Greenwich has lost two magnificent Joans—Joan Warburg, a benefactor of children, families, and the arts, who died last Wednesday at age 93, and Joan Caldwell, a champion of open space and a fierce enemy of over-development, who died Sunday at age 85.
If you didn’t know Joan Melber Warburg, you might have got the idea that she was some formidable grand dame. You might have heard she was married to James Paul Warburg, a scion of the banking Warburgs, an advisor to Presidents Roosevelt and Kennedy, and the author of 30-odd books about foreign affairs and economics. You might have noticed that Mrs. Warburg herself was dedicated to good works—locally and deeply to Round Hill Nursery School, the United Way, Family Centers, and the 350th anniversary celebration, which she chaired, and further afield to Planned Parenthood, The Acting School, and the New York Women’s Foundation, which she cofounded.
You might have noticed the Citizen of the Year Award, the Alexis de Tocqueville Society Award, the Spirit of Greenwich Award; you might even have noticed that humanitarian awards and even whole buildings (The Joan M. Warburg Early Childhood Center) were named in her honor.
Well, she was formidable—in her gentle way. A few years ago, one of our staff had the pleasure of spending a morning with her at Bydale, her rambling 1734 estate on John Street. Whatever intimidating preconceptions he had fell away at an instant: she was keenly intelligent, to be sure, but also funny, engaging, and as sweet as can be. “Oh, he was brilliant,” Joan recalled of James, who died in 1969. “I’m the only thing that saved the kids from being geniuses.”
Joan was a friend of James Warburg’s grown daughter Kay, from James’s earlier marriage to the composer Kay Swift. James had bought the tumbledown Bydale, so unlike a typical Warburg mansion, back in 1925; his friend George Gershwin was a frequent visitor there and composed portions of “Porgy and Bess” and “Rhapsody No. 2” in the old miller’s cottage.
In 1947, James invited daughter Kay’s friend Joan Melber out to Bydale for Sunday lunch. “I came out here all dressed up, silk stockings and everything, and he took me for a walk in the woods,” Joan said, laughing. “Ripped silk stockings and everything! I thought he was just wonderful. This would have been the fall of 1947. And we were married in ’48.”
At first the Warburgs divided their time between New York and Greenwich, but Joan lobbied successfully to live fulltime among the wildflowers and sugar maples of Bydale. “I became involved in the community,” she said, “and he was involved with the world.”
In 1975, when Joan Caldwell was fighting the expansion of Westchester County Airport, Flying magazine called her an “outspoken little chick.” Offended readers chided the magazine for its old-boy condescension, but Joan herself did not take issue with the core observation: yes, she was outspoken; and no, she was not large.
Joan Caldwell served on the RTM for an astonishing 52 years (the last 20 as moderator pro tempore). In that capacity and others, she battled giants. One was Xerox, which wanted to plunk down its world headquarters in the backcountry (“When we want copies of anything in this house, we ‘duplicate,’” she said when the going got heated, in order to avoid using the “X” verb). Another was the state DOT, which intended to double the width of the Merritt Parkway. With her gift for organization and well-honed argument, she was instrumental in slaying both plans.
The Greenwich native also served as property manager and spokesperson for Conyers Farm, whose open, woodsy character she worked to preserve, alongside Peter M. Brant, who bought the 1,500-acre tract in 1980. (Other would-be purchasers had contemplated far denser development plans.
Today Greenwich is greener, opener and more beautiful than it would have been without Joan Caldwell.
