During World War I, American sculptor Solon Borglum served at the front in a non-combatant position but was near enough to the action that he was gassed several times.
[3] There Borglum discovered that he liked teaching so when he returned to the United States he established the School of American Sculpture in New York.
He created a book, Sound Construction, published in 1923, (Six Hundred Plates Drawn by the Author and Mildred Archer Nash.)
Following Borglum's death in early 1922, an attempt to continue the school was made by appointing W. Frank Purdy, "long time president of the Art Alliance in New York and for thirty years in charge of the department of sculpture at Gorham's" to run the school.
Purdy was to be assisted in this endeavor by a committee of governors including the sculptors Herbert Adams, Robert Ingersoll Aitken, George Grey Barnard, Daniel Chester French, Frances Grimes, Anna Hyatt, Frederick William MacMonnies, Hermon Atkins MacNeil, and Mahonri Young.