Helen Adelia Metcalf (née Rowe; July 17, 1830 – March 1, 1895) was a founder and director of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in Providence, Rhode Island.
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Early life and personal life
Helen Adelia Rowe was born in Providence, Rhode Island on July 17, 1830. On November 22, 1852, she married Jesse Metcalf Sr. Jesse Metcalf was a cotton buyer in the South for several years prior to the Civil War, later becoming a textile manufacturer in Providence and co-founding the Wanskuck Company in 1862 in the Wanskuck area of Providence.
Metcalf taught at Sunday school and was an organist.
Founding of RISD
Helen Metcalf helped to found RISD in 1877 after she and a group of Rhode Island women traveled to the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition celebration, the first worlds fair held in the United States. The Rhode Island Women's Centennial Commission, chaired by Helen Metcalf, consisted of 34 prominent Rhode Island women who were partially responsible for fundraising for Rhode Island’s state exhibit at the Exposition.
While at the fair the Commission visited the Women's Pavilion where the inventions of 75 women were displayed. Metcalf was particularly impressed by this display. When the Exposition ended the RI Commission had $1,675 in left over funds (about $43,000 in 2021 dollars). Upon returning to Rhode Island, Metcalf proposed "that this sum, augmented by a generous family donation, should go toward the establishment of a school for the training of designers for the “art industries” of the area, art teachers for the area's schools, and—because the Metcalfs were ardent collectors with a larger than merely pragmatic view as to what art education should be—for artists as well." An alternative option was to build a fountain in Roger Williams Park.