Geoffrey T. Hellman

Who was Geoffrey T. Hellman?

Geoffrey T. Hellman was the son of writer and rare-books dealer, George S. Hellman. Born in New York City, he was also the great-grandson of banking titan Joseph Seligman, and thus, by ancestry, part of the city's German-Jewish elite who referred to themselves as Our Crowd.

He attended Yale and contributed to the Yale Daily News, the Yale Literary Magazine and campus humor magazine The Yale Record.

Upon graduating in 1928, he wrote for the New York Herald Tribune's Sunday book supplement thanks to a recommendation by Thorton Wilder. By 1929, he secured a position at The New Yorker magazine as a reporter for the "Talk of the Town" section. Though he contributed to numerous publications in his career, he would be affiliated and most firmly identified with The New Yorker.

While with The New Yorker, Hellman wrote extensively about New York institutions such as the New York Zoological Society and the Bronx Zoo, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Opera House, the Museum of Modern Art, the New York Public Library, the Pierpont Morgan Library, the United Nations, and the New York Stock Exchange, to promote public awareness of these institutions and of interesting events they sponsored. He also wrote about prominent people such as author Louis Auchincloss; New York Parks Commissioner Robert Moses, who sent him story ideas; and architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Because of his background and family connections, he was also The New Yorker's link to Manhattan society, reporting on parties, local clubs and societies such as the Grolier Club, the Explorer's Club, the National Audubon Society, and the American Geographical Society, and exclusive restaurants, from which he collected an impressive number of menus.