LOW, SETH (1850- ), American administrator and educationist, was born in Brooklyn, New York, on the 18th of January 1850. He studied in the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn and in Columbia University, where he graduated in 1870. He became a clerk (1870) and then a partner (1875) in his father’s tea and silk-importing house, A. A. Low & Brothers, which went out of business in 1888. In 1878 he organized, and became president of, the Brooklyn Bureau of Charities. In 1882-1886 he was mayor of the city of Brooklyn, being twice elected on an independent ticket; and by his administration of his office he demonstrated that a rigid “merit” civil-service system was practicable—in September 1884 the first municipal civil-service rules in the United Service were adopted in Brooklyn. He was president of Columbia University from 1890 to 1901, and did much for it by his business administration, his liberality (he gave $1,000,000 for the erection of a library) and his especial interest in the department of Political Science. In his term Columbia became a well-organized and closely-knit university. Its official name was changed from Columbia College to Columbia University. It was removed to a new site on Morningside Heights, New York City. The New York College for the Training of Teachers became its Teachers’ College of Columbia; a Faculty of Pure Science was added; the Medical School gave up its separate charter to become an integral part of the university; Barnard College became more closely allied with the university; relations were entered into between the university and the General, Union and Jewish theological seminaries of New York City and with Cooper Union, the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Arts and the American Museum of Natural History; and its faculty and student body became less local in character. Dr Low was a delegate to the Hague Peace Conference in 1899. He was prominent among those who brought about the chartering of Greater New York in 1897, and in this year was an unsuccessful candidate, on an independent ticket, for mayor of New York City; in 1900, on a fusion ticket, he was elected mayor and served in 1901-1903.
LOW, WILL HICOK (1853- ), American artist and writer on art, was born at Albany, New York, on the 31st of May 1853. In 1873 he entered the atelier of J. L. Gérôme in the École des Beaux Arts at Paris, subsequently joining the classes of Carolus-Duran, with whom he remained until 1877. Returning to New York, he became a member of the Society of American Artists in 1878 and of the National Academy of Design in 1890. His pictures of New England types, and illustrations of Keats, brought him into prominence. Subsequently he turned his attention to decoration, and executed panels and medallions for the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York, a panel for the Essex County Court House, Newark, New Jersey, panels for private residences and stained-glass windows for various churches, including St Paul’s Methodist Episcopal Church, Newark, N.J. He was an instructor in the schools of Cooper Union, New York, in 1882-1885, and in the school of the National Academy of Design in 1889-1892. Mr Low, who is known to a wider circle as the friend of R. L. Stevenson, published some reminiscences, A Chronicle of Friendships, 1873-1900 (1908). In 1909 he married Mary (Fairchild), formerly the wife of the sculptor MacMonnies.
LOWBOY, a small table with one or two rows of drawers, so called in contradistinction to the tallboy, or double chest of drawers. Both were favourite pieces of the 18th century, both in England and America; the lowboy was most frequently used as a dressing-table, but sometimes as a side-table. It is usually made of oak, walnut or mahogany, with brass handles and escutcheons. The more elegant examples of the Chippendale period have cabriole legs, claw-and-ball feet and carved knees, and are sometimes sculptured with the favourite shell motive beneath the centre drawer.
LOW CHURCHMAN, a term applied to members of the Church of England or its daughter churches who, while accepting the hierarchical and sacramental system of the Church, do not consider episcopacy as essential to the constitution of the Church, reject the doctrine that the sacraments confer grace ex opere operato (e.g. baptismal regeneration) and lay stress on the Bible as the sole source of authority in matters of faith. They thus differ little from orthodox Protestants of other denominations, and in general are prepared to co-operate with them on equal terms.
The name was used in the early part of the 18th century as the equivalent of “Latitudinarian,” i.e. one who was prepared to concede much latitude in matters of discipline and faith, in contradistinction to “High Churchman,” the term applied to those who took a high view of the exclusive authority of the Established Church, of episcopacy and of the sacramental system. It subsequently fell into disuse, but was revived in the 19th century when the Tractarian movement had brought the term “High Churchman” into vogue again in a modified sense, i.e. for those who exalted the idea of the Catholic Church and the sacramental system at the expense both of the Establishment and of the exclusive authority of Scripture. “Low Churchman” now became the equivalent of “Evangelical,” the designation of the movement, associated with the name of Simeon, which laid the chief stress on the necessity of personal “conversion.” “Latitudinarian” gave place at the same time to “Broad Churchman,” to designate those who lay stress on the ethical teaching of the Church and minimize the value of orthodoxy. The revival of pre-Reformation ritual by many of the High Church clergy led to the designation “ritualist” being applied to them in a somewhat contemptuous sense; and “High Churchman” and “Ritualist” have often been wrongly treated as convertible terms. Actually many High Churchmen are not Ritualists, though they tend to become so. The High Churchman of the “Catholic” type is further differentiated from the “old-fashioned High Churchman” of what is sometimes described as the “high and dry” type of the period anterior to the Oxford Movement.