Part 1 - The Institute Libraries - Institute for Advanced Study

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of the Trustees concurred. They knew Flexner had won Mr. Barnbergergs
confidence, and wes the one most likely to gain the Founders' support
for the course he was pursuing. There was a single exception; Hr. Bam
berger had resemations about the Director's plzns for economic research.
Ms. bass expressed the feelings of the Trustees generally when he wrote
Flexner in 1937:
With no desire to hurry you in your selections, my only con-
cern is that the program of expansion be enacted during the
period of your own activities, znd this I am most hopeful
you will bring aboutall
The Institute was forced to get along without l ad or building
for several years, The Director spoke soothingly of the benefits to
learning to be derived £ram a rneasure of asceticism: e.g., "improvisation
in rented quarters,"' from which his pride suffered deeper wounds than any
other =fits. He knew that Mr. Bamberger and his sister would have pre-
ferred to have a visible monument to cmmorete their generosity, and
were~really hard put to it to appreciate the esoteric nature of the Insti-
tute, the more so since the opportunities to corre in contact.wfth the
professors were usually at the social functions glven by the Director and
Mrs. Plexner. But he had put wise words in their mouths which proscribed
impairment of capital for physical things. It wgs surprising that he was
soon to find hZlnselS in canflict over arrbitious plans fox such things,
not with the Founders, but w ith a wber of the faculty, the group which
bad txaditionally "starved," as Beard had put it, while vorking amid
beautiful surraundings to uhich the substance of mny colleges and uni-
\ vers i t tes had been extravagant Ey &voted. '. \ -.
The odds favored the physical things, simply because men of -- -
practical disposition can appreciate them more easily, while the eontrl-