Penny Cent items contributed by...

INTERESTING BITS AND PIECES RE. COLLEGE IN THE HILLS AND PENNY CENT PROVIDED BY MICHELLE HESSE Posted 6/16/2017 - Updated 9/5/2020
Passenger manifest -- S.S. Stuttgart  -- Robert Schmidt -- Age 23 years -- born Biesig, Germany -- Fair -- Blond -- 5' 6" tall -- Blue eyes -- Clerk -- German citizen -- last residence: Finland (Visa issued in Helsingfors [Helsinki] visa No. 2 634) -- Last permanent address: Aunt Hulda (illegiable) in Goerlitz (in Silesia).  Arrives in the U.S.A. Oct. 8,1926  3:40 P.M. -- U.S. destination Father: Gustav Schmidt, 3737 Southport Ave., Chicago, ILL Robert Schmidt
Untamed art -- Penny Cent "invented" the cromorf, which he defines as a color-form-picture. "Color and form are psychomagnetic, have values of emotonal and reflex effect, have intensities, are opto-psychic forces of emotional nature, and do not need the modus of more or less photographic expression of any natural object." Feast your eyes on three dozen cromorfs contributed by Gary Snyder of Gary Snyder Gallery, of New York, NY! images/penny_cent_courtesy_of_gary_snyder.pdf
Penny Cent's Application for Social Security Number. Yes he applied as Penny Cent! Serial Number 338-12-0362, Dated 11/24/1939 Residence: 104 N. McKenely, Harrisburg, Illinois Dated 2/16/1942. Born on Dec. 7 1905, and born in Biesig, Germany. (Note that PC apparently claimed two different birth years!) mh/pc_ss_card_app.jpg
Penny Cent's Draft Card. Yes he was registered as Penny Cent! Serial Number 1017 Order No. 11518, Dated 2/16/1942 Residence: 306 Albemarle Road, Brooklyn 18 New York Dated 2/16/1942. He was 39 years old, height 5' 6", 160 pounds. born on Dec. 7 1902, and born in Biesig, Germany. Self employed. mh/~penny_cent_draft_card.jpg
Though Penny Cent applied for his Social Security Number under the name Penny Cent, the Social Security Death Index gives his name as Robert Schmidt.  His birth year is given as 1905 and his death year as 1986. Just where Penny Cent was during his last 30 years or so remains a mystery. mh/ssdi_penny_cent.jpg
"Centurion's great "1950 comeback" was thanks to the Brooklyn College and the college library. The exhibition was sponsored by Robert  George Reisner (Fellow Brooklyn College), and Stanley T. Lewis (who did the display arrangement). Both gentlemen contributed interesting written biographic tribute to Centurion. All very interesting.      There are no images in this booklet, but the 77 paintings exhibited are listed, numbered, and displayed with numbers, titles, year painted, medium, and dimensions.       mh/1950_brooklyn_college_library.pdf
Our earliest newspaper article mentioning Penny Cent (so far) is from the Friday, May 6, 1932 edition of the The Daily Northwestern, a publication of Chicago's Northwestern University. "If You're Going Out" by Hubert Kelley ...yes, staid old Evanston, is going modernistic, said alice, and therewith led me to the ROC studio... the studio, art school, gallery (very eminently including some snitzy chromorfs), and literary aslon are conducted by the genial little artist, penny cent, whom you'll like -- a lot...   mh/daily_northwestern_may_6_1932.jpg
Evanston Church is Relieved of Presence of Exotic German Artist. Oelwein, Iowa Daily Register, 27 January 1933 It was not the cromorfs that worried the parishioners so much as the gaudy signs in black and red... "They look too much like advertisements for a communist meeting"... mh/oelwein_daily_register_27_jan_33.jpg
Evanston's Untamed Artist Quits His Congregational Church Studio. From the Rockord, Illinois Morning Star, dated January 26, 1933 (This article also appeared in the San Bernadino Daily Sun, on Sunday, February 5th, 1933) Penny Cent, Evanson's untamed he-man artist has gathered up his bright red and green modernstic paintngs from All Souls Unitarian church and gone his sun-bathing way... mh/rockfort_morning_star_jan_26_1933.jpg
College in the Hills" Elects N. U. Students to Faculty from Daily Northwestern, Wednesday, March 21, 1934. "School Names 5 to New Staff" Five Northwestern students will appear on the College in the Hills staff, according to and announcement made yesterday by Donald P. Brown, president of the college. The five students are Donald Brown, Nadia Naumann, Mildred George, Donald Monson and George Guernsey.      Donald Brown is a Northwestern graduate, 1930, with a major in political science...      Completing the announced faculty are J. Harvey Renfrew and Edward L. Adams Jr., both graduates of the Universiety of Illinois...       mh/daily_northwestern_mar_21_1934.jpg
Former N. U. Student Plans New College  -- from the Daily Northwestern, of March 4, 1934 Cooperative System Will Enable Students to Live Cheaply      The founding of the College in the Hills, where a student may secure and education for less money than it would cost him to live at home, is the project being undertaken by a former Northwestern student, Donald Monson, with the aid of an associate, Donald P. Brown...      ..."We are hoping to build a new social, economic, and political order in our time..." mh/daily_northwestern_mar_1934.jpg
THE EVANSVILLE COURIER AND JOURNAL SUNDAY, MAY 20, 1934 Hardin County Hills Site of Labor College Final plans for a summer labor college to be established in Hardin county on route 34... Ronald Brown, Evanson, Ill., ...and Ronald Monson have purchased a 38-acre tract...      The College in the Hills, as it will be known, will have a teaching staff recruited from Midwesten university. Studens will be required to work two hours a day. Hardin county offers much to study. It has sink holes, the largest flourspar mines in the world, and... mh/evansville_courier_sun_may_20_1934.jpg
DAILY NORTHWESTERN, WEDNESDAY, MAY 30, 1934 College of the Hills By Donald Brown A COLLEGE education today costs somewhere between $2,500 and $4,000 depending on what considers a college education.     ...George S. Counts in his "Dare the School build a New Social Order" has this to say about the educational system:     "... Almost everywhere it (education) is in the grip of conservative forces and is serving the cause of perpetuating ideas and institutions suited to an age that is gone. ...the present educational system can be termed a failure."... mh/daily_northwestern_may_1934.jpg
THE EVENING COURIER ILLINOIS MAGAZINE SATURDAY EVENTING JULY 7, 1934 YOUTH IN REVOLT in Hardin County Hills, by Carmen Weir IN THE foothills of Southern Illinois in Hardin County a new institution of higher education is being born. Faculty and students are literally carving it out of the hill even as they persue its educational program...     Penny Cent, graduate of Friedrich Wilhelms university of Berlin, is actually the art instructor... but he can scarely be torn away from hammer and saw as the buildings on the capus take shape.     ...A formal system of grading has been abolished under the new order... mh/the_evening_courier_il_mag.jpg  (7 July, 1934)
Evansville Courrier and Press, Oct 27, 1934 FOUR HURT AS CAR HITS TREES --Four persons connected with the College of the Hills in Hardin County were injure one perhaps seriously when the automobile in which they wer on their way to Chicago failed to make a turn in state highway 1 entering Crossville early tonight.      Miss Eleanor Springer, driver of the car, is believed to have been seriously hurt. At the Harrisburg hospital physicians said that her skull may be fractured.      Others...Miss Mildred George and Miss Astrid Aronson, both of whom escaped with minor cuts and bruises, and Donald P. Brown...suffered a fractured skull. mh/college_accident_evansville_courrier.jpg
Register Republic, Rockfort, ILL., July 23, 1936 Crew of 125 Fights Shawnee Forest Fire. Milwaukee... A crew of 125 men fought to control a fire in the Shawnee national forest in southern Illinois today, regional forest service headquarters here was informed.      The fire was in an area of slash wood and mied timber listed as  "extremely hazardous" ...The crew expected to bring it under control by 6 p.m....     "The fire situation is still critical... It is all due to the drouth." Webmaster's note: It is believed that the College in the Hills buildings fell victim to this forest fire. At the moment we don't have a reference that provides definitive proof at this time. mh/shawnee_forest_fire_1936.jpg
THE NEWS AND COURIER, CHARLESTON, S.C. THURSDAY MORNING, JUNE 1, 1939 Guggenheim Pictures Shown in New York 300 non-objectives, Seen in Charleston Twice, in 'Art of Tomorrow" Building.     A preview of the first public exibition in New Yord city of the Soloman R. Guddenheim collection of non objective  paintings  was held last night at 24 Deast Fifty-fourth street in a newly decorated building to be known as the Art of Tomorrow...     Also displayed will be works of... Pablo Picasso ... Rolph Scarlett... Penrod Centurion...       mh/news_and_courier_june_1_1939.jpg
Brooklyn Eagle, 25 April 1948 (ad) Passionate Records of Our Times, Through May 15 -- New Paintings by CENTURION Founder of Cromorfism -- In the Main Dining Room of BELLA NAPOLI -- Resturant and Bar Unique -- Famed for Its Italian-American Cuisine -- 121 Church Av., Nr. MacDonald Ave., Brooklyn...  mh/brookln_eagle_aor_1948_centurion.jpg
BROOKLYN EAGEL, SUN, MAY 28, 1950 Centurion, Modernist, Paints Boro's 'Impact'  When Robert H. Centurion sounds off rhapsodically about Brooklyn, there is a definite strain of Walt Whitman in his words...     He came to America in 1926. The ensuing years found him working with the Federal Arts Project in Illinois and lecturing at Northwestern University.     In 1938 he joined the Guggenheim Foundation which has given him three fellowships.     Centurion describes himself as and advanced modern artist...     The artist was "rescued" from virtual seclusion serval months ago by Robert George Reisner... (And [thus far] this is the last word about P.C. He seems to have disappeared) mh/brooklin_eagle_may_1950.jpg
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Posted 6/16/2017