Edith Rosenwald Stern

Edith Rosenwald Stern (1895–1980) was an American philanthropist and champion of educational causes in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. She was instrumental in formation of the Stern Family Fund and was recognized as being willing to support causes for which she had conviction even if the causes were controversial at the time. Examples of her philanthropy included supporting voter registration of African-Americans in the American South, the anti-nuclear movement, public-interest law firms, organizing union and tenant groups, and initiation of challenges by shareholders who wanted corporations to become more socially responsible. As a child, she was known to her family and close friends as Ede.

Stern's early education was at the Chicago University Elementary School. Subsequently, through coercion by her parents, Stern as a teenager attended a finishing school in Dresden, Germany, where she completed her education. Audrey Stern Hess (died 1974, age 50) was their middle child. She was chairman of the children's rights section of the Citizens Committee for Children. Their son Philip M. Stern (died 1992 at age 66) was a writer and a Democratic Party activist.

In 1929, following a period of intense activity sponsoring educational causes, at a time coincident with the start of the Great Depression, Stern became ill and was admitted to the Riggs Sanitarium in Massachusetts, where she was diagnosed with ulcers and exhaustion. The name of the home came from an inn on the Hudson River that the couple enjoyed visiting early in their marriage.

In 1934, Edith Stern hired landscape architect Ellen Biddle Shipman to build an English landscape garden on this property. Although Shipman completed this project shortly thereafter, Shipman continued development of the gardens until her death in 1950. Horticulturalist Caroline Dormon made significant contributions to the design and construction of the gardens, who likewise continued to improve the gardens for years following initial construction. This act was controversial at the time and was several years in the making, the controversy being based on a zoning dispute with neighbors. Resolution of the dispute required moving the entrance from Garden Lane to Bamboo Road. Stern died at her home in 1980 of complications from circulatory diseases. She is buried at Metairie Lakelawn Cemetery alongside her husband Edgar, her daughter Audrey and Audrey's husband. Replicas of the Times-Picayune Loving Cup awards that she and her husband each received are located at the foot of the grave site.

Educational causes Recognizing a need for early childhood education, in 1926, Stern founded the Newcomb School for pre-schoolers on the edge of the Tulane University campus. Besides financial backing, Stern selected administrators and remained involved in the management of the school in its early years. At the time, pre-school education was uncommon in the United States, and the Newcomb School was the first of its kind in the American South. Later, in 1957, when the school needed a new building, Stern commissioned Professor John Dinwiddie, then dean of the Tulane University School of Architecture, to design the facility. The new building opened in 1959.

As a member of the board of trustees of the Delgado Museum in New Orleans, Stern worked with architect Arthur Quentin Davis to donate the Stern-Davis collection to the museum, emphasizing the Cusco School of art. and Stern continued to work on behalf of reform of local government.

Stern subsequently took on the issue of voter fraud and worked with the Voter Registration League, as well as the League of Women Voters, on this issue. She organized efforts to educate future voters in New Orleans, including bringing voting machines into local high schools to familiarize young people with the voting process. Mayor Morrison appointed her to the Parkway and Park Commission of the City of New Orleans.

Stern continued her involvement in Democratic Party politics at both the local level and national level. In 1960, she attended the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, California, in a private box to watch the nomination of John F. Kennedy. Following Kennedy's inauguration as President of the United States, he appointed Stern to the National Cultural Center Advisory Committee on the Arts. Locally, Stern directed the Stern Family Fund to support the Institute of Politics, which is an organization at Loyola University that helped prepare young politicians for their careers. The New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper presented its Loving Cup award to Stern in 1964 for her charitable, civic, and political work. Her husband Edgar B. Stern in 1930 had also received the same award, making them the only husband-wife couple so honored. In 1968, Life Magazine named Edith Stern one of the Grandes Dames' Who Grace America". Stern received the Hannah G. Solomon Award in 1971 for the New Orleans Section of the National Council of Jewish Women. In 1977, the New Orleans States-Item newspaper named Edith Stern and Edgar Stern the city's outstanding philanthropists. Chaim Herzog, Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, acting on behalf of the nation of Israel, planted a tree in Edith Stern's honor on the property of Longue Vue Gardens, on May 21, 1978. In 1984, Gerda Weissmann Klein published a biography of Edith Stern. In 2018 the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper named Stern to its "300 for 300" list of people who have had lasting impact on the city of New Orleans.

Legacy Stern's enduring legacy includes the Longue Vue House and Gardens, contributions to education through endowment of schools and their establishment, aid to music and the fine arts, and advances in voting rights and civil rights in the American South. She helped form the Stern Family Fund which provided seed money for social entrepreneurs.