine, where he established Sky Farm. His widow, Florence Haskell (Corliss) Lamont (1873-1952) donated "Torrey Cliff," their weekend residence overlooking the Hudson River in Palisades, New York, to Columbia University. It is now the site of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
His son, Corliss, a champion of civil liberties and humanism, was a philosophy professor at Columbia University where he endowed a number of programs.
Trivia
- Today, the primary undergraduate library at Harvard is named Lamont in his honor. Lamont Library also prominently features a bust of Mr. Lamont in the lobby.
- Lamont famously commuted to his Wall Street job by yacht.
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