Florence Myers Rohr was born on February 27, 1878, in Lynchburg, Virginia. She studied at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College and Brenau College, where she earned her bachelor’s degree. While a student at Brenau, she founded Phi Beta Sigma in 1905; it was an honorary literary society whose criteria were high scholarship, leadership and character.
Rohr worked as an instructor at Brenau from 1906-1913. She became a member of the Lambda chapter of Alpha Delta Pi at Brenau College when it was chartered on April 18, 1910.
She also installed the Phi chapter at Hanover College in 1913, initiating the seven charter members. According to an account, Rohr:
was to have been here on Friday, May thirtieth, the date of our annual Pan-Hellenic dance given by the men’s fraternities. We had planned to have a college reception at the home of Eloise Mills, daughter of the president. A telegram came from Miss Rohr about the middle of the week telling us she must go to Chicago May thirty-first to attend a fraternity convention. Our plans were completely upset. Miss Rohr arrived in Hanover Sunday morning. We had our installation Monday evening in our sorority hall after which we returned to the dormitory for a spread. Miss Rohr remained with us until Wednesday morning when she took the boat for Louisville.
She coordinated the Brenau European Party, and took a group including seven Alpha Delta Pi members to Europe. One visitor, Pearl Napier O’Daniel, an Adelphean, whom the others called “Mother Dannie” described the trip, “I had the good fortune to be a member of Miss Florence Rohr’s delightful European party last summer, and our boat, the Canopic, weighed anchor one bright June day off the coast of the Madeira Islands.” She noted, “I would occasionally forget and speak of the Adelphean Society instead of the Alpha Delta Pi Sorority.” Her Adelphean badge was “quite an object of curiosity to some of the girls, and they would beg to wear it. Once we held an impromptu meeting in my room in Dublin, and as we sat on the bed school girl fashion, I felt like a college girl again.”
When Rohr studied at Columbia University in 1917, she taught part time at the Horace Mann School. She and her sister took an apartment and invited five other women to join in a cooperative living arrangement. Rohr later said:
Each girl brought and prepared the dinner and breakfast for the following morning one day a week and I began to realize how much one could get by pooling resources with others. After a few months, an elderly couple living in another apartment asked me to take over their apartment, letting them retain a few rooms. Not long after another couple, breaking up, asked me to take over their lease and their furniture for anything I would pay and pay when pleased.
By saving what she could from this arrangement, Rohr was able to purchase a house at 100 Morningside Drive. The Morningside Residence Club of New York City was born.
In 1920, as a lecturer for the U.S. Department of Justice, she spoke throughout the eastern states. Publicity about the tour appeared in June 1920 newspapers;
As a part of the battle against the high cost of existence the housewives of the country are being organized into State chapters all over the country by the women’s activities branch of the Department of Justice, in its campaign against high prices. Twenty states have been organized; it was announced. Encouraged by the progress of work, three additional women organizers have started from Washington to take up the organization work. They are Misses Mary Stewart, Helen Grimes and Florence Rohr, all good speakers, whose mission it will be to tell women’s clubs all over the country and weld them into effective units in the campaign to lower prices. The speakers will preach judicious buying, educate housewives in marketing principles and teach the wisdom of buying only essential things.
Ithaca Journal, July 9, 1920
Juanita Brooks’ 1980 account of talking about going to Columbia University for a masters in 1928 mentioned the club:
Early September found me on the eastbound ‘Flyer’ scheduled to go to its final terminal, New York City. Here I would enroll in Columbia University. I arrived in NYC in the later afternoon with on one to meet me. By sunset I was established on the 7th floor of The Morningside Residence Club, a home for women only.
A 1930 newspaper article state that Rohr felt she was “blazing a trail toward a new type of community living inside a city.” It was her aim, the newspaper reported:
to provide the members of her club all the elements that go to make up a wholesome and normal life. To this end, there is an afternoon tea every Sunday from 4 to 6 in the long reception room, to which any member can invite a friend. There is the Wednesday night bridge club. One can join a class for French or Italian conversation or take bridge lessons at small expense. The member who wants to keep in touch with the latest plays or attend the opera once a week has an opportunity to get tickets at club rates. Several season seats for the opera are bought every year and club members get these at the original cost.
In February 1931, she won first prize in the Class B division of the City Gardens’ Club’s annual exhibition for her photograph of the roof garden she had designed.
The Morningside Residence Club moved to 600 W. 113th Street in 1937. Rohr was also a member of the NYC Altrusa Club.
In January of 1941, she spoke in Florida as a country-wide lecturer for the British War Relief Society.
She died in Lynchburg, Virginia, on December 2, 1959, at 81 years of age.
