Vassar College
-------------------- [excerpt from Camera Girl, by Carl Sferrazza Anthony. Copyright 2023, Gallery Books] --------------------
As the June 1949 wedding season approached, it seemed like every one of her fellow Social Register debutantes wanted a husband.
All Jacqueline Bouvier wanted was a "terrific camera."
Vassar College had only just begun its final exam period, but the sophomore...was eager to complete her second year and leave the Hudson River Valley campus behind. Among her innumerable and pronounced contradictions, Jackie was an excellent student who hated school.
She credited individual instructors for introducing her to subjects that became lifelong passions, but learned more on her own, outside institutional boundaries.
...She accepted the era's belief that young women should hide their intellectual gifts. [A teacher said] "to avoid doing too well, Jackie would deliberately leave out one question on a test."
On the day her sophomore year ended, June 9, she departed the campus immediately, with all she owned.
Her destination was Merrywood, her mother and stepfather's McLean, Virginia, estate. This was a trip she knew well, taking her through New York City, where she'd make her way crosstown from Grand Central Station to Pennsylvania Station to catch the train to Washington.
On the way, she would typically stop in at "that camera store by the station," almost certainly Peerless Camera, located at 138 East 44th Street, which was walking distance from Grand Central, and famously offered photographers the full spectrum of new cameras and cutting-edge equipment of seemingly all makes and models, and an array of attachments from lenses to flashes.
The object of her desire was the Leica IIc (notable for its fast shutter speeds), which had gone into production the previous year....She wanted the best camera to record her imminent year abroad in Paris.
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