Among Rex’s greatest supporters in the surrounding community were Joel and Amy Spingarn, who in the early 1900s purchased what is today the Troutbeck hotel and restaurant. Joel Spingarn was the former head of the Comparative Literature Department at Columbia University and a co-founder of Harcourt, Brace, and Co., and Amy was an artist, intellectual, activist, and philanthropist. As owners of Troutbeck, they welcomed guests such as Theodore Roosevelt and Thurgood Marshall.
Joel and Amy were active in the civil rights movement and hosted the NAACP’s Amenia Conferences of 1916 and 1933. We are grateful to have created a supportive partnership with the present owners of Troutbeck, Charlie and Anthony Champalimaud. We are in possession of copies of correspondence between the Spingarns and Rex, and from Marie’s guestbook, we know that the Spingarns visited Rex and Marie in Chickadee Valley.
On June 19, 1930, Marie wrote to Major Spingarn: "I just interrupted Rex (busily painting Whistling Swans) to tell him that Phil had answered your particularly kind note to Rex! . . . I long to be the first to show Mrs. Spingarn the Whistling Swan picture."