Inside the Institute

You are visiting an amazing place, created by an amazing man. Aeneas Constantine was born in 1912 at the western edge of the Ottoman Empire. He was reared in Izmir, known to the Greeks as Smyrna. He spent most of the majority of his adult life in Harrisville, Michigan, where he was known to friends and community members alike as “Doc”.

Doc’s love of collecting and horticulture began in Izmir. with ancient coins unearthed during the building of his family home. He was also fascinated by the stamps on letters sent from his uncle in America, the famous chemist Dr. Lucas P. Kyrides, by the books his father, a professor at the American college in Smyrna, collected and the vineyards and orchards his father cultivated.