Mary Louise Curtis Bok, heiress to the Curtis publishing fortune, was emblematic of the dignified philanthropists who built Philadelphia into a world-class city for the arts. Her greatest achievement was her Rittenhouse music school, which she founded with help from men like conductor Leopold Stokowski and pianist Josef Hofmann, both classical-music titans of their day. Over the years, Curtis would produce a string quartet that played the Roosevelt White House as well as such graduate students as Leonard Bernstein, Samuel Barber and Hilary Hahn, and provided what school president Roberto Díaz terms “a steady source of new talent” to fill the chairs of the Philadelphia Orchestra for almost a century.