Founding

The Rotch Travelling Scholarship was founded on October 1st, 1883 by the sons and daughters of Benjamin Smith Rotch of Milton, Massachusetts.

Mr. Rotch, whose interest in painting led him to study in Paris in 1847, had an early appreciation of the public necessity for encouraging the arts at home. He gave proof by active patronage and timely aid to fellow artists during his lifetime. His son, Arthur Rotch, studied architecture at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris from 1874-1879, and during those years had given thought to the need in the United States of a scholarship to advance the interest of the profession.

His father shared this vision and frequently gave expression to it. At his father's death in 1882, Arthur, his brother, Abbot Lawrence, and his sisters, Edith, Aimee (Mrs. Winthrop Sargent) and Annie Lawrence (Mrs. Horatio Appleton Lamb), met to consider the establishment of an endowment to give form to this thought. They joined in an Indenture of Trust, executed on December 29th, 1883 that provided the sum of $50,000 for “the advancement of education in architecture” sufficient to assure income each ensuing year, year by year, to enable a student or students, architect or architects, to “pursue studies in foreign countries.”

The Rotch family thus expressed the realization of the value of foreign travel and actual acquaintance with the great buildings of the past both to stimulate the creative imagination of young architects, and to enrich their cultural knowledge.

In concurrence with this philosophy, Ralph Adams Cram, a Rotch winner, later observed that “Creative architecture in our day and generation is best stimulated by personal knowledge of and contact with the great work of the past. This does not mean that we are bound to stick to precedent after any archaeological fashion... I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past.”

The Rotch Scholarship is the oldest of its kind in the United States and its influence has been felt throughout the entire profession in America. The roster of Rotch Scholars includes many of the country's most distinguished architects - Henry Bacon, Ralph Walker, Wallace Harrison, Louis Skidmore, Edward D. Stone, Gordon Bunshaft, Victor Lundy and many others. The opportunity for study and travel provided by the Rotch Scholarship has loomed large in the minds of the Scholars as a major element in their development and subsequent achievement.